Girlhood Studies

The SAGE Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood Studies Girlhood Studies Contributors: Author:Shauna Pomerantz Edited by: Daniel Thomas Cook Book Title: The SAGE Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood Studies Chapter Title: "Girlhood Studies" Pub. Date: 2020 Access Date: July 19, 2020 Publishing Company: SAGE Publications, Inc. City: Thousand Oaks, Print ISBN: 9781473942929 Online ISBN: 9781529714388 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781529714388.n306 Print pages: 847-851 © 2020 SAGE Publications, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This PDF has been generated from SAGE Knowledge. Please note that the pagination of the online version will vary from the pagination of the print book. SAGE © 2020 by SAGE Publications, Ltd SAGE Reference Girlhood studies is a multidisciplinary field of inquiry into the lives, experiences, and cultural practices of people who identify as girls, as well as an examination of how girls are discussed and represented in popular and academic venues. It draws from and informs diverse disciplines, such as education, psychology, sociology, history, literary studies, cultural studies, and media studies, and is often framed by feminist theories and methodologies. As girl is a broad, contested, and diverse term that is intersected by gender, race, class, sexuality, age, and nationhood, girlhood studies scholars focus on contextualizing girlhoods across time periods, regions, and identity categories in order to move away from a universal, dehistoricized understanding of the girl. Girlhood studies scholars have also sought to increase awareness of girls across the globe, engage in activism that raises the status of girls, and bring attention to girls’ voices by making them the subject of qualitative research. The field of girlhood studies overlaps with and informs boyhood studies and childhood studies, though it remains distinct in its goals to increase possibilities for, and interest in, girls. To that end, Marion de Ras and Mieke Lunenberg suggest two guiding questions: How and why are girls understood in particular ways at specific points in history? How is girlhood a separate and unique experience from womanhood? Girlhood studies has been the focus of international conferences, including A New Girl Order? Young Women and the Future of Feminist Inquiry, which took place in London in 2001. Claudia Mitchell, Jacqueline ReidWalsh, and Jackie Kirk credit this conference with planting the seed for Girlhood Studies: An International Journal, which highlights research, theories, and methodologies that relate specifically to girls. This entry discusses why girlhood studies is needed, its connection to third-wave feminism, and its status in the 21st century. The Need for Girlhood Studies Up until the 1990s, there was little academic research on girls. Girls were ignored, marginalized, or framed as lesser than boys, men, and women. In The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan challenged women to grow up if they wanted to lead fulfilling lives outside of the home. In Friedan’s analysis, only career women could be feminist adults, whereas housewives were viewed as immature adolescents. This admonition to grow up reinforced a division between girl and woman that elevated the latter at the expense of the former. Women’s studies programs often bear the stamp of this division, only recently incorporating courses on girls and girlhood due to high demand. First- and second-wave feminist movements also turned away from girls to further the cause of women’s liberation, which was tethered to adulthood, maturity, and autonomy. The common practice of calling an adult woman girl became emblematic of patriarchal and sexist culture during the 1960s and 1970s, infusing girl with negative connotations, such as childish, immature, and dependent. Marion Leonard explains that the second-wave feminist refusal of the term girl reduced its value, rendering it a depoliticized social category while simultaneously helping to strengthen the cause of women. The devaluing of girls also has a long-standing tradition in Marxist cultural theory. Embedded in the culture industry thesis put forward by the Frankfurt School, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer characterize the masses as tasteless, easily manipulated dupes who operate under false consciousness—most often represented as girls. Considered undiscerning consumers and conformists, Lisa Lewis suggests that this negative view of girlhood has made it difficult to study girls’ culture with the same kind of legitimacy as the culture of boys, men, and women. Instead, consumer girl culture is often treated as a form of marketplace delusion with little validity, potential for resistance, or significance in relation to the production of empowering subjectivities. Catherine Driscoll notes that girls’ culture is often dismissed as frivolous by sheer dint of the fact that it relates to girls, while conformities by boys and men are hardly ever commented upon. In the 1970s and 1980s, the influential work of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham focused on youth cultural practices, but in these studies, youth largely stood for male. Girls were ignored or assigned minor roles in spectacular male subcultures, such as punks, skinheads, and mods, Page 2 of 7 The SAGE Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood Studies SAGE © 2020 by SAGE Publications, Ltd SAGE Reference and were uncritically framed as sexual objects in examinations of working-class lad culture. These oversights caused Angela McRobbie and Jenny Garber to critique the invisibility of girls and to question the bias of male researchers. McRobbie and Garber, as well as Christine Griffin, challenged the masculine and sexist nature of youth studies by conducting research that focused specifically on girls and their cultural practices. These explorations were often based on ethnographic observations and interviews with girls relating to subcultures, friendship, leisure, mall culture, school-to-work transitions, magazines, dances, youth clubs, bedroom culture, and working-class identities. Developmental psychologists and psychoanalysts of the early 20th century also framed girls in negative terms that suggested they were lesser than boys. Sigmund Freud described an early stage of female psychosexual development in relation to penis envy. Girls’ sex organs, he notes, are inferior, small, and inconspicuous in relation to the superior sex organs of boys. Jean Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg often focused on boys to the exclusion of girls in their studies of moral development. Girls’ experiences were either grafted onto those of boys’ or viewed as less exemplary. Piaget found girls’ games to be unsophisticated compared to those of boys; and Kohlberg did not include girls in his original study on moral development, implying that boys’ experiences were universal and that child stood for boy. Carol Gilligan sought to redress this androcentric disparity in developmental psychology through a number of well-known studies. In 1989, Gilligan and her colleagues, Nona Lyons and Trudy Hanmer, published Making Connections: The Relational World of Adolescent Girls at Emma Willard School. This book revolves around the stories and experiences of girls as they navigate school and peer relationships. Highlighting a crisis of connection brought on by adolescence, Gilligan and colleagues suggest that girls give up their authentic voices in order to please others and be seen as feminine. In 1992, Lyn Mikel Brown and Gilligan published Meeting at the Crossroads: Women’s Psychology and Girls’ Development, which highlights girls’ difficult journey from childhood to adolescence, marked by a split between true and false selves. The feminist researchers mentioned in this section, along with critical psychologist Valerie Walkerdine, social psychologist Michelle Fine, criminologist Meda Chesney-Lind, journalist Peggy Orenstein, critical psychologist Deborah Tolman, and the American Association of University Women, were some of the prominent scholars who brought attention to girls in the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s. This momentum, combined with the emergence of third-wave feminism and the rise of girl culture, catapulted girlhood into its own field of study. Third-Wave Feminisms and the Rise of Girl Culture The rise of girlhood studies in the 1990s is inextricably linked to what Mary Celeste Kearney calls coalescing, or the combination of cultural, political, and academic elements that brought attention to increased representations of girls in popular culture, and created platforms from which girls could speak for themselves. In 1992, 22-year-old Rebecca Walker published an essay in Ms. magazine after sexual harassment charges were dismissed against Supreme Court Justice nominee Clarence Thomas. Angered by this decision, Walker proclaimed, “I am not a postfeminism feminist. I am the third wave.” This statement inspired a burgeoning movement known as third-wave feminism, which included the voices of girls. Third-wave feminism embraces difference in a way that second-wave feminism does not, incorporating a doit-yourself, individualistic attitude toward feminist politics, as opposed to a collective agenda meant to unite all women. As noted by Leslie Heywood and Jennifer Drake, the third wave is a continuation of the second wave, but one that speaks specifically to young feminist activists with diverse interests. Drawing on postmodern and poststructural critiques of truth, language, and identity, the third wave promotes intersectionality, multiplicity, the proliferation of genders and sexualities, a sex-positive focus, trans-global concerns, third world feminisms, youthful feminist identities, and multiple forms of activism, including marches, zines, e-zines, blogs, and muPage 3 of 7 The SAGE Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood Studies SAGE © 2020 by SAGE Publications, Ltd SAGE Reference sic. For the first time in feminist history, the role of girls shifted from margins to center. While the third wave brought girls into the discussion, it also helped to salvage the word girl from first- and second-wave dismissals. As Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards argue, girl was reclaimed by the third wave as an identity for adult women who enjoyed girlhood toys (Barbie and Hello Kitty), girlish fashions (baby doll dresses, braids, and tiny T-shirts), girl-focused films and television shows (Clueless, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Powerpuff Girls, and My So-Called Life), girl-focused magazines (Sassy), and girl-focused music (Madonna, Hole, Alanis Morissette, Salt-N-Pepa, the Spice Girls, Destiny’s Child, and Lilith Fair Festivals). Baumgardner and Richards also explain that some third-wave feminists proudly claim the feminine without feminist guilt—an ethos also embodied in Bitch and Bust magazines, two publications devoted to feminist analyses of culture that have helped make girl a respected word and girlie an acceptable adult identity. Third wave rock culture also aided in reclaiming girl through what Gayle Wald calls the performance of girlish femininity. Wald sites Gwen Stephani of the band No Doubt as an example of the deliberate and ironic presentation of girlhood in the song “I’m Just a Girl.” The third wave’s reclamation and revitalization of girl culture are connected to a feminist movement of the early 1990s known as Riot Grrrl. The third wave is often viewed as growing out of or in combination with Riot Grrrl, initially a feminist punk scene that began in Olympia, Washington, and Washington, DC, in response to the misogyny of indie and mainstream music industries. Bands such as Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, Babes in Toyland, and Sleater-Kinney produced and performed music that tackled sexism, racism, homophobia, capitalism, and violence against girls and women. Riot Grrrl shows became political events, where girls were invited to mosh, dance, or stand at the front and boys were asked to move to the back. Riot Grrrl bands adorned themselves in girlie outfits and wrote words such as whore and slut on their clothing in order to call attention to the sexual double standard. Out of these politically charged concerts emerged a youthful feminist movement that spread through zines, e-zines, blogs, pamphlets, and rallies. When Bikini Kill published a zine called Girl Power in 1991, the term initially became symbolic of the do-it-yourself feminist political activism that defined the movement—Grrrl Power! By the late 1990s, girl power had become a mainstream expression made popular by the British pop group the Spice Girls, who were successfully marketed through what Catherine Driscoll calls everygirlness. While the Riot Grrrl movement spoke to the politically engaged college girl about rape, queerness, and anti-corporatism, the Spice Girls spoke to young girls about friendship, fashion, and fun. Dawn Currie, Deirdre Kelly, and Shauna Pomerantz note that girl power took on several distinct meanings in this commercialized form: meanness, hypersexuality, the pursuit of perfection, and the kick-ass girl. Girl power exploded in the marketplace around these categories through products that many feminists felt were diluted of political significance. Suddenly, girls were the focus of feminist analyses that generated critiques, op-eds, anthologies, and academic articles that helped to formalize the nascent field of girlhood studies. A key theme during this era was whether girls’ engagement in consumer girl culture could constitute resistance, agency, and a form of youthful feminism. Girlhood Studies in the 21st Century In the early 2000s, central texts and articles emerged that continued to define the field and expand its range of topics. Girlhood studies scholars focused on agency, resistance, sexualization, sexual desire, activism, SlutWalk, feminist clubs, dress codes, tween culture, girls’ academic success, sk8er girlhoods, rural girlhoods, racialized girlhoods, dis/abled girlhoods, queer girlhoods, Aboriginal girlhoods, online girlhoods, rape culture, slut-shaming, violence, fangirls, celebrity culture, African girlhoods, Scandinavian girlhoods, Canadian girlhoods, computer girls, girls who make media, girls in history, girls in fiction, and representations of girls in film and television. Cutting across many of these topics, two broader themes emerged that shaped girlhood Page 4 of 7 The SAGE Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood Studies SAGE © 2020 by SAGE Publications, Ltd SAGE Reference studies into the 21st century: neoliberalism and postfeminism. In their study of class, young women, and deindustrialization in the United Kingdom, Valerie Walkerdine, Helen Lucey, and June Melody define neoliberalism as a strategy of modern-day government that denies inequality and depends on self-inventing, entrepreneurial, and flexible subjects who are able to make themselves relevant in the new global economy. The authors argue that girls have been remade as ideal neoliberal subjects who are capable of not just surviving but thriving in this time of social and economic change. Yet not all girls are treated similarly under neoliberalism—class produces and divides girls in unequal ways through the family, education, and the job market. For example, the authors’ longitudinal study shows that middleclass girls pay a high emotional price for maintaining the expectation of perfectionism, such as stress and anxiety, while working-class girls suffer humiliations and frustrations in a crushing labor market. The authors thus note that class is still a critical feature in the production of girls’ subjectivities. Anita Harris also identifies unequal girlhoods under neoliberalism: the at-risk and can-do girls. Can-do girls are constructed as girls of the future who are best able to take up the call for adaptable students and workers in the new global economy. Typically, White and middle-class can-do girls are the epitome of individualized girl power. The at-risk girl, on the other hand, represents the unproductive subject who is incapable of succeeding within a neoliberal context. The at-risk girl is usually represented as a poor or working-class girl of color who is lazy, criminal, or deviant. Harris explores how this problematic can-do/at-risk binary is formed around assumptions of personal weakness and strength, rather than oppression and privilege. For example, when can-do girls struggle, they are individualized as girls who temporarily go astray but must be pulled back from the brink, as described in Mary Pipher’s best-selling book Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls. But when at-risk girls struggle, their problems are often pathologized as bad personal choices that cannot be easily recuperated. The thread of neoliberalism in girlhood studies is inextricably connected to another key focus in the early 2000s: postfeminism—or the popular belief that gender equality has been achieved in the West, making girls and young women beyond the need for feminist politics. Defined by Rosalind Gill as a pervasive cultural sensibility in education, government, and popular culture, postfeminism has been taken up by girlhood studies scholars in complex ways. Angela McRobbie explains postfeminism as that which takes feminism into account while simultaneously representing it as a spent force that is outdated and irrelevant. In this way, feminism becomes a form of common sense and a rejected and derided political position. Nowhere has this sensibility been taken up more strongly than in popular culture, where girls and young women are routinely depicted as living their own choice lives because they have transcended sexism and other forms of social inequality. Shows and films such as The Gilmore Girls, Veronica Mars, High School Musical, Girls, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Mulan, and Frozen draw on characters whose lives are disconnected from but made possible by feminism. McRobbie and other girlhood studies scholars, such as Sinikka Aapola, Marnina Gonick, Rebecca Raby, Jessica Ringrose, Harris, and Pomerantz, have focused on the widespread narrative of female success (top girls, A1 girls, successful girls, smart girls, supergirls, can-do girls, perfect girls) as a flash point for the dissemination of postfeminism in contemporary culture. What McRobbie calls the glamorous high achiever is often seen as proof that girls now experience gender equality due to high grades, university acceptances, consumer and sexual power, and unlimited choice in the spheres of work and family. As a result, girls have become synonymous with freedom and self-regulating autonomy. However, McRobbie explores this power in relation to what she calls the new sexual contract—an understanding that girls and young women can enter social, public, and political life but only on condition that they partake in a non-threatening, individualizing form of femininity. Girlhood studies scholars focusing on girls’ activism, media production, and feminist engagement have challenged the idea that girls are apolitical or postfeminist. Jessica Ringrose and Emma Renold explore girls’ acPage 5 of 7 The SAGE Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood Studies SAGE © 2020 by SAGE Publications, Ltd SAGE Reference tivism on social media that tackles rape culture, slut-shaming, and everyday instances of gender inequality, including the challenging but empowering work of feminist clubs in schools. Mary Celeste Kearney explores girls’ production of multiple forms of media in the wake of the Riot Grrrl movement, and how girls can be active producers rather than the passive consumers written about by the Frankfurt School and the youth culture theorists of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. And Jessica Valenti identifies a nascent fourth wave of feminism that is youth driven and online. Girlhood studies is an evolving, diverse, dynamic, multidisciplinary field that continues to grow, shift, and respond to relevant issues facing girls across the globe. Since its beginning in the 1990s, girlhood studies scholars have explored girls’ lives through multiple theoretical lenses, including feminisms, phenomenology, critical theory, postmodernism, poststructuralism, postcolonialism, posthumanism, and critical and social psychology, often creatively expanding these theories in relation to data collected through observations, interviews, focus groups, textual analyses, and surveys. In the 21st century, girlhood studies will see more focus on intersectionality, third world girlhoods, refugee girlhoods, queer girlhoods, online girlhoods, and the continuing investigation of global capitalism as it produces, and is resisted, by girls. See also Feminism; Girl Power; Girlhood; Girls; Riot Grrrls; Schooling, Gender, and Race; Tween Shauna Pomerantz Aapola, S., Gonick, M., & Harris, A. (2004). Young femininity: Girlhood, power and social change. London, UK: Palgrave. Currie, D. H., Kelly, D. M., & Pomerantz, S. (2009). ‘Girl power’: Girls reinventing girlhoods. New York, NY: Peter Lang. Driscoll, C. (1999). Girl culture, revenge and global capitalism: Cybergirls, Riot Grrrls, Spice Girls. Australian Feminist Studies, 14, 173–195. doi: Driscoll, C. (2002). Girls: Feminine adolescence in popular culture and cultural theory. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Gonick, M. (2006). Between “girl power” and “reviving Ophelia”: Constituting the neoliberal girl subject. NWSA Journal, 18, 1–23. doi: Harris, A. (Ed.). (2004). All about the girl: Culture, power, and identity. New York, NY: Routledge. Harris, A. (2004). Future girl: Young women in the twenty-first century. New York, NY: Routledge. Jiwani, Y., Steenbergen, C., & Mitchell, C. (2006). Girlhood: Redefining the limits. Montreal, Canada: Black Rose. Kearney, M. C. (2006). Girls make media. New York, NY: Routledge. Kearney, M. C. (2009). Coalescing: The development of girls’ studies. NWSA, 21(1), 1–28. McRobbie, A. (1991). Feminism and youth culture: From ‘Jackie’ to ‘Just seventeen’. Boston, MA: Unwin Hyman. McRobbie, A. (2009). The aftermath of feminism: Gender, culture and social change. Los Angeles, CA; Lon- Page 6 of 7 The SAGE Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood Studies SAGE © 2020 by SAGE Publications, Ltd SAGE Reference don, UK: Sage. Mitchell, C., & Reid-Walsh, J. (Eds.). (2005). Seven going on seventeen: Tween studies in the culture of girlhood. New York, NY: Peter Lang. Pomerantz, S. (2009). Between a rock and a hard place: Un/defining the “girl.” Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures, 1, 147–158. doi: Pomerantz, S., & Raby, R. (2017). Smart girls: Success, school, and the myth of post-feminism. Oakland: University of California Press. doi: Ringrose, J. (2013). Postfeminist education? Girls and the sexual politics of schooling. London, UK: Routledge. Wald, G. (1998). Just a girl? Rock music, feminism, and the cultural construction of female youth. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 23, 585–610. doi: Walkerdine, V., Lucey, H., & Melody, J. (2001). Growing up girl: Psychosocial explorations of gender and class. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, UK: Palgrave. Page 7 of 7 The SAGE Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood Studies