All about the Girl: Culture, Power, and Identity

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Anita Harris
Psychology Press, 2004 - 280 pages
This groundbreaking collection offers a complicated portrait of girls in the 21st Century. These are the riot grrls and the Spice Girls, the good girls and the bad girls who are creating their own "girl" culture and giving a whole new meaning to "grrl" power. Featuring provocative essays from leaders in the field like Michelle Fine, Angela McRobbie, Valerie Walkerdine, Nancy Lesko, Niobe Way and Deborah Tolman, this work brings to life the ever-changing identities of today's young women. The contributors cover all aspects of girlhood from around the world and strike upon such key areas as schooling, sexuality, popular culture and identity. This is new scholarship at its best.

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Contents

Notes on Postfeminism and Popular Culture Bridget Jones and the New Gender Regime
3
Women Girls and the Unfinished Work of Connection A Critical Review of American Girls Studies
15
Good Girls Bad Girls Anglocentrism and Diversity in the Constitution of Contemporary Girlhood
29
From Badness to Meanness Popular Constructions of Contemporary Girlhood
45
Feminism and Femininity Or How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Thong
59
Girl Power Politics PopCulture Barriers and Organizational Resistance
69
Mythic Figures and Lived Identities Locating the Girl in Feminist Discourse
79
I Dont See Feminists as You See Feminists Young Women Negotiating Feminism in Contemporary Britain
91
Jamming Girl Culture Young Women and Consumer Citizenship
163
Girls Web Sites A Virtual Room of Ones Own?
173
Pleasures Within Reason Teaching Feminism and Education
185
Girls Schooling and the Discourse of SelfChange Negotiating Meanings of the High School Prom
195
Gender and Sexuality Continuities and Change for Girls in School
205
Colluding in Compulsory Heterosexuality? Doing Research with Young Women at School
219
Speaking Back Voices of Young Urban Womyn of Color Using Participatory Action Research to Challenge and Complicate Representations of Youn...
231
Beneath the Surface of Voice and Silence Researching the Home Front
243

Pretty in Pink Young Women Presenting Mature Sexual Identities
103
Talking Sexuality Through an Insiders Lens The Samoan Experience
115
Shifting Desires Discourses of Accountability in Abstinenceonly Education in the United States
127
Where My Girls At? Black Girls and the Construction of the Sexual
141
Spicy Strategies Pop Feminist and Other Empowerments in Girl Culture
155
Possible Selves and Pasteles How a Group of Mothers and Daughters Took a London Conference by Storm
255
Contributor Biographies
265
Index
271
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About the author (2004)

Anita Harris is Lecturer in Sociology at Monash University in Victoria, Australia. In 2000-2001, she was a Visiting Scholar at the City University of New York and an invited speaker at Birmingham University.

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