PHENOMENAL BODIES, PHENOMENAL GIRLS: HOW YOUNG ADOLESCENT GIRLS EXPERIENCE BEING ENOUGH IN THEIR BODIES by HILARY ELIZABETH HUGHES (Under the Direction of Mark D. Vagle) ABSTRACT Drawing on philosophers (Ahmed, 2006; Fanon, 1986; Heidegger, 1927, 1962, 1992; Merleau-Ponty, 1962) and social science scholars (Dahlberg, Dahlberg, & Nystrom, 2008; Vagle, 2009, 2010, 2011; van Manen, 1990, 2000) for this phenomenological study, I asked what it was like for the seventh grade girls who participated with me in a year-long writing group to experience moments where they found themselves in bodily-not-enoughness: moments when someone or something was telling them they were not enough of something in their bodies. Using a multigenre magazine format for the dissertation, I describe how I learned—as an adult, a qualitative researcher, a middle grades teacher, and a teacher educator—from these seventh grade girls how to be-enough in my own body, by illustrating various moments when some of the girls seemed to talk-back-TO those societal messages telling them they were not pretty- enough, thin-enough, English-speaking-enough, white-enough, popular-enough, or smart-enough by embodying some kind of resistance-to those messages. I then suggest that if we as adults, qualitative researchers, middle grades educators, and teacher educators wish to try and understand better how female young adolescents of color experience living in their bodies, we should begin listening differently so that we can begin seeing/knowing/thinking the bodies of young adolescents, and more specifically young adolescents of color, as something other than problems. Finally, I suggest that the Cartesian mind/body dualism that continues to permeate American education leaves little-to-no room for Merleau-Ponty‘s (1962) notions of the body being our anchorage in the world—that the surrounding world only becomes meaningful for us because of our bodies and bodily experiences; and if we continue living as if there is no body in education as seen through the profound absence of bodytalk in K-12 and teacher education, we will continue to close off spaces for children, young adolescents, and preservice teacher education students to (re)envision living in their bodies as anything other than not-enough. INDEX WORDS: Phenomenology, Bodies, Bodies in education, Middle school, Young adolescent girls, Young adolescent girls of color, Feminist phenomenology, Qualitative methodologies, Multigenre writing, Mixed- theory projects, Cartesian mind/body dualism in education PHENOMENAL BODIES, PHENOMENAL GIRLS: HOW YOUNG ADOLESCENT GIRLS EXPERIENCE BEING ENOUGH IN THEIR BODIES by HILARY ELIZABETH HUGHES B.A., Mercer University, 1995 M.Ed., Colorado State University, 2001 A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY ATHENS, GEORGIA 2011 © 2011 Hilary Elizabeth Hughes All Rights Reserved PHENOMENAL BODIES, PHENOMENAL GIRLS: HOW YOUNG ADOLESCENT GIRLS EXPERIENCE BEING ENOUGH IN THEIR BODIES by HILARY ELIZABETH HUGHES Major Professor: Mark D. Vagle Committee: Hilary Conklin Corey Johnson Stephanie Jones Electronic Version Approved: Maureen Grasso Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia May 2011 iv DEDICATION For my grandmothers, Eloise Hughes and Henrietta Elms v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Lying, thinking Last night How to find my soul a home Where water is not thirsty And bread loaf is not stone I came up with one thing And I don‘t believe I‘m wrong That nobody, But nobody, Can make it out here alone. --Maya Angelou I offer a most humble thank you to many people for helping me during this process so that I was not alone; know that these words hardly convey the boundless gratitude and admiration I have for you. To the beautiful and intelligent girls in the Purple Flowers writing group who agreed to come along with me in this journey, I thank you for participating in this study, for teaching me how to live more comfortably in my own body, and for teaching me how to listen differently. To my partner and my best friend, Thomas Bryant Decatur (my TBD). I will forever be grateful for your unrelenting patience, love, kindness, neck massages, parenting to our kitties, cleaning, cooking, shopping, laughing, walking, reading, and talking, with me. Thank you for always working to understand the strange places from which I come in my mind. I love you. To my mother, my mentor in life, I first thank you for persuasively suggesting I go to Choate that first summer, because it was there I first understood what education could be for me, and it was there where I first thought that even I might be able to one day earn these letters: Ph.D. I thank you for uncountable long days and nights on the phone, helping me work through vi my latest PhDness quandary; your continued monetary support so I could remain more stable/sane than not; your unbelievable commitment to this journey and every other journey I‘ve been on in my life. You have always encouraged and pushed me to follow my seemingly outlandish ideas, mom, and for that, I will always be indebted to you. To my father, my hero in battle and in life, I thank you for committing to this journey I have been on, for putting up with my philosophical jargon the past five years, and really trying to understand the work I have been doing—both with bodies and with phenomenology. Thank you for all of your visits to Athens, for the dinners with my friends in Athens, supporting my trips home or to visit my ‗other family‘ in Colorado; and for all the monetary help along the way. Thank you for continuing to make me laugh. Thank you, dad, for believing that I could do this—you‘ll never know how much that means to me. To Mark Vagle, I thank you for introducing me to phenomenology, a philosophy already so intuitively familiar to my way-of-being-in-the-world; for continuing to model how to live-in- the-world phenomenologically; for your incredible patience with my PhDness-not-enoughness; and for your incredible support and mentorship as my advisor. I have learned so much from you about phenomenology, research, and the life of an academic. I am proud to have had you as a mentor, and to ‗take what I like and leave the rest.‘ To Stephanie Jones, I thank you for teaching me that women can disrupt the patriarchal traditions continuously working on academia; for reminding me to ―JUST STOP‖ when I had past the point of insanity; and for continuously modeling for me as a friend and an academic scholar how to take care of myself when I need to balance my life. To Hilary-same-name-Conklin, I thank you for teaching me the ways of mindfulness through Thich Naht Hanh and his readings, our conversations, and your way-of-being-in-the- vii world; for tending to the needs of young adolescents like they should to be tended to in education; and for mentoring me as a scholar, a friend, and a gentle spirit. To Corey Johnson, I thank you for reminding me that personal writing conveys just as much information and rigor as traditional academic writing; for the chance to come in second at the annual pumpkin carving contest; and for being open to learning about phenomenology and its possibilities. To my LP: ‗What happened? I‘ve been making a sandwich for the past…ten minutes.‘ I thank you for Monday night data-dinners, too much wine, and incredible conversations; for summer swim and bike fun; for gently and not-so-gently reminding me to take care of my body; for being an incredible writing partner and friend; and for showing me how to simultaneously be an amazing mother and scholar. To my writing group: Mardi, thank you for keeping my humor alive by being so incredibly freaking funny; thank you for being my amazing personal shopper; for giving me wonderful feedback on any and every piece of writing I ever gave you—you will always be my ‗special note of thanks‘ in writing and laughter. Alex, thank you for showing me that people can be super-human and still function somehow; thank you for introducing me to the idea of VCU; for helping me think differently about my writing; and for allowing Mardi and I to make fun of the people we needed to in order to make ourselves feel better. Joseph, thank you for your amazing sensitive spirit; your openness to the natural world; your wonderful friendship; and most of all, thank you for not giving up on the insanity of PhDness—it needs you so much more than you will ever need it! viii To Natalie: you are an incredibly talented artist and a wonderful friend. I will never be able to thank you enough for the work you did on my magazine—the layouts, the artwork, the meticulous details I would have never had the patience to do! Thank you forever and ever and ever, my editor, my illustrator! To my UGA-alumni-professor-friends: Lisa, Diana, Madinah, and Tracy, I cherish the time we spent together when you were in Athens: the dinners, the walks, the talks, the laughs, the movies, the writing camps, the drinks, the online-fun—you girls really know how to make a few years of PhDness go by quickly. To my fellow PhDness friends: Missy, Shar, and Beverly thank you for the conversations about the processes of PhDness, the weekends of writing, good meals, the laughs about life, men, and supervision, and the plans we have to one day rule the world.