Girlhood Studies

Over 22,000 UK women told VictimFocus about their experiences of violence and abuse. This dataset is the largest and most comprehensive record of violence committed against women and girls in the UK.

'I thought it was just a part of life' Understanding the Scale of Violence Committed Against Women in the UK Since Birth 99.7% of our sample had been repeatedly subjected to violence including assaults, harassment and rape.

Only 0.3% of women had only been subjected to one violent incident or less.

Our initial findings in this report suggest that current statistics of the prevalence of violence against women have been underestimated for decades, and instead, it is likely that every woman and girl will be subjected to violence, abuse, rape or harassment.

In the vast majority of cases reported here, women were subjected to multiple crimes and the perpetrators were overwhelmingly male

Th is article examines the practical construction and eff ects of the schoolgirl as an emergent social category in contemporary Kenyan Maasai society against mainstream development’s fi guring of the girl-child. The paper relies upon ninety-eight interviews with schoolgirls between the ages of ten-seventeen in nine primary schools in Kajiado District, Kenya. A contradictory resistance to traditional gender norms and social forms characterizes the schoolgirls’ narratives of education and development in their daily lives. These narratives are embedded in larger questions regarding the transnational intersections of ethnicity and gender in the formation of local identities in marginalized indigenous communities in postcolonial Kenya.
Without disputing the practical necessities of educating girls, I problematize the seamless rhetoric concerning formal schooling as a neutral public good in order to open up the complex conversation about educational access and attainment in the global south today.

"Guavas for Dummies, American Jíbaras, & Postnational Autonomy: When I Was Puerto Rican in the Hemispheric Turn" (2019) re-engages this text after I taught it in Puerto Rico four years. In this 2009 essay, Santiago’s memoir is said to bridge U.S. and Caribbean lit. WIWPR begins with a remembered Puerto Rico, and ends in the author’s adulthood in the USA. Studying Santiago’s text within a trajectory of immigrant narratives familiarizes the text to readers who are often processing their own entries into the US / its cultural orbit. This essay examines Santiago’s representation of jibaros, a subculture whose place in in Puerto Rico parallels the conflicted relationship many Jamaicans have with Rastafarians. Also, the theme of “Translating and Resisting Imperialism” is developed through a close reading of the chapter “The American Invasion of MacÚn.” Santiago’s treatment of gender roles in her family is also explored.

Who says a girl cannot be pretty and smart at the same time? In girl power cartoons, girls who are both brilliant and beautiful abound. Through such depictions, girl power texts offer girls cultural support by suggesting they can be feminine, intelligent, strong, and empowered—that they can have it all. This is a significant cultural change: Earlier cartoons rarely focused on powerful, smart girls, and so something new is afoot. American culture is permeated, however, with conflicting messages about what it means to be a girl. Girls are told that they are able to do anything; they are even told that they are smarter than boys. But they are also taught that producing normative femininity through the skillful consumption of commodities is essential to their female identities. The girl power media charged with supporting girls is itself one source of these conflicting messages: girl power’s emphasis on the feminine implies that femininity is a pre-requisite for girl power, and that only those who look “girlish” are offered cultural support. Furthermore, the production of femininity promoted by girl power makes the movement more palatable and less threatening to patriarchal norms. The intelligent girls in girl power texts take pains to demonstrate their normalcy through elaborate performances of femininity. In the process, however, their intelligence is rendered less visible. This suggests that girls can be smart, but that they should think twice about showing it. This essay explores how texts like Kim Possible, The Powerpuff Girls, and Totally Spies have contributed to the proliferating depictions of extraordinarily intelligent girls who are pretty, perfectly “nice,” and therefore non-threatening. These brilliant girls expend extraordinary energy making their intelligence palatable, and it is troubling to see them confine their appearance and behaviors within strict heteronormative boundaries. However, their efforts to do so can also be read as a subversive strategy: Because of their feminine appearances and their pleasant natures, when these girls use their intelligence to change the world around them, their efforts are warmly received. Only rarely do girl power cartoons feature girls who refuse to conform, such as the title character of Daria—and such girls face serious social consequences. These girls’ depictions reflect and contribute to the socialization of girls in U.S. society, for girls rely on the media texts they consume as arbiters of social norms.

Australian media depictions of young women are currently influenced by what Angela McRobbie calls "postfeminism"--that women are content, and that feminism is finished. Yet media representations of young women are also inherently patriarchal, influenced by moral panic around the "crisis" of femininity. Historically, self-publishing in general, and zine-making in particular, have been strategies for marginalized groups to create media that gives voice to their experiencesthere is a history of zines by people of colour, queer people, and wom*n and grrrls (these categories are not discrete). Despite research suggesting that the materiality of zines is no longer important, or that zine discourse has now moved into digital culture, this is not entirely the case: though the internet has come to play a role in the distribution of zines and zine culture, there remains something indispensable about the materiality of zines. Materiality enables the 'underground' nature of zine culture-the difficulty of finding zine-makers or distributors, and the limited print runs of most grrrl zines; this 'undergroundness' also creates barriers to entry within feminist zine culture. These barriers, however, allow feminist zines to develop autonomous narratives-content might be intimate, confessional (an author might disclose sexual assault), angry and combative ("Death to rape apologists!" or similar). The materiality of grrrl zines allows authors to create autonomous, safe spaces, in which hegemonic media discourse around girls and women can be subverted, dissented, and destroyed. This project emerges from a community archive project to assemble a library of feminist and grrrl zines.

I argue that while the tween is understood as having transnational relevance and mobility, this is often emphasized in ways that overlook the national and cultural specificities of tween culture. I argue that the distinctive context of British television history augments the connections between national and transnational paradigms of tween culture in important ways. While authenticity, friendships, and honesty remain foregrounded in a number of Children's British Broadcasting Corporation (CBBC) shows, these are constructed through a national discourse that connects to transnational models of the tween girl but also mobilizes a cultural specificity that is inextricable from the broadcasting context in which it is produced.

This essay reports on the perspectives of young feminist-identified women who have listened to the music of the riot grrrls and/or the Spice Girls. In previous analyses, scholars have found the Spice Girls’ commercialization of the riot grrrls’ feminist message a
problematic instance of commodity feminism. This essay offers an alternative viewpoint: Commercialized girl power may actually lead some listeners back to the source, indicating that a consideration of the chronology of encounter is necessary in assessing the merits and problems of commodity feminist texts.

The figure of the 'woman-child' appears time and time again in the field of British fashion. Caught somewhere between the discursive domains of childhood and womanhood, the 'girl' has vast and malleable 'symbolic appeal' (Jobling 1999). She has been used at different historical moments to symbolise something beyond herself: modernity and progress; freedom and financial independence; pessimism and so-called heroin chic. But what does the 'woman-child' represent today, following three (or even four) waves of feminism? This question is unravelled here through discussion of Meadham Kirchhoff's Spring/Summer 2012 collection, A Wolf In Lamb's Clothing.

We conducted three online focus groups [n=25] with teen girls in Canada in May and June 2020 to explore their dating and relationship experiences during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. Given the strict public health measures limiting physical contact, participants reported connecting primarily online with possible dating partners and others. While facilitating platforms, like Snapchat, were already part of these teen girls' dating and relationships repertoire, many participants reflected on the limitations and drawbacks of being able to connect only virtually. Results suggest the need to better attend to the impacts that COVID-19 restrictions are having on teen girls' dating relationships, as well as to the larger impacts that the deterioration of these relationships might be having on their mental and emotional health.

By focusing on one particular re-education institution, this book offers a multifaceted analysis of practices of diagnosis and curing what was defined as «delinquency», «criminality» or «disorderly behaviour» at the turn of the twentieth century. The study provides an important corrective to the existing accounts of re-education by proposing an approach in which institutional practices are analysed both from above and from below. The book draws attention to the process of reforming identities – the construction of reformatory identities – as the core of residential re-education. Special emphasis is placed on the interplay of notions of gender and social background.
The book is based on extensive archival research drawing from a wide range of new and neglected sources. The primary material includes a unique collection of documents produced by the girls of the Vuorela State Reform School in Finland. Narrative analysis of correspondence, and careful scrutiny of the official sources created for re-educational purposes, form a basis for the investigation of the interaction between pupils’ own self-expression and the aims of re-education in the construction of reformed identities. The practices developed in Finland are carefully contextualised in the European history of re-education.

This paper complicates notions of Black girlhood by examining the dual experiences of gendered racism that result in both strength and sadness in Black girls’ educational experiences. I highlight the need for a curriculum of liberation to combat historical and current social conditions negatively impacting school-aged Black girls, such as harsh disciplinary practices, low academic expectations, and sexual objectification. The Super-Girl phenomenon serves as a metaphor illustrating the balance and imbalance of multiple social constructs. Utilising constructivist grounded theory [Charmaz, K. 2006. Constructing Grounded Theory. London: Sage], the key concepts in the research derived directly from the voices of 18 school-aged girls (8–13) as well as my observations, interpretations, and related experiences. Data collection utilising observation notes, interviews, written responses, and activity products provided from monthly sessions over the course of two years, offer critical insight into some of the complexities of Black girlhood. The most striking common themes abstracted from their voices were concepts related to ‘strength’ and ‘sadness’ in their lives. Thematic narratives were found to be most relevant to (1) negative teacher–student relationships, as well as, (2) policed bodies and sexual objectification. This work offers specific recommendations for future girl empowerment programming, curriculum, and evidence-based intervention development that can aide in liberating Black girls.

Esse trabalho busca sinalizar as descontinuidades apresentadas na construção de um elenco de práticas culturais atreladas à condição infantil e jovem da personagem Luluzinha. Tal análise irá se focar nas representações contidas em identidades positivadas que prometem àqueles que as absorvem a construção de um sujeito juvenil feminino alinhado com as demandas socioculturais da contemporaneidade.

Palavras-chave: Infância; Luluzinha Teen; liberdade; identidade

Aesthetics of Excess examines how the bodies of women and girls of color are racialized through cultural discourses of aesthetic value that mark them as excessively sexual “others,” and how in turn, aesthetic value is generated through the presentation of their bodies. Finding that the sexualized styles of working class Black and Latina women and girls generate cultural capital when appropriated in contemporary art, while drawing mockery and denigration in everyday contexts, the book argues that aesthetics of excess are targeted for regulation when embodied by women and girls of color because they signify forms of class, gender, sexual, and racial difference that agitate norms of respectability and social mobility. Conversely, when classified as “art,” these aesthetics generate value in galleries and museums as ironic, streetwise, and edgy. The book employs participatory research with young women of color, critical readings of art and popular culture, and autoethnography to provide new frameworks for understanding the relationships between cultural production and racialized bodies that can be variously exploitative and socially transformative. The book is grounded in Hernandez’s community arts work with Black and Latina girls through Women on the Rise!, an outreach project she established at the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami, Florida.

This essay explores five very different films that all represent adolescent girlhood in troubling and mysterious ways. Two quite recent films, The Falling (directed by Carol Morley, 2015, UK) and The Fits (Anna Rose Holmer, 2015, USA), are considered alongside three older films, Picnic at Hanging Rock (Peter Weir, 1975, Australia); Heavenly Creatures (Peter Jackson, 1994, New Zealand); and The Virgin Suicides (Sofia Coppola, 1999, USA). These films dwell on ‘Gothic’ themes of sexuality and adult repression, and ultimately on sickness, contagion and death. In different ways, and to different degrees, they all blur the boundaries between reality and illusion. In doing so, they challenge the constraints of the conventional ‘coming of age’ movie. They show the development of gender identity as a source of disruption, not just for the girls themselves but also for adults; and in each case, the girls’ transition to adult womanhood is ultimately blocked or prevented.

This essay is part of a larger project, Growing Up Modern: Childhood, Youth and Popular Culture Since 1945. More information about the project, and illustrated versions of all the essays can be found at: https://davidbuckingham.net/growing-up-modern/.

This article positions remix as an agentive site for girls and women in their consumption and production of popular media, one that disrupts dominant gender norms and representations and the pervasiveness of male gaze. Noting girlhood as connected to but also unique from womanhood (Kearney, 2009), the authors offer feminist interpretations of collage and video mash ups created by adolescent girls in a program of juvenile arbitration as a series of messy, non-linear readings of visual and textural fragments of girls' work, interlaced with authors' reactions to girls' productions as female facilitators/ audience. The authors pose that this double-folded, dialogic, intergenerational remix generates a flow of female gaze-as a continuous repetition and collaborative disruption of dominant gender codes-which is produced, reproduced, and passed on to other girls and women to elicit reactions of difference.

This paper is located in a larger study of girls' empowerment within the everyday context of school cultures. While much feminist research has focused on the 'perils' of feminine adolescence, we are interested in how girls successfully navigate the transition from girlhood to adult womanhood. Thus the sample for this paper includes girls who consciously positioned themselves against an 'emphasized femininity' that made their classmates popular, but that has been blamed for girls' lowered self-esteem, dissatisfaction with their bodies, and disordered eating. Because their self-positioning carried the risk of marginalization within peer cultures, we ask 'What makes their alternative self-representations possible?' We are particularly interested in whether their transgressive identities signal a rewriting of girlhood as a social rather than personal project, and how feminism might operate to support girls' empowerment.

El artículo busca indagar sobre las cambiantes taxonomías de la imaginación que asignan rasgos simbólicos a la diferencia sexo-género en la figuración de la infancia, específicamente centrado en la infancia femenina. Aborda el concepto de género desde una perspectiva taxonómica y no biopolítica, y plantea una lectura desde el concepto de estructuras de lo imaginario empleado por Gilbert Durand. Argumenta que hay una creación de nuevas mitologías de la monstruosidad femenina en la representación de la figura de la jovencita en la cultura mediática posterior a la segunda guerra mundial, en la cual operan la mezcla categórica y las dinámicas nocturnas de lo imaginario.

Feminist scholars have begun to unpack the ways in which neoliberalism is underpinned by particular gendered affective investments: drives for perfection (Angela McRobbie 2015), confidence (Rosalind Gill and Shani Orgad 2015), and the careful observance of feeling rules mandating a pleasing balance of resilience and approachability (Akane Kanai 2017a). In this context, we are interested in mapping the cultural production of affective dissonances (Clare Hemmings 2012) with neoliberal modes of thriving. We draw attention to post-recessional television made by and about young women that articulate affective dissonances with the confident subjectivities associated with neoliberal cultural mythologies of girlpower. We suggest that within recent, largely US, television some important questioning of such mythologies is taking place through the articulation of young women’s anger, insecurity, anxiety, and misplaced confidence. Such affective dissonances may to some extent serve to problematise myths about both the accessibility and appeal of highly individualist career-oriented lifestyles idealised in cultural mythologies of powerful “can-do” girls (Anita Harris 2004). Our analysis aims at two-fold consideration of: first, how giving voice to young women as “suffering actors” (Harris and Dobson 2015) may open space for dissonant affective positions that connect to feminist aims of social transformation (Hemmings 2012); and second, consideration of the ways in which exclusionary technologies of femininity may also operate through representations of young women’s anger, insecurity, and anxiety. Through this analysis we contribute to understanding dialectical tensions in the psychic and affective life of postfeminism and feminine subjectification in the neoliberal, post-recessional socio-cultural context.

About the book
Offering critical response to a range of popular debates on children's sexual cultures, this ground-breaking volume challenges preconceived and accepted theories regarding children, sexuality and sexualisation. The contributions to this collection offer compelling accounts from a range of disciplinary fields and transnational contexts to present original empirical research findings, which offer
new ways to make sense of children's sexual cultures across complex political, social and cultural terrains. Organised into five sections, this book addresses the history of young
sexualities research and theory across disciplinary boundaries; pre-teen sexualities and a rethinking of sexual agency and innocence; how space, place and history shape young queer
sexualities; the representation of young sexualities in the popular cultural imaginary; and the role of new media and digital technology in the formation of children and young
people's sexual cultures.

In this article I explore the gendered assumptions in the new generation of dress codes that have swept through North American schools in response to how girls are dressing these days. Through a feminist poststructural examination of a particular case in Langley, British Columbia, I locate three contradictory discourses in one school's dress code policy that positioned girls as irresponsible, deviant, and in need of help. I argue that these discourses reproduce dominant and oppressive forms of gender and sexuality. I conclude by suggesting that much work remains to be done on the minutiae of school policies such as dress codes given that they contribute to how the student('s) body is thought about, looked at, and treated. Dans cet article, je me penche sur les hypothèses genrées sur lesquelles reposent les nouveaux codes vestimentaires qui ont été instaurés dans les écoles en Amérique du Nord en réaction à la tenue des filles de nos jours. Une étude féministe poststructurale d'un cas à Langley, en Colombie-Britannique a révélé trois discours contradictoires dans la politique vestimentaire d'une école où le code présentait les filles comme étant irréfléchies, déviantes et ayant besoin d'aide. Je propose que ces discours reproduisent les positions dominantes et abusives face à la sexualité et au rôle des hommes et des femmes. Je termine l'article en concluant qu'il reste beaucoup de travail à accomplir dans le domaine des politiques scolaires comme les codes vestimentaires étant donné que ceux-ci jouent un rôle dans la façon que l'on perçoit, regarde et aborde le corps des étudiants.

Drawing primarily on discourses and events from the period surrounding World War I, this essay examines the methods deployed by Camp Fire Girls and Girls Scouts to recruit the daughters of immigrants and, upon joining, acculturate these new members to the American way of life. The argument begins by analyzing those discourses describing the so-called ‘‘new immigrant’’ from southern and eastern Europe as a threat to national unity. Turning to the ways in which the new immigrant problem was gendered through the rhetorical construction of a ‘‘girl problem,’’ this author argues that the advocates describing the girl problem leveraged the presumed cultural rift between foreign-born parents and their new-world children in order to induce the daughters of the foreign-born
to perform as American. The essay closely analyzes the discourses of two groups committed to the project of Americanizing the daughters of immigrants: the Camp Fire Girls and Girl Scouts. The article contends that these groups, the two most popular of the period, Americanized the daughter of the foreign-born by using recruitment tactics that
invited her to dissociate from an old-world ethnicity, deploying legendary heroines refiguring the girl’s American belonging, and engineering patriotic regimens habituating her to American customs. Ultimately, this essay demonstrates how these groups rhetorically refigured the cultural and social belonging of their members in order to assuage public concerns about national unity.

In Dún na mBan trí Thine , Éilís Ní Dhuibhne uses the oral legend, ‘The Old Woman as Hare’, a tale of a woman who transforms herself into a hare to challenge social boundaries and traditional hierarchies. In the tale, transformation is central to the protagonist’s freedom; in Ní Dhuibhne’s work, that transformation is associated with the power of perceiving differently. Ní Dhuibhne uses the hare to deconstruct the boundaries between human and animal, self and Other. Her narrative remaps the boundaries between animals and women as well as challenging conventional ways of representing both. Consequently, the female protagonist of the fairy-legend is re-imagined in a contemporary context while the issue of power, both cultural and gendered, is disputed and redirected.

This paper provides a case study of African-descent girls of multiracial heritage, who have been culturally constructed as 'white' girls prior to puberty, only to later construct a non-white 'black' or 'biracial' identity after moving to a different residential, cultural and ideological community - the University of California at Berkeley. Drawing upon 16 taped interviews with African-descent university students, this paper delineates the specific cultural conditions under which a racially neutral 'white' identity is acquired, constructed and then re-constructed by a segment of the African-descent community, who are the daughters of Asian and/or European American women in economically privileged households in suburban communities.

In the early 1960s, Hayley Mills was the most popular child film star in the Western world. While she is best known for her performances in six Disney movies made between 1960 and 1965, she also played leading roles in several British-made film dramas of the time. These films raise several broader questions about the phenomenon of child stardom, and about the representation of childhood – and specifically of girlhood – during this period of rapid social and cultural change.

This essay is part of a larger project, Growing Up Modern: Childhood, Youth and Popular Culture Since 1945. More information about the project, and illustrated versions of all the essays can be found at: https://davidbuckingham.net/growing-up-modern/.

In this article we consider the absence of queer female protagonists in dystopian Young Adult (YA) fiction and examine how texts with queer protagonists rely on heteronormative frameworks. Often seen as progressive, dystopian YA fiction features rebellious teen girls resisting the restrictive norms of their societies , but it frequently sidelines queerness in favor of heteronormative romance for its predominantly white, able-bodied protagonists. We analyze The Scorpion Rules (2015) and Love in the Time of Global Warming (2013), both of which feature queer girl protagonists, and conclude that these texts ultimately marginalize that queerness. While they offer readers queer female protagonists, they also equate queerness with non-normative bodies and reaffirm heteronormativity. The rebellion of both protagonists effectively distances them from the queer agency they have developed throughout the narratives.

Mattel’s tween girl property Monster High is a transmedia project that reworks classic monsters from history and cinema into teenagers attending a high school specifically for monsters. Much of the work about Monster High has focused on its presentation of sexualized femininity whose ‘dolls had a higher number of sexualizing characteristics than Bratz … or Barbie …’ and its ‘taming’ of the monstrous through reinforcing conventional beauty standards, or focusing the presence of particular elements of monstrosity such as hair, femininity, and werewolves. This paper focuses on the teenaged vampire Draculaura and her interactions with other monsters, and what those relationships reveal about the construction of her own monstrosity. Her experience as the assumed prey for vampires – her adopted ‘father’ Count Dracula turned her to save her life, and the emotional abuse of her vampiric ex-boyfriend – have modified her powers and how she ‘feeds’. The violation of self by both father and her beloved is in direct contrast to Draculaura’s own powers, and presents as a conflict between female monstrosity – explicitly transformative, nurturing, and powerful – and the predatory, ultimately self-defeating monstrosity of the male version.

This paper focuses on Non è la Rai, a TV show aired on Silvio Berlusconi’s broadcasting channels between 1991 and 1994. Through the analysis of the program a connection emerges between three macro-phenomena: postmodern aesthetics; Berlusconism (as a specific and national embodiment of larger concepts like capitalism and neoliberalism) and the fundamental role of “girlhood” in the first two. In particular, it proves that the neoliberal strategy could not have been effective without an unprecedented increase in the importance of the symbolic category of girlhood in Italian society, both in terms of an exploitation of the category of “girl” in cultural and entertainment production, and of an increasing “girlification” of the cultural and social landscape.

My paper explores the contested and liminal cultural space of tween music by focusing on one of the genres biggest stars, Miley Cyrus. Tween music inhabits a cultural space between traditional notions of childhood and adolescence and is aggressively marketed to a core demographic of girls aged between 6 and 12. Tween has been accused not only of the up-aging of childhood, but also of the down-aging and infantilisation of adulthood. My paper attempts to explain the media's and increasingly, academia's fascination with Cyrus, and the contrasting responses to her onstage performances, recordings and promotional videos. Commentators have noted how her videos and performances either empower young women and girls by redefining the narrow and stereotypical definitions of young female sexuality policed by the media, or, they merely reinforce hetero-patriarchal constructions of gender expectations, thus reinforcing stereotypes and disempowering young women. An analysis of Cyrus' singing voice begins to explain this fascination. As an ex-child star, she is often perceived to be precociously sexualised, 'too sexy too soon'. Children, especially girls, with adult mannerisms have long aroused the interest of the record-buying and cinema-viewing public. The combination of 'grown-up' gestures with childlike attributes, contextualised by socially prescribed constructions of innocence has led to the eroticisation of child stars such as Shirley Temple, Brenda Lee, and Judy Garland. The frequent conflation of Cyrus' on-screen and on-stage personae also contribute to media responses. The paper draws on Kristeva's ideas of intertextuality to explain the largely-binary representations of Cyrus. To the media, Cyrus and other young female tween stars such as Ariana Grande are either angel or devil, innocent or knowing, virginal or slutty. Social constructions of innocence and its protection inform such responses. I present a taxonomy of vocal attributes that contribute to aural perceptions of aging. The mismatch between Cyrus' low voice and her childlike appearance contributes to the perceptions of premature sexualisation and perceived loss of innocence that are central to mainstream media narratives. Her resonant and aurally 'damaged' voice defies expectations of gender, age and perhaps, sexuality. Through textual and contextual analysis of the pitch and timbre of Cyrus' voice, combined with ideas from McClary, I propose that Cyrus is able to transgress a number of sexual personae, from the street wise young teen in Hannah Montana, to the raunchy young adult of her post-transition career. Cyrus' voice, I argue, subverts normative notions of childhood (especially female childhood) where purity of tone signifies innocence, and its absence spells knowingness, lived experience and an encroachment of adulthood into childhood. I draw on Brackett's discussions of how the person, persona and character combine, and how the voice, and the biography of the vocalist become symbiotically linked. A consideration of musical genre suggests that pop, and the obvious auto-tuning of Cyrus' voice on recordings, confines Cyrus to a particular media narrative which contrasts to other child singers such as 14 year olds Ari Up of

Warum lieben Mädchen Pink? Die neurowissenschaftliche Studie der britischen Psychologinnen Anya Hurlbert und Yazhu Ling gibt Aufschluss. 1 Sie führt die Vorliebe von Frauen und Mädchen für Rot-und Rosatöne auf die geschlechtsspezifische Arbeitsteilung in der Urgeschichte zurück. Als Sammlerinnen hätten Frauen ihre Augen darauf trainiert, Beeren möglichst effizient zu erkennen. Die Anziehungskraft, die Rosa heute auf Mädchen ausübe, habe somit mit dem evolutionsbezogenen Vorteil zu tun, der Frauen das Erkennen von Rotund Rosatönen erleichtert und für das Überleben der Urmenschen gesorgt haben soll. Wer horcht nicht interessiert auf, wenn renommierte Wissenschaftlerinnen belegen, dass Frauen bereits in der Urgeschichte Rosa bevorzugten, würde das doch eindeutig erklären, warum kleine Mädchen sich mit Haut und Haaren dieser Farbe verschreiben. In der Öffentlichkeit erhalten evolutionspsychologische Studien viel Aufmerksamkeit, sei dies in reich bebilderten Reportagen oder aber in ironisierenden Artikeln, welche die Titelseite von Gratiszeitungen oder die letzte Seite von Tageszeitungen zieren. Was sind die zentralen Argumente der evolutionspsychologischen Studien über die Farbpräferenz von Menschen und wie werden sie in den Massenmedien kommuniziert? Ein Blick in die Geschichte zeigt, dass die Farbe Rosa erst in den 1950er Jahren allgemein als Mädchenfarbe betrachtet wurde. Mancherorts vollzog sich diese Entwicklung sogar noch später. Die historischen Erkenntnisse scheinen den evolutionsbiologischen Spekulationen jedoch keinen Abbruch zu tun. Wie

This paper explores representations of girls in current discourses of neoliberal development through an analysis of a range of texts that promote the global Girl Effect movement. These representations are situated in the context of theoretical debates about gender mainstreaming and policy developments that construct girls and women's 'empowerment' as 'smart economics'. The paper draws on postcolonial and transnational feminist analyses that critique market-led approaches to development and their complicities in the dynamics of neo-colonialism and uneven development, to contextualise the Girl Effect movement. It is argued that the Girl Effect movement draws on colonial stereotypes of girls as sexually and culturally constrained, but reworks these through the discourses of neoliberal development to construct girls as good investment potential. In doing so, it reproduces a dominant narrative that highlights the cultural causes of poverty but obscures structural relations of exploitation and privilege.

Presented at: Under Construction Postgraduate Seminar Series, Monash University, June 2015

Film and television dominantly represents queer girls through a temporal metaphor, ‘a passing phase,’ through which queerness and futurity are rendered incongruous.  With girls’ queer experiences, feelings, and intimacies typically represented only within a liminal moment of youth, the figure of the queer girl has come to embody the structuring logics of heteronormative temporality. Such logics valorise what Lee Edelman describes as “reproductive futurism” by ensuring that queerness is valued only as a temporary phase on the way toward normative heterosexual adult identity.
This paper considers these issues through three recent films that explicitly deal with the issue of queer girls growing up: Life Partners (Susanna Fogel, 2014), Appropriate Behaviour (Desiree Akhavan, 2014) and Blue is the Warmest Colour (Abdellatif Keniche, 2013). In questioning what happens to queer girls as they grow up, this paper comments upon the ways that these representations offer a different understanding of human development, sexuality, and girlhood in which neither queerness nor ‘girlness’ must be outgrown. Films such as Life Partners, Appropriate Behaviour and Blue is the Warmest Color remind us, as Kathryn Bond Stockton argues, that “there are ways of growing that are not growing up” and, as Deleuze and Guattari write in Thousand Plateaus: “girls do not belong to an age group, sex, order, or kingdom: they slip in everywhere, between orders, acts, ages, sexes.” As this paper argues, it is not only the queerness of the queer girl that can remain part of her subjectivity as she moves into the future, but also something of her radical ‘girlness.’

In 2017 two books that explicitly explored rape culture in high schools were published, Moxie by Jennifer Mathieu and The Nowhere Girls by Amy Reed. Neither book centered a rape, and yet both books addressed sexual assault, harassment, and the culture that girls experience in schools.
This paper examines the themes at the core of how the objectification of girls as good girls, mean girls, sluts, virgins, and jezebels perpetuates rape culture and the patriarchy, silencing girls. This reduces the capacity of girls to be subjects in their own lives. It creates a structure in which girls are both sexualized and supposed to refrain from sex, objects in how society constructs girl as a concept. This creates a culture emphasizes sexual activity, or lack thereof, in defining what a girl is, and how a girl should be.