and the discussions that followed, then, remind us of the cultural visibility of tweenhood, and that the subject of the tween—one bound up with deep-rooted assumptions about race, beauty, and consumer culture—is a site onto and through which
Search Results
Locating Tween Girls
Melanie Kennedy and Natalie Coulter
Visible on Our Own Terms
Evoking Girlhood Self-Images Through Photographic Self-Study
Rosalind Hampton and Rachel Desjourdy
Photographic self-study can promote professional growth and deepen analysis of how girlhood experiences such as those related to ability, class, gender, and race are conditioned by and inform our multiple, shifting identities as women. This article presents excerpts from three women's experiences of photographic self-study, highlighting the possibilities of this method as a malleable, feminist approach to critical reflexive practice. Our stories demonstrate how a creative process of self-interpretation, self-representation, and self-knowing can draw oppressive categories of self-identification-carried from girlhood-to the surface and expose them to critique and deconstruction.
Some Assembly Required
Black Barbie and the Fabrication of Nicki Minaj
Jennifer Dawn Whitney
This article explores the public persona of hip hop artist Nicki Minaj, and her appropriation of the iconic Barbie doll. Minaj's image has drawn criticism from pundits and peers alike, but, nonetheless, it has inspired a creative fan following. With reference to feminist theory and recent trends in poststructuralist thought, this article suggests the ways in which Minaj and her fans pluralize how we think about Barbie, race and idealized femininity in the West.
Digitizing the Western Gaze
The End FGM Guardian Global Media Campaign
Jessica Cammaert
to divide, rather than unite, transecting as is often the case, existing ethnic, and class divisions (Cammaert forthcoming). And this is precisely what makes End FGM problematic—the allusion/ illusion that regardless of race, religion, class or any
“Boys Fight, Girls Fight“
Adolescent Girls Speak about Girls' Aggression
Melissa K. Levy
A perceived rise in girls' physical aggression is alarming the public as it collides with dominant views of femininity. Existing research focuses on either boys' violence or girls' non-physical aggression, leaving the realm of girls' physical aggression relatively unexplored. Using data from ethnographic observations and interviews, this study examines young adolescent girls' experience of their and their peers' fighting. Findings indicate that girls participate in fights to stand up for themselves and others, to show they are not afraid, and for fun. This study calls for continued in-depth research into girls' perspectives on aggression and violence in order to provide insight into how gendered, raced, and classed structures affect girls. It seeks, too, to address the problems that arise from girls fighting.
Spatializing Black Girlhood
Rap Music and Strategies of Refusal
Asilia Franklin-Phipps
required by law to be in educational spaces that do not engage with or recognize them because of the assemblage of age, race, and gender in these spaces ( Wun 2016 ). This results in social violence that is broadly normalized. Savannah Shange (2019) notes
“Something Good Distracts Us from the Bad”
Girls Cultivating Disruption
Crystal Leigh Endsley
better be good. We were going to spend that afternoon making use of a literary and feminist tradition designed to explore how girls “engage with the complex identificatory possibilities … to negotiate their gendered, raced, classed, and sexed identities
Groped and Gutted
Hollywood's Hegemonic Reimagining of Counterculture
Samantha Eddy
's commitment to white-male authority. Molina-Guzman finds that Hollywood productions can be consumed by mixed-gender and mixed-race audiences for the purposes of maximum profit. Yet ultimately, the white-male imagination behind the screen leads to the
Hostile Geographies
Black Girls Fight to Save Themselves and the World
Dehanza Rogers
; Said 1978 ). In “Black Looks: Race and Representation,” bell hooks (1992) explains how Black woman as other connects to the desire of the Black female body within sexual desire and pleasure. Although the Black girls discussed in these media are not
Scenes of Subjection
Slavery, the Black Female Body, and the Uses of Sexual Violence in Haile Gerima's Sankofa
Z'étoile Imma
and disruptive, in Sankofa sexual violence is shaped as a dehumanizing experience, a site of subjection, and yet nonetheless a motivation for enslaved Black women to imagine a life beyond the race/gender supremacy and sexual political economies that