Girls Made Of? the Discourse of Girl Power in Contemporary U.S
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WHAT ARE LITTLE (EMPOWERED) GIRLS MADE OF? THE DISCOURSE OF GIRL POWER IN CONTEMPORARY U.S. POPULAR CULTURE Rosalind Sibielski 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 2010 Committee: Ellen Berry, Advisor Lesa Lockford, Graduate Faculty Representative Cynthia Baron Kimberly Coates © 2010 Rosalind Sibielski All Rights Reserved iii ABSTRACT Ellen Berry, Advisor Beginning in the late 1990s, U.S. popular culture has been inundated with messages promoting “girl power.” This dissertation examines representations of girl power in the mass media, as well as popular literature and advertising images, in order to interrogate the ways in which the discourse of girl power has shaped cultural understandings of girlhood in the past twenty years. It also examines the ways in which that discourse has functioned as both an extension of and a response to social concerns about the safety, health and emotional well-being of girls in the United States at the turn of the millennium. Girl power popular culture texts are often discussed by commentators, fans and their creators as attempts to use media narratives and images to empower girls, either by providing them with models for how to enact empowered femininity or by providing them with positive representations that make them feel good about themselves as girls. However, this project is arguably limited by the focus in girl power texts on girls’ individual (as opposed to their structural) empowerment, as well as the failure of these texts to conceive of the exercise of power outside of patriarchal models. Girl Power as it has been articulated in U.S. popular culture is full of contradictory messages about adolescent female empowerment, as well as girls’ places within U.S. society. This dissertation argues, however, that rather than trying to reconcile these contradictions, girl power must be understood in terms of the inconsistencies in and tensions between its iv varying articulations, all of which shape how we as a culture understand what it is and what it means to be an empowered girl at the present moment. v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank the members of my committee for their input and support during the writing of this dissertation. Your advice, your patience, and your enthusiasm for this project has been invaluable! In addition, I owe a special debt of gratitude to Rebekah Burchfield and Kelly Watson for forcing me to work when I wanted to hang out and drink coffee, as well as Mark Bernard and Cassandra Jones for taking time out of their own work to answer my research questions. Finally, I would like to thank both sets of my parents for lending encouragement (and occasionally money), as well as Ben Sibielski for forcing me to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Becky Sibielski for suffering through the Twilight Saga with me. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page INTRODUCTION. IT’S ABOUT POWER ......................................................................... 1 The Era of Girl Power: The Origins and Evolution of Girl Power Discourse in the U.S ................................................................................................................... 11 Articulations of Girl Power in Popular Music: Riot Grrrls v. the Spice Girls .......... 21 The Selling of Girl Power: Girl Power Discourse as Marketing Slogan .................. 40 The Power in Girl Power ........................................................................................... 44 CHAPTER I. PRODUCING GIRLS: DISCOURSE, SUBJECTIVITY, AND THE ENACTMENT OF IDENTITY ............................................................................................. 48 Making Girls Into Girls .............................................................................................. 49 The Origins of Girlhood and The Emergence of Girl as an Identity Category .......... 64 CHAPTER II. THE GIRL OF THE PERIOD: REPRESENTATIONS OF ADOLESCENT GIRLS IN TWENTIETH CENTURY U.S. POPULAR CULTURE ......... 85 Intersections of Liberation and Delinquency in Popular Representations of the Dance Hall Girl ................................................................................................ 88 The “Frivolous Flapper”: Gender Transgression as Feminist Empowerment and Youthful Rebellion .............................................................................................. 91 “Hundreds of Little Long-Haired, Round-Faced Girls in Bobby Sox”: Popular Representations of the Bobby Soxer ............................................................ 97 Victory Girls and Juvenile Delinquents: Representations of “Bad Girls” in the 1940s and 1950s ............................................................................................... 111 vii Gender Transgression, Sexual Agency and Female Empowerment in Popular Representations of Adolescent Girls in the 1960s ..................................................... 119 Final Girls and Women’s Libbers: Popular Representations of Adolescent Girls in the 1970s .................................................................................... 129 Tough Girls, Outsiders and Wannabes: Representations of Adolescent Girls in the 1980s .................................................................................... 141 Problem Girls and Girl Problems: Popular Representations of Adolescent Girls in the 1990s .................................................................................... 154 CHAPTER III. TOUGH GIRLS AS EMPOWRED GIRLS: ADOLESCENT FEMALE EMPOWERMENT AND DEVIATIONS FROM HEGEOMONIC FEMININITY IN GIRL POWER TEXTS .......................................................................................................... 162 The Tough Girl and Girl Power ................................................................................. 171 The Warrior Girl as Girl Power Heroine ................................................................... 181 Girl Power as Coalitional Power in Warrior Girl Texts ............................................ 192 Girl Power, Personhood and the Public Sphere ......................................................... 195 The Limits of Girl Power: Suffering, Punishment and Containment in Warrior Girl Texts ................................................................................................. 201 Girl Power as Pathology and the Pathologizing of Warrior Girls ............................. 208 Fetishizing the Warrior Girl, Sexualizing Girl’s Power ............................................ 212 The Girls Who Wield Girl Power .............................................................................. 219 CHAPTER IV. GIRL AVENGERS AND OUTSIDER GIRLS: EMPOWERMENT, RESISTANCE, AND REFUSAL IN GIRL POWER TEXTS .............................................. 230 Girl Avengers ............................................................................................................ 232 viii Outsider Girls ............................................................................................................ 250 Refusal that Isn’t Resistance: Reaffirming Patriarchy in Girl Avenger and Outsider Girl Texts .............................................................................................. 266 CHAPTER V. THE POWER OF GIRLIE-NESS: RESIGNIFYING HEGEMONIC FEMININITY AS A STRATEGY OF EMPOWERMENT IN GIRL POWER TEXTS ...... 271 The Power of Girlie Girls .......................................................................................... 278 Mean Girls and Gossip Girls: The Negative Side of Girl Power .............................. 291 CHAPTER VI. GIRL POWER’S TWILIGHT YEARS: STEPHANIE MEYER’S TWILIGHT SAGA AND THE BACKLASH AGAINST GIRL POWER ............................. 299 The Girl as Blank Slate: Anti-Girl Power Representations of Adolescent Femininity ............................................................................................... 302 The Twilight Saga as Anti-Girl Power Narrative ...................................................... 310 Conclusion: The Legacy of Girl Power .................................................................... 322 END NOTES ......................................................................................................................... 330 WORKS CITED ............................................................................................................ 335 1 INTRODUCTION IT’S ABOUT POWER In the Episode “Lessons” from the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy begins schooling her younger sister, Dawn, in the training methods of the all-female vampire slayer tradition. As Dawn engages in her first solo fight with a vampire in the local cemetery, Buffy offers her the following insight into gaining the advantage in combat: Buffy: It’s about power—who’s got it, who knows how to use it. So, who’s got the power, Dawn? Dawn: Well, I’ve got the stake. Buffy: The stake is not the power . Who’s got the power? Dawn: (grudgingly) He does. Buffy: Never forget it. It doesn’t matter how well prepped you are or how well armed you are. You’re a little girl— Dawn: Woman. Buffy: Little woman . [At this point the vampire lunges at Buffy, but she directs him to attack Dawn instead.] Buffy: Power. He’s got it, he’s going to use it. You don’t have it, so . [Dawn trips the vampire and attempts to stake him] . use that. Perfect. Scenes such as this one have become common in the U.S. media in the last two decades, as popular culture productions