TWEEN QUEENS and the MARKETING MACHINE Meredith Rae
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SOMEWHERE IN-BETWEEN: TWEEN QUEENS AND THE MARKETING MACHINE Meredith Rae Guthrie A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY August 2005 Committee: Ellen Berry, Advisor Thomas Chibucos Graduate Faculty Representative Erin Labbie Jeff Brown ii Abstract Ellen Berry, Advisor This study begins at the moment in the 1990s when tweens, or 8-14 year old girls, coalesced into a recognized marketing demographic within popular discourse, and continues to trace the development of tween definitions through early 2005. Before tweens were important as a cultural group, they were important as an economic demographic. In fact, the group was created by marketers in an effort to sell more products to children. Many theorists believe that, within capitalist societies such as the United States, being recognized as a marketing demographic often translates into that group’s cultural recognition. This study traces the tween’s growing cultural acknowledgment. Rather than examining the actual, lived experience of tweens, this study focuses on the discourse of the tween as presented by both popular culture and marketing texts. Together, these texts attempt to define a tween “ideal.” Throughout this study, I stress that an important part of this ideal is that tweens should be able to participate fully in the consumer economy. Within American culture, the tweens’ first purpose is to buy things. As tweens are indoctrinated into their roles as consumers, they are also brought into the more defined gender roles required of older girls, because embodying proper girlhood requires that tweens buy the correct array of products. To examine the formation of tweens as a marketing and cultural demographic, this study uses a wide variety of popular culture texts, such as girls’ magazines, television shows, films, novels and the body manuals that tell girls about puberty and sex. Different chapters examine the history and development of tween-aimed cable television programming, the ideal tween as it is expressed through tween-aimed popular culture, some of the ways tweens learn to connect menarche with their entry into consumer culture, the Lolita myth’s connection to tween sexuality, and the commodification of Riot Grrrl rhetoric in the creation of Girl Power marketing schemes. Throughout, I note the ideal tween’s classed and raced position. In all, this study is intended to create a foundation for further studies of the tween. iii This dissertation is dedicated to my sister, Amanda Austin Guthrie, for giving me the inspiration and the motivation to write about tweens. Thanks, Amanda! iv Acknowledgements I would like to thank my advisor, Ellen Berry for all of her help and guidance. All of your advice is truly appreciated! I would also like to thank Erin Labbie for her assistance and suggestions. Thanks also go to the rest of my committee, Jeff Brown and Thomas Chibucos, for making my dissertation process so informative and rewarding. As always, my utmost gratitude goes to my family: first, for their dedication to raising smart girls, and second, for never asking “So, what are you going to do with that degree?” TABLE OF CONTENTS Page INTRODUCTION ……………………………………………………………………….. 1 CHAPTER I. TWEEN MARKETING, LIFESTYLE BRANDS AND CONSUMER CITIZENSHIP ……………………………………….. 28 CHAPTER II. WHAT IS THE TWEEN IDEAL? ………………………………….. 69 CHAPTER III. BECOMING A WOMAN’S BODY: MENARCHE AND THE CONTAINMENT OF FEMININITY ………………………………. 112 CHAPTER IV. LOLITA AND TWEEN SEXUALITY …………………………….. 156 CHAPTER V. RIOT GRRRL, GIRL POWER AND COMMODIFICATION …….. 201 CONCLUSION ……………………………………………………………………….. 242 FIGURES ……………………………………………………………………….. 259 WORKS CITED ………………………………………………………………………... 281 Appendix ……………………………………………………………………….. 297 LIST OF FIGURES Page Chapter Three Figure 1 Always ad 1 ……………………………………………… 259 Figure 2 Always ad 2 ……………………………………………… 260 Figure 3 ThermaCare ad 1 ………………………………………… 261 Figure 4 ThermaCare ad 2 ………………………………………… 262 Figure 5 Tampax training kit diagram of uterus …………………... 263 Figure 6 Tampax training kit diagram of vulva …………………… 263 Figure 7 The Period Book diagram of vulva ……………………… 264 Chapter Four Figure 1 JonBenet Ramsey 1 ……………………………………… 265 Figure 2 JonBenet Ramsey 2 ……………………………………… 265 Figure 3 Britney Spears’ first Rolling Stone cover ……………… 266 Figure 4 Britney Spears and dolls ………………………………… 266 Figure 5 Spears as cheerleader …………………………………… 267 Figure 6 Spears in “Baby” hotpants ……………………………… 267 Figure 7 “Britney Wants You!” cover ………..…………………… 268 Figure 8 Spears as fairy …………………………………………… 268 Figure 9 “Britney Talks Back” cover ……………………………... 269 Figure 10 “Britney Takes Charge” cover …………………………... 269 Figure 11 Spears in babydoll dress 1 ………………………………. 270 Figure 12 Spears in babydoll dress 2 ………………………………. 270 Figure 13 “Women in Rock” cover ………………………………… 271 Figure 14 Topless Spears cover …………………………………….. 271 Figure 15 Spears undressing ……………………………………….. 272 Figure 16 Abercrombie & Fitch thong for girls ……………………. 272 Figure 17 “Daddy’s Little Girl” t-shirt ……………………………... 273 Chapter Five Figure 1 Bikini Kill ……………………………………………….. 274 Figure 2 Bikini Kill CD cover ……………………………………. 274 Figure 3 “No more nice girl” Riot Grrrl art ………………………. 275 Figure 4 One Riot Grrrl “look” …………………………………… 275 Figure 5 Another Riot Grrrl “look” ………………………………. 276 Figure 6 “Jigsaw” zine cover ……………………………………… 276 Figure 7 Spice Girls 1 …………………………………………….. 277 Figure 8 Spice Girls 2 …………………………………………….. 277 Figure 9 Spice Girls dolls …………………………………………. 278 Figure 10 Sarah Michelle Gellar ad ……………………………….. 278 Figure 11 Britney Spears ad ……………………………………….. 279 Figure 12 Stuff by Hillary Duff ad ………………………………… 279 Figure 13 Mary-Kate and Ashley brand banner ……………………. 280 1 Introduction In October 1999, a Newsweek cover story claimed to tell the “Truth about Tweens.” This article marks one of the first mentions of the tween in the mainstream press. Defining “tween” as children from the ages of 8 to 14, Newsweek introduced a whole new generational grouping to the American public. The mainstream finally recognized tweens for a couple of reasons: First, in 1999 there were roughly 27 million tween-agers in America, the largest this age group has been in twenty years (Kantrowitz “The Truth about Tweens”). Just as baby boomers received a lot of media attention simply because of the sheer size of their age group, so do the tweens. Second, and more importantly, the mainstream media began to pay attention to tweens because of their economic power. Business publications such as Brandweek and Strategy had been writing about the spending power of the tween demographic, and how to capture it, since about 1992. Before tweens were important culturally, they were important economically. Marketers invented and popularized the very term “tween,” meaning consumers who were between childhood and teenager-dom, turning what was just a group of children into a viable marketing demographic (Katnrowitz “The Truth about Tweens”). Barbara Kantrowitz, who wrote the Newsweek article, admits that one reason why tweens are important is their buying power, naming them “a retailer’s dream” (Kantrowitz “The Truth about Tweens”). Just as the Newsweek article defined the age range of the tween demographic to a mainstream audience, it also defined much of the resulting discourse around tweens. To Kantrowitz, tweens are “a generation in fast forward, in a fearsome hurry to grow up.” One reason for this is that tweens are inherently in the middle, existing between the already well- defined arenas of children and teenagers. Further, tweens are primarily defined as girls. While boys are occasionally referred to as tweens, the overwhelming majority of tweens referred to in 2 the media are girls. Writing about Maja, a twelve-year-old girl, Kantrowitz states that “No longer a child, not yet a teen, she had officially morphed into a tween.” She quotes Maja, who admits that “When we're alone […] we get weird and crazy and still act like kids. But in public we act cool, like teenagers” (Kantrowitz “The Truth about Tweens”). Tweens are pressured to act older than they really are, but they still sometimes want to act like children. This puts stress on both tweens and their parents, because both struggle to determine appropriate behavior for an age group that is still hazily defined. This study begins at the moment in the 1990s when tweens coalesced into a recognized marketing demographic within popular discourse, and continues to trace the development of tween definitions through early 2005. As Susan Douglas states in her book, Where the Girls Are, within late capitalist societies such as the United States, being recognized as a marketing demographic often equates to that group’s cultural recognition. Douglas sees potential in this recognition, because “once you’re a market – especially a really big market – you can change history” (24). At the same time, however, we must recognize that being marketed to during such an formational period of life also carries certain consequences. In 2000, the Girl Scout Research Institute (GSRI) released the study Girls Speak Out: Teens Before Their Time. In this study, the GSRI introduces the concept of “age compression,” or the pressure that girls feel “to deal with typically ‘teenage’ issues years before they reach their teens” (5). Just as the girl Maja states in Kantrowitz’s Newsweek article, pre-teen girls feel pressure to act like teenagers. Girls Speak Out believes