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Home , Aang, All That (season 8), American animation, Angela Anaconda, Anndi McAfee, Arlene Klasky

The Typing Discourse in North American Children’s Television , 1990-2010

Emily Chandler

A thesis in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

School of the Arts and Media Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

March 2017

Table of Contents Abstract 4 Acknowledgements 5 List of Figures 6 Introduction 7 Problem Identification 7 Aims 9 Scope of Inquiry and Rationale for Time Period, Medium and Topic 10 Theoretical Framework 13 Gap in Research 16 Sampling and Selection Procedures 17 Data Analysis Methods 22 Research Questions 23 Thesis Chapter Outline 24 Chapter One: Literature Review 25 Girl Typing 25 Female Representation in Animation 30 Postfeminist Discourses of Girlhood and 34 as Empowered 34 Girls Out of Control 37 Neoliberal Feminism 41 Gap Identification 44 Conclusion 46 Chapter Two: Methodology and Methods 48 Introduction 48 Methodology 48 Data Analysis Methods 49 Discourse Analysis 50 Textual Analysis 51 Narrative Analysis 53 Limitations of Data Analysis Methods 55 Positionality 56 Sampling and Selection Procedures 58 Limitations of Sampling and Selection Procedures 59 Conclusion 60 Chapter Three: Agency and Power in 61 Introduction 61 As Told By Ginger (, 2000-2004) 63 Everygirls 66 Popular Girls 70 Girl Typing and the Subverted Transformation 78 Episode Analysis: “Deja Who?” 81

2 Conclusion 89 Chapter Four: Androcentrism and Gender Entitlement in Recess 91 Introduction 91 Recess (Disney, 1997-2003) 91 Tomboys 98 Girly-Girls 104 Episode Analysis: “First Name Ashley” 112 Conclusion 119 Chapter Five: The Romance of the Outsider in 120 Introduction 120 Daria (MTV, 1997-2002) 121 Outcast Girls 125 Episode Analysis: “” 137 Conclusion 148 Discussion and Conclusion 150 Introduction 150 Research Process 151 Research Outcomes 153 Girls’ Identities in the Animation Medium 153 Girls’ Identities as Binary Opposites 153 Race, Ethnicity, Class, Gender, Age and Sexuality 155 Context and Ideology 157 Girls’ Identities as Mutable, Performative and Interdependent 157 Significance of Findings 159 Implications of Study 161 Limitations of Study 162 Recommendations for Future Research 163 Concluding Remarks 165 Bibliography and Filmography 166

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Abstract From 1990, North American children’s television animation was revolutionised due to the regulation of children’s television under the 1990 Children’s Television Act, the rise of cable channels and the dissemination of third-wave feminism into the mass media. Consequently, children’s television animation saw greater representation of girl characters, both in terms of the number of characters and their roles in narratives. Lyn Mikel Brown proposes that despite these developments, girlhood subjectivity in media remains dependent on attaining the approval of boys and men. My research on the representation of girls in children’s television animation aired in North America between 1990 and 2010 builds on Brown’s concept of “girl typing,” a discourse that categorises girls as superficially opposed . I use textual, discourse and narrative analysis to examine children’s television animation through a feminist poststructuralist framework. The series I explore in detail are Nickelodeon’s As Told By Ginger, Disney’s Recess and MTV’s Daria, which feature girl characters of varying ages and gendered subjectivities. In each of these series, I examine how girls are represented within discourses of gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, age and class, how different girl types interact and how opportunities for transitioning into a different subjectivity are portrayed. Each of these series feature subverted transformation narratives, in which a girl is called upon, or forced, to perform a different form of girlhood. Within these narratives, girls must disavow their new subjectivity after a moment of sameness panic, wherein they realise that they risk losing their own identity. I argue that while the form of girlhood represented as correct changes according to variables such as the target and brand identity of the series in question, the girl typing discourse is ultimately structured around the belief that girls’ identities are mutable, performative, and interdependent.

4 Acknowledgements I express my gratitude to Jane Mills, my primary supervisor, and Jodi Brooks, my co- supervisor, for their guidance, patience, understanding and sharing of their expertise during my Ph.D. candidature. Their perspectives and input allowed me to enhance the quality of my work and to have faith in capabilities as a researcher. I recognise Stephanie Hemelryk Donald, Caroline Sheaffer-Jones, James Donald, Dorottya Fabian and Helen Groth, for the invaluable assistance they provided at various points during my research. I would also to thank the people I have met over the past four years, both in moving to Sydney and through my doctoral studies, particularly Kascha Sweeney, Sim Mautner, Danni Stevens, Logice Chen, Parsemain, Tina Giannoulis, Jessica Ford, Ian Zucker, Sofia Rios and Athena Bellas, for their encouragement and for the positive impacts they have made on my life. I extend my love and appreciation to my parents, Helen and Steve Chandler; my siblings, Lucy, Alfie and Lilli Chandler; my brother-in-law, Melik Eid; my nieces, Nadia, Alessia and Amelia Eid; and my aunt, Sandra Hubbard (Aunty San), for their support of me during the writing of my thesis, and for empowering me to pursue my dreams. I dedicate this thesis to the women I have loved.

5 List of Figures Figure 1 Promotional art for Season 1 of Ginger (Nickelodeon) ...... 66 Figure 2 Hope’s character design pre-transformation (Nickelodeon)...... 73 Figure 3 Hope’s character design post-transformation (Nickelodeon) ...... 73 Figure 4 Promotional art for Season 2 of Ginger (Nickelodeon) ...... 74 Figure 5 The popular girls in the Ginger episode “Sleep On It” (Nickelodeon) ...... 75 Figure 6 The popular girls in the Ginger episode “About Face” (Nickelodeon) ...... 76 Figure 7 Macie and Dodie approach Ginger at her locker (Nickelodeon)...... 82 Figure 8 Promotional art for Recess (Disney) ...... 93 Figure 9 Promotional art of Spinelli (Disney) ...... 99 Figure 10 Ashley A, Ashley B, Ashley Q and Ashley T, L-R (Disney) ...... 105 Figure 11 Screen capture from the Recess episode “The Beauty Contest” (Disney) ..... 107 Figure 12 Screen capture from “First Name Ashley” (Disney) ...... 115 Figure 13 Promotional art showing Jake, Helen, Quinn, Daria and Jane, L-R (MTV) 122 Figure 14 Promotional art of Jodie, Quinn, Brittany, Daria and Jane, L-R (MTV) ..... 126 Figure 15 Screen capture of Jane and Daria as an artist and nude model (MTV) ...... 136 Figure 16 Screen capture showing Jane’s sameness panic in “The F Word” (MTV) ... 139 Figure 17 Daria’s dream sequence in the episode “Monster” (MTV) ...... 141

6 Introduction If a young girl tuned her television to a children’s station playing North American cartoons anytime between 1990 and 2010, she was likely to see two animated girl characters. One girl was the protagonist; to whose point of view the audience were privy. The other remained at a narrative distance from the audience, her personality less developed and more stereotypical. After the episode established the differences between these girls, circumstances within the narrative led the girl protagonist to experience life in the other girl’s shoes – to wear her clothes, associate with her and adopt her worldview, willingly or otherwise. The protagonist struggled with this turn of events, but eventually adapted to living as the other girl did. Realising that she was at risk of losing her own identity, the protagonist publicly denounced the other girl’s way of life and return to her original subjectivity. I am not describing a single episode or a particular programme, but many episodes, programmes and characters. The protagonist may be a socially awkward geek, a gregarious , a sarcastic outcast or a kind, normatively feminine everygirl. Her opposite number is usually a powerful popular girl or prim girly-girl. The two girls may be children for whom puberty seems light-years away, “tweens” on the cusp of adolescence, or teenagers in junior high or high school. The circumstances leading to the transformation may be a bet, a prank, a favour, a school project, a desire to be accepted or a yearning to beat “those other girls” at their own game. The public forum may be as public as a press conference or as domestic as a living room. The superficial details change, yet the story, at its core, remains the same: two girls struggling to reconcile whose performance of gender is the best. Girl characters in North American children’s television animation series of this period learned particular lessons over and over again. Be true to yourself. Don’t try to be someone you’re not. Don’t be like that other girl. Who “that other girl” was and how she behaved varied according to the programmes’ brand identities, their target demographics and the priorities of the characters. The stories that could be told about each of the girls in these storylines were limited by what type of girl each one was. In this thesis, I argue that if the media of a generation did not allow onscreen girls to be whole people existing outside of binaries, then this represents a problem for child viewers at that time and since.

Problem Identification For the purposes of my study, I define a “girl type” as a category that a girl character may be placed into, such as the girly-girl, outcast, everygirl, popular girl or tomboy. “Girl typing” is

7 the process of placing girls into these categories, which operate around the logic that for every kind of girl, there is an opposite; girls draw their identities from the ways that they are different to other girls. The contrasts between a girl protagonist and her various foils and allies, the way these distinctions are represented onscreen, the cultural meanings from which these differences derive and the resulting narrative possibilities for each girl constitute what I term “the girl typing discourse.” This discourse is a collection of intersecting ideas about girlhood, gender, age, sexuality, class and race that structure how girls’ identities and relations to one another are represented in media. The term “girl typing” derives from a discussion of female archetypes in North American popular music by Lyn Mikel Brown (in Meltzer 2010), an academic who has written extensively on girls’ psychological development and their representation in media (1992, 1995, 1998, 2003, 2005b, 2006, 2008, 2011, 1991). Brown provides an evocative picture of the machinations of girl typing in media and culture in her book Girlfighting:

girls of all ages are bombarded every day with subtle and not so subtle images and messages about what it means to be a girl – a tomboy, a , a bossy girl, a girl other girls want to be with, a girl boys like, a girl who’s taken seriously, a beautiful girl, an athletic girl, a smart girl, a tough girl, a fighter. This collage creates what might appear on the surface to be a rich array of choices; a new freedom for girls to be the girl they want to be. On closer scrutiny, however, the choices seem more like the refracted colors of a prism, capable of spinning a brilliant but dizzying array of options, beautiful but illusory. In the final analysis, the rich complexity of girls’ experiences is narrowly labeled and voiced-over in this culture and the same old gender dichotomies hold sway: Girls will be girly girls or they will be (tom)boys; they will be good girls or sluts; nice girls or bitches. While the parameters have widened and shifted a bit, the general structure hasn’t changed – both sides provide pathways to power through boys’ attention and acceptance (2003, 29).

As Brown demonstrates, this discourse uses superficially opposed, dichotomous archetypes derived from differing performances of girlhood and to prescribe how girls should interact and how they should conceive of themselves. This discourse informs the use of such well-worn media tropes as the tomboy and girly-girl, smart sister and popular sister, good girl and bad girl and so on. Girls are contrasted and measured on the basis of their competence, intelligence, poise, social sway, ability to place others at ease, emotional displays, dress

8 sense, body type, race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, age and gender. In media drawing on this discourse, differences between girls are the evidence of their intrinsic worth as human beings. Girl typing is bound up not only in gender but also in race, class and sexuality, and so provides a lens through which to examine complex social structures by analysing which traits are considered aspirational or acceptable in girls within particular fields. Girl typing is historically and geographically influenced, drawing on ideas regarding gender, age, race, sexuality and class that date back centuries. The girl typing discourse draws on gender constructs which appear in popular cultural offerings as seemingly different as Charles Perrault’s 1892 tale Diamonds and Toads, in which virtuous and ill-tempered sisters are respectively rewarded and punished for their performances of femininity (Bottigheimer 2010, 65) and the 1973 Brady Bunch episode “My Fair Opponent” in which popular Marcia’s dowdy friend Molly becomes overbearing and malicious as soon as she is granted the self- esteem which comes with a makeover (Conaway 2007, 93-94).When these ideas are invoked in storytelling, they are typically reinterpreted according to the specific needs of the era in question. In this way, the girl typing discourse provides an avenue to study the dialogue between the past and present in a particular time and place. While girl typing as a discourse appears in many societies and countless forms of literature and media, this thesis reflects centrally on the specific forms of girl typing that proliferated in dominant North American representations of girlhood from the into the 2000s. While these are influenced by the social forces and which came before them, and shape social forces and popular culture which came after, I do not argue that the forms of girl typing I talk about here are equally applicable across all societies and forms of popular culture. Nor do I claim that the girl typing discourse is purely a product of the postfeminist 1990s and 2000s. However, by analysing the relative freedoms allowed and restrictions imposed on a girl character by her identification with a particular girl type, we gain insight into how dominant North American popular culture of the 1990s and 2000s interpreted the experience of female subjectivity. Establishing a framework for interpreting how the narrative possibilities for girl characters are expanded and limited by their gendered subjectivity is useful for the kinds of questions asked in fields such as girlhood studies, media and cultural studies, psychology, teaching and policy making.

Aims This thesis examines discourses of girlhood and gender as articulated in popular culture, using the medium of children’s television animation to analyse how the depiction of girlhood

9 reflects cultural ideas around identity. I explore the historical, cultural and political meanings informing how girlhood is conceived and represented to reveal how the narrative and generic possibilities for girls differ over a single medium, one that has previously been considered to represent girlhood homogenously. This, I argue, indicates that representations of girls are at once more diverse and more restricted than previously argued.

Scope of Inquiry and Rationale for Time Period, Medium and Topic For the purposes of this study, I define girls as female subjects under the age of eighteen years. The characters I examine in my textual analyses are female children and teenagers of an age to attend primary, middle or secondary school in North America. I define girlhood as the state of existing in, and interacting with, the world as a female child or teenager. It is differentiated from childhood, which is the state of existing in, and interacting with, the world as a person of any gender who is under the age of majority and dependent on parents or guardians. The 1990s and 2000s were subject to seismic changes in the ways that girls were represented and addressed in mass media and popular culture. During these decades, there was a flood of popular cultural offerings targeted toward girls. This was in large part due to a heightened awareness of girls’ potential as consumers, epitomized by the runaway success of the blockbuster Titanic (Cameron 1997), which “drew teen girls to malls and theaters in droves” (Anderson 2012, 141). As a demographic, girls were targeted by television series such as (Whedon 1997-2003) and The O.C. (Schwartz 2003-2007), ghost-written book series such as The Saddle Club and The Baby-sitters Club, such as (Heckerling 1995) and Mean Girls (Waters 2004) and popular music by groups such as the Spice Girls and Destiny’s Child, all to great commercial success. During this time, commercial interpretations of neoliberal feminism in popular media and culture typically held that girls were uniquely empowered by virtue of their age and gender (Hains 2012). In addition to a veritable explosion in the volume of media geared toward girls, the two-decade time span of 1990 to 2010 was a period of growth and innovation in the history of children’s television animation.1 There was a boom in the number and variety of episodic

1 Before the turn of the millennium, cell animation was the dominant form in film and television. Within cell animation, individual frames are drawn and painted before being photographed in sequence to give “an illusion of movement which has not been directly recorded in the conventional photographic sense” (Wells 1998, 10). However, from the early 2000s, digitally rendered and coloured animation began to achieve more prominence, due to the process being quicker, more cost-effective and having the capability for greater realism (Parent 2012, White 2006). Although the majority of the television series in my sample are traditionally animated, several of them (including Daria and Hey Arnold!) transitioned to digital ink and paint after several seasons of production. Thus, even series typically conceived as cell animation typically include aspects of digital animation.

10 cell/digital animation series aired in half-hour installments, produced by mainstream studios and aired on commercial television. Changes to television policy, as well as to the mode of delivery for animated programmes, made this possible. One major shift was the introduction of the 1990 Children’s Television Act (CTA) in the , which aimed to “serve the child audience as part of the obligation to the public interest” (Banet-Weiser 2007, 16). Enacted by Congress on 18 October 1990, the CTA mandated that networks were required to air a particular number of “educational and informational programmes” in order to renew their broadcasting licenses with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) (Simpson 2004, 9). This did not merely refer to programmes focused on literacy or science, but classed as educational any programme which addressed “intellectual and cognitive or social and emotional needs” (FCC in Perea 2011, 119). Furthermore, the CTA limited the amount of permitted during children’s programming to 12 minutes per hour on weekdays and 10.5 minutes per hour on weekends. Commercials had to be distinguished from programmes through the use of brief announcements placed in a pause between the television programme and a commercial break, and vice versa (Jordan 2013, 389). The CTA was a reaction to the toy-based children’s programming of the , which had flourished under the deregulation of television broadcasters by the Reagan administration (Perea 2013, 6). In the 1980s, North American targeted to girls, such as (Bacal 1984-1987) and Rainbow Brite (Glissmeyer 1984-1986), were marked by their pastel colour schemes and emphasis on interdependence and consensus within a group (Schine 1988). By contrast, animated series aimed at boys, such as G.I. Joe (Friedman 1985- 1986) and (Wise 1984-1987), were action-adventure stories criticised by parents’ groups for their violent content (Carter and Weaver 2003). Simensky links these two forms of children’s animation, observing that the vast majority of animated series in the 1980s were, in essence, “half-hour commercials for toy and licensing lines” (1998, 173). As such, they were highly differentiated along and aesthetic lines in accordance with gender , due to the desire for total market segregation by television and merchandise producers (Kline 1993, Seiter 1993). While implementation of the CTA took several years, its introduction facilitated the creation of animated series which were not required to have premises that maximised the potential for marketing tie-ins, meaning that writers and were given greater storytelling and artistic opportunities. The medium of animation experienced further changes with the introduction of channels. In 1985, Geraldine Laybourne was made executive producer of the fledgling children’s cable network Nickelodeon. At the time of her appointment,

11 Nickelodeon’s schedule featured only two animated programmes (Pecora 1997). Laybourne became the network’s president in 1989, a title she held until 1996 (Hendershot 1998). She instituted a major structural and image overhaul of the network which until that point had mostly aired game shows, , educational programming and foreign-produced cartoons (Hubka 1998, Banet-Weiser 2007). For the first time, Nickelodeon contracted animation studios such as Spümcø, Inc., Jumbo Pictures and to produce original animated content (branded as “”) which would air in a special Saturday morning programming block. Nickelodeon’s new brand identity derived from Laybourne’s philosophy that to ask, “How can we improve kids?” implied a belief that “[t]here’s something wrong with [kids]” (Banet-Weiser 2007, 48). Nickelodeon’s “kid-centred” ethos aimed to “entertain six to eleven year-olds without patronizing or corrupting them” (Swartz 2004, 114). Their first three Nicktoons, Doug (1991-1994), (1991-2004) and The Ren and Stimpy Show (1991- 1996), premiered in August 1991 (Victoria Advocate 1991).2 According to Orenstein, these series were intended to appeal to girls and boys equally, in stark contrast to the gendered, toy- based programming prevalent in the 1980s (2011). Laybourne’s overhaul of the network’s brand image and programme schedule would change the face of animation. In 1985, Nickelodeon was the least popular channel on cable (the basic programming package offered by cable television systems), “airing programs that parents wanted their kids to watch, not programs that kids themselves wanted to see” (Banet-Weiser 2007, 36). By 1993, Nickelodeon “was watched by more children than similar programming on all four major networks combined” (Yago 2003, 137). This can be attributed to its rebranding with an egalitarian ethos, and especially to its production of innovative animated programming. The Nicktoons’ success caused children’s channels such as and to try and replicate Nickelodeon’s success by producing their own original animated content (Banet-Weiser 2007, 61). Subsequently, North American television saw a wide variety of new original animated programmes for children. The imperative to create many original programmes with appeal signalled expanded storytelling and artistic opportunities for producers of children’s television. Due to the rise of cable television, multiple networks aimed at children produced original animated series in order to fill time slots and entice new viewers (Selznick 2008). Producers and creators of children’s television animation were granted unprecedented freedom to trial new

2 Bibliographic details for these series are provided in the Filmography section of this thesis.

12 concepts and ideas (Banet-Weiser 2007, Klickstein 2013). Nickelodeon in particular emphasised a creative approach to the business of making children’s television, with storytelling prioritised over merchandising (Grove 2008). These institutional and creative shifts contributed to the increased in media representation of female characters discussed above. By 1997, the growing numbers of girl characters in children’s television animation were noted by Barry Blumberg, Senior Vice President of series development for Television Animation, who observed that “[b]ecause of the success of girls’ shows … more of them are being presented and getting up to the studio level. Five or 10 years ago, this wasn’t happening. … Girls’ shows are now created to be interesting to boys, too” (Laski 1997). The combination of an industry imperative to create series with cross-gender appeal and an awareness of girls’ sway as consumers (as well as the trickle-down effect of feminist discourse, discussed in detail in Chapter One’s review of literature) resulted in the creation of children’s television animation programmes with a greater range and number of girl characters than ever before. This medium at this time provided a field where the girl typing discourse could flourish, and thus represents compelling subject matter for academic study.

Theoretical Framework My thesis examines the meanings attached to various genders and gender expressions, racial and ethnic identities and socio-economic class affiliations. The theoretical approach I have chosen to analyse texts is shaped by ideas drawn from feminist poststructuralism and theory. My rationale for my theoretical framework follows. Poststructuralism is a collection of connected theories about how societies produce meaning, the influence of meaning upon systems of power, and the impact of meaning on subjectivity. Within poststructuralism, meaning is influenced by – and influences – power. Simultaneously, meaning is organised and imparted through discourse. Chris Weedon defines discourse in a Foucauldian sense as “ways of constituting knowledge, together with the social practices, forms of subjectivity and power relations which inhere in such knowledges and the relations between them” (1997, 105). Since my thesis focuses on how North American children’s television animation within a particular time frame consolidated cultural knowledge regarding what it means to be a girl within ideas of race, age, ethnicity, sexuality, class and gender, a view of discourse drawn principally from poststructuralism aids my research by allowing me to consider how this occurs.

13 Discourses are often so ingrained as to be regarded as common sense, “unvoiced and unthought” (Young 1981, 10). Gee defines discourses as “ways of behaving, interacting, valuing, thinking, believing, speaking, and often reading and writing that are accepted as instantiations […] by specific groups of people” (1996, viii, emphasis added). Discourses are multiple and intersecting, originating from and informing “a practice of production which is […] always inscribed in relation to other practices of production of discourse” (Henriques 1984, 106). With this in mind, Ifversen conceives discourse as “a totality of statements formed by a given configuration” (2003, 64). Discourse produces, rather than reflects, social reality. The widespread acceptance of particular understandings of reality creates the dominant social order and its institutions “through language and other signifying practices” (Gavey 1989, 463; see also Belsey 1980; Black and Coward 1981). Within this framework, since all members of a society understand the world around them and their relation to it using discourse, power is not only imposed from above, but from all levels of a given society. Power is the effect of particular discursive constructions, which privilege certain subject positions over others. Discourses provide multiple, potentially incongruous ways of understanding the world. They influence human subjectivity, which Weedon defines as “the conscious and unconscious thoughts and emotions of the individual, her sense of herself and her ways of understanding her relation to the world” (1997, 32). Discourse is part of what creates or imprints subjectivity, which manifests in the ways people express themselves. Reality is mediated through various language systems, meaning that texts are “sites for both the inculcation and the contestation of discourses” (Locke 2004, 2). According to Albury, discourse analysis involves examining “different kinds of texts … to see how they reflect various theoretical perspectives” (2002, viii). Using discourse analysis, researchers can understand how discourses “consolidate power and colonize human subjects through often covert position calls” (Locke 2004, 1). According to Banister, sensitivity to language within its specific context is what characterises discourse analysis as a research method, rather than a series of steps for analysis (1994). Poststructuralist feminist approaches to qualitative research conceive women as constantly moving between different subjectivities as they engage with various labels, cultural expectations and norms. Weedon argues that since poststructuralism’s emphasis on historically and socially situated meanings renders it able to “recognize the importance of the subjective in constituting the meaning of women’s lived reality,” it is particularly useful for generating knowledge which benefits feminism (1997, 8, emphasis in original).

14 Poststructuralism and feminism both offer “critique and careful examination of taken-for- granted notions of subjectivity and identity for women” (English 2010, 711). By recognizing that subjectivity is not merely imposed but actively created, “poststructuralist feminism makes it possible for women to revise how they have been constructed and to grasp that they inhabit multiple and possibly contradictory positions at the same time” (English 2010, 711). By foregrounding multiple subjectivities, feminist poststructuralist theoretical perspectives emphasise ethical research, critical reflection at all stages of the research process and awareness of unequal power relations (particularly the intersection of with other structures of inequality such as and ableism) (Maynard 1994, Weedon 1997). My research is also shaped by intersectionality theory. Intersectionality is the idea that various axes of identity – such as race, age, gender, dis/ability, ethnicity, religious affiliation and sexuality – interact with one another to shape a person’s experience of the world. Within feminist analyses, intersectionality works to highlight “the limitations of gender as a single analytical category” (McCall 2005, 1771). The term was developed by the legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw, who argued that race and gender could not be understood independently of one another since “the violence many women experience is often shaped by other dimensions of their identities, such as race and class” (Crenshaw 1991, 1242). According to Cooper, Crenshaw’s theory of intersectionality marks a watershed moment in the development of feminist theory by

creating an analytic framework that exposed through use of a powerful metaphor exactly what it meant for systems of power to be interactive, and explicitly tying the political aims of an inclusive democracy to a theory and account of power (2016, 386).

Put another way, women of colour often face different challenges to White women, because their gender is viewed through the lens of their race, and vice versa. Building from this, people who are economically disadvantaged, queer and/or disabled experience life differently to those who are economically stable, heterosexual, cisgender and able-bodied. The various facets of a person’s identity thus may be seen to impact on their experience of subjectivity. Since feminist poststructuralism and intersectionality each refuse to accept status quo ideas about what it is to be female, both inform my theoretical approach to this material. In my textual and discourse analyses of the girl typing discourse in North American children’s television animation, I use an intersectional, feminist poststructuralist theoretical framework by considering the various axes of identity which inform the representation of particular girl

15 types, including class, race, ethnicity, sexuality, age and gender. I refuse to position White, heterosexual, middle-class girls as the default, or as being “without” racial or class identity. By rejecting the notion of a default or neutral girlhood, I gain a more in-depth picture of what girlhood can be.

Gap in Research Prior studies of the girl typing discourse in children’s television animation have sought to determine which girlhood gender expression is hegemonic over others. There are two broad perspectives on the form that the girl typing discourse takes. According to Rebecca Hains, normative femininity is hegemonic over all other forms of girlhood gender expression (2007b, 2012, 2007a, 2008b, 2009, 2008a). This concept of a hierarchy where normative girlhood is positioned most favourably applies to series about normatively feminine adolescent girls who are concerned about image, popularity and relations with boys, such as (McCorkle 2002-2007), My Life as a Teenage Robot (Renzetti 2003-2009) and (Klein 2005-2007). These comedic series each feature girl protagonists who divide their attention between saving the world from evil and more mundane concerns such as dating and school. Discussing Kim Possible, Hains argues that, in this series, girls are required to be intelligent and high-achieving while always being polite and self-effacing; girls who display their negative feelings openly within these series are typically or outsiders (2007b). Hains’ research has found that this summation applies to many other 1990s and early-to-mid-2000s series aimed at girls, including Teenage Robot, Bratz, Totally Spies (Chalvon-Demersay 2001-2014) and (McCracken 1998-2004). Analysing series such as Lilo and : The Series (Sanders 2003-2006) and Maya and Miguel (Forte 2004-2007), Katia Perea’s research argues that children’s television animation is a medium uniquely conducive to depicting girlhood as the preserve of tomboys and other girls who flout traditional gender expectations (2011, 2015, 2013). While the series that Perea analyses have varying premises, their protagonists are all prepubescent children. Lilo and Stitch: The Series is about an eccentric five-year-old Hawaiian girl who is tasked with capturing and rehoming creatures. Maya and Miguel follows the misadventures of ten-year-old Hispanic in a diverse neighbourhood. However, in each of these series, normatively feminine girls are sidelined or depicted as aberrant in comparison to boys and tomboy girls. According to Perea, many animated series are characterised by the use of feminine and anti-feminine foil characters whose roles in the narrative, respectively, are to

16 either provide a negative example of what normatively feminine girlhood is, or to react negatively to displays of femininity. I expand on these positions in Chapter One where I review the relevant literature. However, at this point I simply announce my intention to consolidate existing knowledge. I argue that by analysing programmes which differ in their representations of girlhood, I draw a more multifaceted picture of the demands placed on girls in North America at the turn of the millennium. By examining a wider range of girl types within a single study in terms of not only how they differ, but also their similarities, I aim to provide a hitherto unseen picture of what popular culture says about girlhood at the turn of the millennium, one that goes beyond the idea that there is a particular gender identity which reigns supreme over all others. A limitation of a doctoral thesis is that, due to time and space constraints, I am unable to give an exhaustive account of the representation of all girls in all North American children’s television animation dating from the time span of 1990-2010. However, by analysing three distinct representations of girlhood – the everygirl/popular girl dynamic in As Told By Ginger (Kapnek 2000-2004), the tomboy/girly-girl rivalry in Recess (Germain 1997- 2003) and the adolescent outcast in Daria (Eichler 1997-2002) – which differ in terms of the gendered appearances and priorities of the girls depicted, I explore what is expected of girls regardless of their type, and what this shows about the place of girls in North American society at the turn of the millennium.

Sampling and Selection Procedures My choices of medium (animation), delivery mode (children’s television), time period of interest (1990-2010) and object of study (the girl typing discourse) each inform one another. The 1990s and 2000s were subject to many developments in both the number and variety of children’s television animation programmes being produced, and in the prominence of girl characters in popular culture. These factors produced a field in which use of the girl typing discourse is prevalent. To decide which series to analyse in my study, I use purposive sampling, a method wherein “the units to be observed are selected on the basis of the researcher’s judgement about which ones will be the most useful or representative” (Babbie 2013, 200). I describe my selection and sampling procedures in more detail in Chapter Two’s account of my methods and methodology, but at this point I describe them briefly. The decision to analyse only series produced and aired between 1990 and 2010 is motivated by the particular industrial and cultural conditions of these decades, such as the

17 Children’s Television Act of 1990, the implementation of children’s cable channels, the dissemination of popular forms of neoliberal feminism in media and the increased representation of girls onscreen during these decades. In order to qualify for inclusion in this study, the animated series must have been broadcast in their entirety between 1990 and 2010. This excludes series dating from before 1990, such as The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan (Marks 1972) and Jem and the Holograms (Marx 1985-1988). This also excludes series that began airing after the time period of interest to this thesis, such as The Legend of (DiMartino 2012-2014) and (Hirsch 2012-2016). For reasons of clarity, I exclude animated series which began before 1990 and ended during the time period of interest, such as The Raggy Dolls (Jacobson 1986-1994), as well as series which began airing in 2010, such as Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated (Watson 2010-2013) and (Alcorn 2010-2013).3 My thesis concerns the representation of girls in North American animated series produced for children and adolescents. Given the rise of adult fandoms for animated series, and their interaction with animation producers via social media, in the years since 2010, I argue that 2010 marks a logical closing year for the time period of interest to my thesis. In 2010, an article by Amid Amidi titled ‘The End of the Creator-Driven Era in Television Animation’ was published on web portal Cartoon Brew. The article cites the involvement of noted animation writers Lauren and in a “toy-based animated series” called My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (Faust 2010-present) as “a white flag-waving moment for the TV animation industry” (Amidi 2010). In part due to this article, many users from the comics and cartoon board of the web site , “where anonymous posters discuss everything from to sports to paranormal activity to torture porn,” tuned into Friendship is Magic with the intention “to make fun of it” (LaMarche 2011). Instead, many were charmed by Friendship is Magic’s “respect [for] their audience,” as well as its positivity and high production values (LaMarche 2011). These users and similar adults massed into the Brony fandom, a community of adult male fans of My Little Pony, who have generated a great deal of scholarly attention (Robertson 2014, Jones 2015, Johnson 2013, Ellis 2015). The Brony fandom marks the first time that the adult male audience for a

3 The one exception to this rule is Arthur (Brown 1996-present). Since this series aired for three quarters of the time period of interest to this thesis, I maintain that it is likely to articulate the girl typing discourse similarly to the other programmes selected for analysis. However, to preserve the integrity of the rationale, only Arthur episodes produced and aired prior to 2010 are eligible for inclusion in the study. Arthur is not analysed in detail in any of the chapters; it is included primarily to show how the gender representations in a range of animated series are in dialogue with one another.

18 children’s animated television series (particularly one aimed specifically at girls) received more scholarly and media attention than the child audience, or, arguably, the series itself. The producers of Friendship is Magic were in dialogue with this adult audience – in the episode “The Last Roundup” (Rogers 2012), a background character whom Bronies had decided was mentally disabled was given lines and a name that recalled her fan persona (Bell 2013). Analysing series that were produced with both child audiences and an adult fandom in mind is a project to be undertaken at another time or by another researcher, being outside the scope of this current thesis. I specify a focus on television animation over theatrical animation because I am concerned with how girlhood identity is articulated within episodic narratives. Furthermore, episodic television is characterised by a status quo, which established characters must return to by the close of each episode (Abelman 1998). This allows the episodes to be seen out of order without too much viewer confusion. Episodic television structure provides a framework for considering systems of meaning: if this preferred status quo involves, for example, segregation of different social groups in a school, this is telling in terms of what is considered “preferable” in the context of the culture which produced this text. In analysing these episodes, I will consider how girl typing is used to inform either static characterisation within a floating timeline, or a within a linear timeline. Since the narrative world of a film does not require characters to return to a status quo at the conclusion of a story, but rather aims to progress its characters toward a resolution, incorporating films into my sample would over-complicate the demands of my analysis. For this reason, I concentrate on episodic television series produced by commercial studies and aired on major networks such as Nickelodeon, Disney and MTV. This focus on television animation series excludes theatrical releases such as Lilo and Stitch (Sanders 2002), theatrical adaptations of animated television series such as Movie (Malkasian 2002) and straight-to-video releases such as as the Princess and the Pauper (Lau 2004). In the interest of clarity, I do not analyse television spin-offs of animated theatrical films, such as Lilo and Stitch: The Series (Sanders 2003-2006) and The Adventures of : Boy Genius (Davis 2002-2006). This is because they use characters which have already been established in theatrical films, which would mean that I would have to take the films into consideration in my analysis. In order to emphasise the influence of the episodic television format on the girl typing discourse, I use animated series with consistent characters. For this reason, I exclude , sketch series or any other series premised around unconnected standalone narratives, such as Tales from the Cryptkeeper (Hinson 1993-1999). While KaBlam!

19 (Mittenthal 1996-2000) has animated short segments which air in each episode of the series and thus have recurring characters (such as Life With Loopy and The Off-Beats), these are under ten minutes long and do not qualify for inclusion in the study, since short subjects of this kind tend to be premised around gags or building to a , rather than substantive character development or narrative arcs. I specify a focus on children’s animation by analysing only series produced for viewers between the ages of five and fifteen years. While many children do watch programming aimed at an older or younger audience, I focus on messages and representations produced specifically for school-aged children and young adolescents. This excludes series intended for pre-schoolers, such as (Gifford 2000-present) and Franny’s Feet (Nielsen 2004-2010), as well as “” such as (Groening 1989-present) and (Miller 2002-2003). To be included in the sample, the children’s television animation series in question had to have been produced in North America, so that their representations of gender, race, ethnicity, age, sexuality and class would not be complicated by the articulation of different national identities.4 This excludes series such as Sailor (Sato 1992-1997) from the sample. Sailor Moon was based on a Japanese , Naoko Takeuchi’s Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon (Joanette 2009). The anime was not only produced in Japan, but also set there, which is apparent from the inclusion of Japanese foods, schools and spiritual practices. Analysing its portrayal of girlhood in terms of race, ethnicity, class, gender, age and sexuality would involve taking into account specifically Japanese cultural phenomena, which could detract from the central discussion of North American attitudes to girlhood. The girl typing discourse is centrally concerned with the representation of girl characters as dichotomous archetypes. In order to investigate how it operates in children’s television animation, I include in the sample only series wherein two or more girl characters interact in multiple episodes. These characters do not have to be the central protagonists of their series, but must play a substantial role in the narrative. The girl characters must interact in meaningful ways on a regular basis, as friends, teammates, rivals, enemies or family. One female character in any particular pair of girl types may be older than the other, provided she is not in a caretaking or mentoring role to the younger girl. Making this allowance is imperative in order to recognise that girlhood is not defined only by psychological

4 Some of the series in the larger sample, such as and , are North American/Canadian co-productions. Neither of these series are explicitly set in Canada. In the interests of clarity, my three main series in focus are North American productions.

20 development, biological processes or even age (Ojanen 2008, Aapola 2005). For example, Mitchell and Reid-Walsh argue that there are at least five different generations of females who might classify themselves, or be classified, as girls:

girl-group bands from Generation X, 55-year-old women as Gap shoppers along with their five-year-old Gap Kid granddaughters, little girls playing Barbie or My Little Pony, representations of Monica Lewinsky as “just a girl,” American Girlhood viewed as a commodity in the form of the American Girlhood dolls, books, trading cards and stores, as well as the pre- teen group of “tween girls” who now wield so much shopping power that they have their own catalogs, stores, and fashions (2002, 5).

Outside of these classifications, Gonick has argued that girlhood is increasingly defined by environmental and societal factors such as class and race (2004). Within the parameters of the girl typing discourse, this becomes apparent when a character aged in her late teens or early to mid-twenties relates to a younger girl character as an equal because they are placed in a similarly marginalised position. For example, Kim and of Kim Possible are enemies, rivals and sometimes allies. Cheerleading crime fighter Kim is sixteen years old at the series’ beginning and eighteen at its end. Shego’s age is not given, but she is assumed to be in her early to mid- twenties. Despite their age difference, similarities are drawn between the two characters. They look so alike that Shego can be read as “Kim’s ” (Hains 2007b, 79). They are both in a somewhat subordinate position, Shego being a “sidekick” to the inept Dr Drakken rather than a in her own right, and Kim being an adolescent who is subject to her parents’ rules and those of her high school. When Kim and Shego meet, they exchange insults, compliment one another’s clothing or bemoan the men in their lives. In the episode “Stop Team Go” (Weldon 2007), Shego is affected by a device which exaggerates the positive aspects of her personality. This causes Shego and Kim to bond as pseudo-sisters, rather than relating as a mother and daughter or mentor and student. This demonstrates that a girl character can relate to a young as equals – as girls – provided the young woman in the equation is not in a position of authority over the younger girl. With this in mind, my requirement typing necessarily involves young female characters relating as equals excludes series with one girl character who is surrounded by adult women who are responsible for her, such as X-Men: The Animated Series (Lewald 1992-1997), and series where all the principal characters are adults, such as Justice League (Timm 2001-2004). In

21 the interest of applicability, the girl characters in the series I analyse in detail are all close in age, but girl characters in series that are in dialogue with my three major series may be further apart in age. I identify girl characters on the basis of pronouns, first names, self-identification as female, labelling by other characters and/or gendered visual markers such as pigtails or dresses. Girl characters in my study must be over kindergarten age, but below tertiary education age – roughly between the ages of six and eighteen years. I exclude series where the principal characters understand themselves as something other than human, so that readings of characters’ gender expressions are not complicated by anthropomorphism or by post-human considerations.5 In writing this thesis, I screened episodes of twenty North American animated television series for analytical purposes. I analyse the series As Told By Ginger (Kapnek 2000-2004), Recess (Germain 1997-2003) and Daria (Eichler 1997-2002) in detail. In order to demonstrate how the girl typing discourse is present in a range of animation texts, I also refer briefly to the series Rugrats (1991-2004), Hey Arnold! (1996-2004), Arthur (1996- present), The Powerpuff Girls (1998-2004), Mike, Lu & Og (1999-2001), Angela Anaconda (1999-2002), X-Men: Evolution (2000-2003), (2000-2005), Braceface (2001-2005), (2001-2005), Totally Spies (2001-2014), Fillmore! (2002-2004), Kim Possible (2002-2007), (2003-2006), All Grown Up (2003-2008), (2004), Bratz (2005-2007) and : The Last Airbender (2005-2008).6

Data Analysis Methods My chosen methods for analysing the data are textual analysis, discourse analysis and narrative analysis. I viewed a range of episodes of each of these series, taking note of the representational patterns within each series and across the sample as a whole. After isolating representational trends, I selected a single episode for a close reading in each chapter, using textual analysis to discern how it reflects the meaning-making practices of the culture it

5 With this in mind, I include the characters of Arthur (1996-present) in the sample, despite the characters having non-human features. In this series, the characters refer to themselves as people, are all of a roughly equivalent size and build, have non-anthropomorphised pets, speak in human voices (rather than growling or gibbering depending on their species) and have ordinary surnames (Baxter, Read and Frensky, as opposed to species-based surnames such as Rabbit, Aardvark and Chimp). Arthur is not analysed in detail in any of the chapters; it is included primarily to show how the gender representations in a range of animated series are in dialogue with one another. 6 Bibliographic details for these series are provided in the Filmography section of this thesis.

22 emerged from. My discourse analysis involved researching the discourses of gender, race and class informing the representation of the girl characters, using the relevant information to develop an overarching theory of the forms and functions of girl typing in popular culture. My narrative analysis portion involves examining how events such as makeover scenes and confrontations between girls are prioritised and imbued with significance within a story. Chapter Two of my thesis provides a fuller account of my methods and methodology, including my strategies for counteracting the limitations of particular methods. Chapters Three, Four and Five of this thesis are organised to reflect the results of my analyses. After examining the particular context of the series I analyse in detail, such as how the series reflects the brand identity of the network on which it was originally aired, any noteworthy features of the animation or storytelling, and the field in which the characters operate, I then discuss the particular girl types to be examined in that chapter, both in a general sense across a range of media (such as books and films) and in the specific series being discussed in that chapter. Finally, I conduct a close reading of a particular episode of the series in question, examining how different girl types emerge in superficially similar circumstances, according to the priorities and brand identity of the series.

Research Questions In reviewing relevant literature, I located a gap in literature relating to the tendency of previous works to analyse the positioning of normative or transgressive girlhood as unequivocally superior to its perceived “opposite” form of girlhood. This gap in literature led me to devise the following research questions:

1. How does the girl typing discourse construct girlhood identity? 2. How do context, ideology and the television animation medium influence the representation of gendered subjectivity?

In my thesis, I use van Dijk’s definition of ideology as “the basis of the social representations shared by members of a group” which "form the basis of specific arguments for, and explanations of, specific social arrangements, or indeed influence a specific understanding of the world in general” (1998, 8). Within my research, context is defined as “cultural setting, speech situation, [and] shared background assumptions” which inform the content of a media text (Goodwin 1992, 3). My research questions do not suppose any hegemonic form of

23 girlhood, but instead allow for the interrogation of multiple forms of young female subjectivity through a variety of different lenses.

Thesis Chapter Outline Following from this introduction, in Chapter One I review the relevant literature regarding representation of girls in children’s television animation and discourses of gender and girlhood, including gender performativity, femininity as masquerade, the heterosexual matrix and postfeminist notions of girls in crisis, girls as empowered and girls out of control. In Chapter Two, I present my methodology and methods for answering my research questions. I also reflect on theoretical concerns impacting the research, including my sampling and selection procedures, and my positionality as a researcher. In Chapter Three, I examine the As Told By Ginger episode “Deja Who?” (Anthony 2001) within a Foucauldian power relations framework. In this chapter, I examine the everygirl and popular girl types and begin to engage with my own concepts of subverted transformation and sameness panic. In Chapter Four, I explore the girly-girl and tomboy girl types using the articulation of androcentric and gender-entitled views of girlhood in the Recess episode “First Name Ashley” (Huckins 1997a). Chapter Five considers the outcast girl type in Daria by discussing the romance of the outsider in a postfeminist media context and analysing the episode “Monster” (Beber 1998). In the concluding chapter of my thesis, I present my findings, discussing the implications and speculating on future directions for research. In my thesis, I argue that the girl typing discourse operates across a wide range of children’s television series, not merely ones which feature either prepubescent and/or gender transgressive girls or adolescent and/or gender normative girls. My argument is that girl characters of varying ages, gender expressions and archetypes are discursively constructed with the understanding that their gender expressions are constantly in dialogue with those of the girls around them, that other girls’ performances of gender have enormous bearing on their own, and that whatever field the characters inhabit, the options for girls are limited.

24 Chapter One: Literature Review This chapter of my thesis provides a critical review of the literature relating to the gendered representation of girls as dichotomous, superficially opposed types in North American children’s television animation between 1990 and 2010. Relevant literature spans the fields of girlhood studies, gender studies, psychology, feminist theory, education and parenting literature. I begin this chapter by reviewing previous literature on the girl typing discourse, including relevant theories of gender and sexuality. I then synthesise literature on female representation in North American television animation. I engage with key debates around girls’ agency and subjectivity in the 1990s and 2000s, based in postfeminist discourses of girlhood and gender, including notions of girls as empowered, girls out of control, and girls as neoliberal subjects. After considering the literature as a whole, I identify gaps in knowledge and propose theoretical tools to address these gaps. Prior academic writing on the girl typing discourse in North American children’s television animation of the 1990s and 2000s typically takes one of two positions. According to one perspective, normative femininity is privileged, with girls who prioritise their appearances and popularity situated as the default (Hains 2004, 2007b, 2007a, 2008a, 2008b, 2009, 2012, 2014). An alternative perspective suggests that girls who flout normative gender roles are represented as superior to more traditionally feminine girls (Perea 2011). These differing views suggest that what constitutes ideal femininity within children’s television animation is dependent on context and ideology, a standpoint I wish to expand on in this thesis.

Girl Typing The girl typing discourse categorises girls and women using superficially opposed, dichotomous types. The American academic Lyn Mikel Brown coined the term “girl typing.” Brown has written extensively on girls’ psychological development and their representation in media (1992, 1995, 1998, 2003, 2005b, 2005a, 2006, 2008, 2011, Edell 2013, 2015b, 1991). Within media drawing upon the girl typing discourse, as introduced and theorised by Brown, female characters may be “pretty and playful (but vapid and trivial) and an object of affection for the boys, or they could be sensible and interesting (but asexual and responsible) and friends with the boys” (Meltzer 2010, 109). The girl typing discourse measures girls’ behaviour in comparison to another girl, real or imagined, whose behaviour is opposite. According to Thompson, this means that “[g]ood”

25 girls are compared to “bad” girls, whereas girls on the fringes are encouraged to malign girls with a different or more stigmatised identity: “drugs instead of sex, lesbianism instead of promiscuity, bisexuality instead of lesbianism” (1994, 228). Within North American children’s television animation, girls whose gender expressions are counter to the version of femininity promoted as the ideal within a certain programme are othered. The concept of othering refers to how a marginalised person or group “both defines, and is defined by, the boundaries for inclusion in and exclusion from the dominant group” (Cockburn 1999, 11; see Rutherford, 1990; Connolly, 1991; Paechter, 1998). Discussing the othering of women by men, Simone de Beauvoir argues that within this formation, the dominant group is considered “positive and … neutral,” whereas the othered group is invoked to signify “the negative, defined by limiting criteria, without reciprocity” (1953, 15). Although the term “girl typing” is not widely used, there exists a body of literature concerning gendered representations of girls as types in children’s television animation. One viewpoint of the girl typing discourse holds that normative femininity is presented as the only viable option for girls. Another perception is that rebellion against normative femininity is championed as the ideal. In order to discuss these positions, it is necessary to outline key theories of gender and sexuality: gender performativity, hegemonic /emphasised femininity and the heterosexual script. Gender performativity as a concept originates in psychoanalyst Joan Riviere’s theory of femininity as masquerade. Observing and analysing professional women, Riviere argues that women exaggerate their femininity in order to obscure masculine traits marking them as a possible threat to male domains of power. Riviere proposes that ultimately, there is no distinction “between genuine womanliness and the ‘masquerade’” (1986, 38). This position has problematic aspects, namely Riviere’s assumption that in comparison to femininity, masculinity is an intrinsic and unlearned expression of a person’s true self. However, Riviere’s theory provides a gateway to modern queer theory, especially the notion of gender as performative. The poststructuralist philosopher Judith Butler expands upon the notion of gender as behaviours employed in response to other people, rather than an intrinsic expression of biology. Butler argues that gender is “a constructed identity … which the mundane social audience, including the actors themselves, come to believe and to perform in the mode of belief” (1990, 141). Butler consciously refers to gender “performativity” rather than as “performance.” Whereas “performance” implies an isolated event with a recognisable beginning and end, the term “performativity” connotes “culturally sustained temporal

26 duration” (1990, xv). As Butler states: “The view that gender is performative show[s] that what we take to be an internal essence of gender is manufactured through a sustained set of acts, posited through the gendered stylization of the body” (1990, xv). According to sociologist Raewyn Connell, there are multiple and diverse and in contemporary culture (1987). This is because “gender is not always constituted coherently or consistently in different historical contexts,” as well as being influenced by “discursively constituted identities” connected to a person’s race, class, age, ethnicity, education, profession and so on (Butler 1990, 3). However, all genders are measured against the standards of the genders Connell terms hegemonic masculinity and emphasised femininity. The Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci developed the concept of hegemony to refer to how the dominant section of a population exerts disproportionate cultural influence “caused by the prestige (and consequent confidence) which the dominant group enjoys because of its position and function in the world of production” (Gramsci 1971, 12). It is “achieved through culture, institutions, and persuasion” and therefore is not necessarily violent (Connell 2005, 832). Within this paradigm, the ordering structures of the world legitimise “the way a subordinate class lives its subordination” (Nowell-Smith in Alvarado 1992, 51). Connell defines hegemonic masculinity as “the configuration of gender practice … which guarantees … the dominant position of men” (1995, 77). This involves “subordination of women, the exclusion and debasement of gay men, and the celebration of toughness and competitiveness” (Spade 2011, xvi). Hegemonic masculinity positions normatively masculine gender expressions as ideal, othering groups or individuals who cannot adequately perform these gender expressions, which serves to disenfranchise them. Men earn esteem within society by enacting hegemonic masculinity. According to Messerschmidt, women acquire esteem through emphasised femininity, “a form of femininity that is practiced in a complementary, compliant, and accommodating subordinate relationship with hegemonic masculinity” (2011, 206). Numerous scholars argue that there is no hegemonic femininity as such, because there is no femininity that ostracises and polices other gender expressions to the extent that hegemonic masculinity does (Connell 1987, Messerschmidt 2011, Schippers 2007). Hegemonic masculinity and emphasised femininity are premised around heterosexuality. The heterosexual script means representing “natural” sexuality, which is inevitable and therefore should organise human social life, as heterosexual (Berlant 2012, Butler 1990, Ingraham 1996, Richardson 1996, 2000). The heterosexual script’s

27 pervasiveness cannot be overemphasised. It is present in “television, elementary school books, movies, magazines, folklore, and in the common experience of everyday playgrounds and supermarkets” (Herdt 1997, 168). Indeed, heterosexuality is considered so universal as to be assumed of prepubescent children, who are as yet unlikely to be (hetero)sexually active. Dennis describes the heterosexual presumption of children’s television animation series which represent “heterosexual dating, going steady, and falling in love” being as common “among ten-year-olds as among fifteen-year-olds” (2009, 71). Although the majority of people are heterosexual, the heterosexual script is less about what people actually want than what they are expected to want. People are encouraged to play out a script wherein people are “attracted only to persons of the other gender, has his/her romance and marriage officially sanctioned, has biological children, and lives to enjoy grandchildren in later years” (Lott 2010, 95). The privileging of heterosexuality implies that girls ought to “relinquish ties to other women so that their energies can be harnessed in preparation for the fiercely competitive race toward men’s approval” (Fisher 1998, 80). Since “libido-as-masculine is the source from which all possible sexuality is presumed to come,” boys and men’s needs are prioritised (Rose in Butler 1990, 53). Due to the cultural capital associated with emphasised femininity and the influence of the heterosexual matrix, it is reasonable to assume that most media representations of girls would portray emphasised femininity as the ideal. Summarising the findings of a global study of children’s television, Lemish makes the following observations regarding the depiction of men and women:

On the whole, men are … associated with characteristics such as activity, forcefulness, independence, ambitiousness, competitiveness, achievement, higher social status, and the like. Women are … characterized, generally, as passive, emotional, care-giving, childish, sexy, subordinate to men, of lower social status, and the like (2007, 104).

Female agency is more prevalent in popular culture of the 1990s and 2000s than in previous decades (Brown 2003, Hains 2012, Sweeney 2008, Zaslow 2009). However, Landry argues that emphasised femininity remains “powerful social capital for girls” in schools, which accounts for its prominence in children’s television animation (2008, 14). According to Hains, heroines in North American children’s animated series of this period often downplay their intellectual and physical prowess by being humble and demure (2007b). They are markedly feminine in their dress, demeanour and physicality. Their participation in consumer

28 culture and cultivation of image implies “that normative femininity is a prerequisite for ” (Hains 2007b, 68, emphasis in original). These heroines often clash with abrasive, conceited girls who threaten their social status. Girl characters’ agency frequently hinges on their remaining cordial and pleasant, prioritising appearance and asserting their moral superiority over another girl who cannot or will not perform femininity to the standards of the programme. Hains summates that “the girly girl is at the top of the girlhood identity hierarchy, [and] the tomboy is at the bottom” (2012, 167). Girl characters who exhibit their intelligence with bluntness and sarcasm are pariahs (Hains 2007b). Hains posits that such characters “constitute a cautionary tale about the use of newfound female power and the dangers of internalizing a victim feminist perspective” (2009, 103). This construction can be traced to fairy tales, wherein the “bad woman reminds the young reader of her dreadful fate, should she stray from the path of perfect femininity” (Ussher 1997, 11). Girls’ “niceness and goodness” are positioned as dichotomous to, and, thus, inextricable from, “anti-socialness and evilness” (Hains 2007b, 80). This forbids girls from embodying both traits simultaneously, or exploring alternative modes of being. Despite the prevalence of normative femininity in children’s television animation of the 1990s and 2000s, other gender representations also proliferated during this period. An alternative perspective of the girl typing discourse in children’s television animation holds that transgressively feminine characters are championed at the expense of normatively feminine girls. This discursive construction draws on, and reacts to, larger cultural constructs of normative femininity as alien, inferior or passive, which have been widely analysed (Inness 1998, Olsen 1996, Albury 2002, Brown 2003, Hains 2004, Currie 2009, Genz 2009, Griffin 2006, Tanenbaum 2003, Serano 2007). A transgressively feminine heroine, such as a prepubescent tomboy or teenage outcast, is often situated in opposition to another girl who is beautiful, wealthy and popular. Brown cites the characters of working-class tomboy Francine and pampered girly-girl Muffy in the Canadian animated series Arthur (Brown 1996-present) as an example of this dynamic, observing that “the young audience is made well aware that Francine … is the better girl – more loyal, grounded and real. We root for Francine and collectively dismiss Muffy as narcissistic and mean” (2003, 25). Perea argues that within this formation, normatively feminine girl characters “actively embod[y] the antithesis of the empowered protagonist,” perpetuating a “gender-normative rivalry” (2011, p. 116). Both broad perspectives on the representation of girls in children’s television animation of the 1990s and 2000s are correct when applied to particular types of

29 programmes. For this reason, I argue that, rather than defining girl typing as being the veneration of one particular girl type over all others, it is more accurate to maintain that within the girl typing discourse, the behaviours that constitute proper girlhood change according to context and ideology. Whichever girl is represented as being in the right, the relation between the girls will be shown in standardised ways. In many cases, girls are represented in conflict with one another. Even if girls are allies, it is often implied that one is somehow superior to the other, due to being more conventionally attractive, capable of self- defence, friendly with and/or attractive to the boys. These gendered representations are grounded in hegemonic masculinity, emphasised femininity and the heterosexual script.

Female Representation in Animation In this section, I summarise literature relevant to the representation of girl characters in children’s animation, both during and before the time period of interest to this thesis. Although female representation in animation is subject to many of the discourses that impact representation in other mediums, it is important to consider animation specifically in terms of its capabilities and its limitations. Animation also has a history independent of the larger history of live-action films and television, and this is also crucial to consider. According to Furniss, discussing production context necessitates analysis of “the period during which a context was becoming established,” which typically encompasses at least the decade before a text was produced (2007, 7). Hence, this section summarises key debates relating to the dearth of female representation in North American television animation dating from the 1960s to the 1980s. Following this, I provide a summary of the literature on female representation in animation from the 1990s onward, such as the ratio of female characters to males, and trends in character design during the time period of interest to this thesis. From the 1960s to the 1980s, animated series with highly varied male casts and one token female character were common on North American children’s television. These token females were portrayed in broadly stereotypical terms. For example, in Wacky Races (Hanna 1968-1970), a series about drivers in outlandish vehicles who compete in cross- country races, the characters included an inventor, gangsters and cavemen – all males. The sole female was Penelope Pitstop, “glamour girl of the gas pedal,” whose pink car featured controls allowing Penelope to “apply lipstick, dry her hair … and even vibrate away excess fat … while she drove” (Hall 2011, 30). In (Peyo 1981-1990), a series about a group of cheerful blue elven creatures living in a fairy tale forest, Smurfette was the lone adult female Smurf in a village of near-identical males (Gonsalves 2008). The male Smurfs

30 have names like Brainy, Greedy, Jokey, Painter and Poet, which describe their personalities or professions. Jeffrey A. Brown observes that, by comparison, Smurfette’s name announces her as “the sole repository for all things stereotypically feminine” which is an accurate summation of her entire character (2015a, 57). Within these and other animated series of the 1960s and 1970s, maleness is treated as the default, and so male characters are portrayed as diverse individuals. The gender of female characters, such as Penelope Pitstop and Smurfette, is their defining attribute. In the words of Katha Pollitt, a media commentator who coined the term “the Smurfette Principle” to describe this phenomenon, these series imply that

[b]oys are the norm, girls the variation; boys are central, girls peripheral; boys are individuals, girls types. Boys define the group, its story and its code of values. Girls exist only in relation to boys (1991, 22).

“Girl cartoons” of the 1980s, as discussed in Chapter One, were often characterised by pastel colour schemes, use of feminine iconography such as flowers and rainbows and an emphasis on caring for others. However, both Seiter and Perea suggest that the strict gendering of 1980s toy-based “girl cartoons” allowed female animated characters to flourish independently of males, albeit within very restricted circumstances. Although the female characters in series such as (Muller 1980) and Rainbow Brite (Glissmeyer 1984-1986) remained effervescent and sympathetic to others, they were “not token female characters of a male gang; and they are not drawn in the sexualized caricature of adult women repeated since Betty Boop” (Seiter 1993, 147). Perea argues that although these series were intended as little more than episode-length toy commercials, they “inadvertently … created an empowering space for little girls to see themselves as heroes, a space that previously did not exist on television” (2011, 106). Before, during and since the decades of interest to this thesis, male characters have had greater representation in media generally. In family films, females represent 25-28 per cent of all characters appearing onscreen (Smith 2008). This ratio has remained unchanged since 1946 (Smith 2009). The number of female characters in North American children’s television animation is only slightly improved from this dismal figure. A landmark qualitative survey of children’s programming in 24 countries, undertaken from May 2007 to July 2007, found that of “26 342 main characters of the fictional programs in the worldwide sample, 32% were girls or women and 68% boys or men,” meaning that male protagonists outnumbered female protagonists two to one (Götz 2012, 20).

31 This underrepresentation of female characters in animation is propagated by the prevalent idea that they are incompatible with the medium itself. Since the majority of children’s television animation series are or at least possess a comedic element, their representation of girls can be influenced by prevailing gendered ideas about what kind of people are allowed to take part in humorous storylines. Animation production executive Liz Young recalls veteran Friz Freleng telling her

in no uncertain terms that female comic characters just wouldn’t be funny. He further explained you couldn’t have a female character [endure] the same kind of cartoon calamities that would happen to Bugs Bunny, , Sylvester, or Wile E. Coyote. He felt audiences would not accept, nor find any humor in, this sort of and physical treatment of female characters (Young in Nagel 2008, para.22).

Interviewed by Maureen Furniss, Linda Simensky, a former Senior Vice President of Original Programming at Nickelodeon, claims that the predominantly male animation directors and creators she worked with

pitched concepts that featured male characters in central roles, with female characters included only as objects of affection or in other secondary positions. Some seemed incapable of or unwilling to create strong central female characters; when asked by Simensky why a long list of series concepts did not contain even one that focused on a female, the representative of an award-winning English replied: ‘[W]e don’t do women. They’re not funny’ (Furniss 2007, 238).

The male bias in children’s television animation is further advanced by the fact that female characters who occupy the spotlight are usually required to be physically attractive. For example, the “homely” appearance of Eliza Thornberry, the lead girl character of Nickelodeon’s The Wild Thornberrys (Astrof 1998-2004), caused “concern” at the network (Casemiro in Beck 2007, 96). Kate Boutilier, a writer for the series, recalls that “[e]very ten episodes or so, a writer would come in and propose a show where Eliza gets her braces off … [or] contact lenses” (Beck 2007, 96). The series, about a twelve-year-old girl who has the power to talk to animals, had no particular need for its protagonist to be beautiful. Nevertheless, the presence onscreen of a buck-toothed and bespectacled girl made many

32 people uneasy, even on the series’ writing team. This implies that physical attractiveness is considered an integral part of girlhood. Prior studies have found that in North , female characters are typically differentiated from male ones principally on the basis of their gender (Sandler 1998, Kotlarz 1992, Newman 2005). For example, although in reality, human males and females both have eyebrows and eyelashes, animated characters are assigned these features along gendered lines. Males typically have more pronounced eyebrows to make their faces appear more dynamic, whereas females are likely to have more exaggerated eyelashes, to mark them as sexually desirable. This is a convention dating back to early Warner Bros. and Disney animation, in which character designers “would put a bow or ribbon on the head and a skirt around the waist of one basic character design largely composed of circles” in order to denote a female character (Beiman 2010, 70). These accessories were intended to distinguish the female character from the primary, male design; as Wells argues, “the female is predominantly designed as a set of signifiers of femininity” (1998, 204). It is reasonable to argue that both the character design and prevalence of girl characters in North American children’s television animation have been heavily influenced by the androcentric notion of boys as the default (which I explore in more detail in Chapter Four). During the time period of interest to my thesis, girl characters in children’s television animation were also constituted through various postfeminist discourses of girlhood. In children’s television animation episodes such as ’s “The Sisterhood” (McCreary 1998), The Powerpuff Girls’ “Equal Fights” (Rogers 2001) and X-Men: Evolution’s “Walk on the Wild Side” (Johnson 2002), girl characters engaged with contemporary and prior . In each of these episodes, the girl characters generally found that feminism was irrelevant to their lives. For example, Hains notes that in “Equal Fights,” the girl heroes realise that the outspoken feminist is “using victimization to justify her inexcusable behavior” and subsequently distance themselves from feminism (2009, 102). However, even when North American animated series did not deal explicitly with feminism, girl characters still negotiated their place in the world within postfeminist understandings of girlhood. In the next section and subsections, I synthesise literature regarding several widespread postfeminist discourses of girlhood and feminism dating from the 1990s and 2000s: girls as empowered, girls out of control and neoliberal feminism.

33

Postfeminist Discourses of Girlhood and Feminism is an ethos involving “the simultaneous incorporation, revision, and depoliticization of many of the central goals of second-wave feminism” (Stacey 1990, 339). Characterised by Ringrose as “part backlash, part cultural diffusion, part repressed anxiety over shifting gender orders,” the term is used to describe the intersections of anti-feminism, the perceived end of feminism, the emergence of third-wave feminism, and a conflation of consumerism and sexual self-objectification with feminism (2007, 473; see Hawkesworth, 2004; Projansky, 2001). According to Angela McRobbie, postfeminist discourse “actively draws on and invokes feminism as that which can be taken into account in order to suggest that equality is achieved … [to] emphasize that … [feminism] is no longer needed” (2004, 4). McRobbie argues that media employs “a complex array of machinations … [which] are perniciously effective in regard to the undoing of feminism” (2004, 3). Postfeminism imagines that “[g]endered oppressions … have evaporated, and we are now living in an age of equality, making feminism irrelevant” (Pomerantz 2011, 549). This ethos impacts each of the discourses below, all of which simultaneously draw upon feminism while blaming it for the woes besetting girls in the 1990s and 2000s.

Girls as Empowered The Girl Power discourse positions girls as empowered by virtue of their age and gender. Emphasising the importance of ambition and assertiveness for girls, many theorists observe that this discourse was prolific in Western music, film, television and animation from the 1990s to the mid-2000s (Budgeon 1998, Press 1997, Taft 2001, 2004, Zaslow 2009, Meltzer 2010, Tasker 2007, Driscoll 2007, Murphy 2008a, Currie 2009, Pozner 1998, Roberts 2001, Hains 2012). Discourses of girls’ empowerment offered a rose-tinted outlook on girlhood, particularly on bonds between girls. Girl Power may be understood as echoing the second- wave notion of sisterhood, in that girls’ strength is achieved through perfect female friendship. Knight argues that the depiction of girls attaining empowerment through bonds with one another contradicts the “the patriarchic pattern of the lone male who is depicted without friends, family, or any other social networks” (2010, 327). However, the tendency of Girl Power media to situate heroines in opposition to a girl whose gender expressions and personality are different and therefore threatening renders female bonding anomalous, as “finding your few true girlfriends in a social landscape peppered with female competitors”

34 (Tally 2008, 107). The focus upon female friendship, rather than larger female solidarity, means that the prospect of bettering circumstances for all girls, instead of just the protagonist and her closest friends, usually remains unexplored. As a concept, Girl Power has commercial, cultural and political origins. In the wake of calls for more positive media role models for girls and increased awareness of girls’ potential as consumers, popular culture near the turn of the millennium “recognized the potential of the audience and created for it the new girl hero” (Durham 2003, 25; see Inness 1998; Ward 2004; Hains 2007b, 2012; McMinn 2007; Pomerantz 2008; Sweeney 2008; Yarrow 2009; Karlyn 2011). According to Projansky, positioning girl characters as heroes alleviates cultural anxiety around “the presumed crisis of girls’ adolescence” while still providing “a commodified figure marketed to the commodified girl audience and in turn marketed to advertisers” (2007, 44). Due to its commercial potential and presumed self- esteem benefits for children, the Girl Power discourse thrived in cultural offerings geared toward children and teenagers. Gilbert and Kile argue that Girl Power has its origins in the phrase, “You go, girl,” coined by young African-American women in the 1980s as a statement of encouragement or congratulation (1996). Murphy suggests that Girl Power originated within Black hip-hop music in the United States (2008a). The discourse has also been traced to the Motown girl singers and groups of the 1960s, especially in the call-and-response lyrics of the Shirelles and the Supremes (Warwick 2007). However, the most commonly accepted account of Girl Power’s inception grounds the concept of young female subjectivity as empowered within the early 1990s Riot Grrrl feminist punk subculture. Spearheaded by mostly White, tertiary- educated, queer women, Riot Grrrl was primarily youth-oriented, reacting to a perceived sidelining of girlhood within both patriarchy and second-wave feminism (Shoemaker 1997, Stoller 1999, Nguyen 2011, Dawes 2013). The word “girl” was chosen to disassociate the movement from patriarchal concepts of hierarchy and class divisions (Hesford 1999). The deliberate misspelling “grrrl” aimed to combine a joyous, childlike aesthetic with the forbidden fury of young women (Currie 2009). Riot Grrrl responded to the sexism and exclusivity of the male-dominated punk music scene by addressing issues of sexuality, domestic abuse and female empowerment and excluding men from gatherings “as an issue of safety” (Kearney 2011, 302). To challenge potential condemnation of their bodies, Riot Grrrls would write inflammatory or loaded words on their skin, including “Slut,” “Rape” or “Property” (Piepmeier 2009, 51). Self- expression was encouraged not only via music, but also through writing, art and activism, all

35 of which endorsed “young women’s self-love, solidarity and creativity” (Minton 2008, 504). Relationships between girls were valorised in anthems such as Bikini Kill’s Rebel Girl, whose lyrics subverted the expectation that girls should undermine one another’s self confidence in order to win the approval of boys:

That girl thinks she’s the queen of the neighbourhood I got news for you: she is! They say she’s a slut, but I know She is my best friend (Hanna 1993).

The song’s agreement that the titular girl is “queen of the neighbourhood,” as well as its promises to “Love you like a sister, always / Soul sister, blood sister,” demonstrates how the Riot Grrrl movement idealised female friendship in a similar way to the later Girl Power discourse. However, in this and similar Riot Grrrl songs, this friendship comes with a distinctly radical edge: girls maligned as “sluts” (or, in an alternate recording of the song, “dykes”) are positioned as objects of admiration and love, rather than girls to avoid. Riot Grrrl artists did not use mainstream media to spread their message. This allowed the media to denigrate Riot Grrrl as “a feminism of rage and fear” (Zeisler 2008, 107). Hains argues that the opportunity to “pathologize girls who subverted normative femininity, rather than recognize that perhaps they had found a valid way to demonstrate that not all girls are vulnerable” proved too tempting for mainstream media (2012, 23). Discrediting Riot Grrrl subsequently allowed more palatable repackaging of its philosophy. By the mid-1990s, aspects of Riot Grrrl were reflected in a variety of media, under the label of Girl Power (a term initially styled as “Grrrl Power” on the cover of a Bikini Kill fanzine) (Currie 2009, 7). The Spice Girls, a phenomenally successful UK pop group, popularised the term by using it as their rallying cry. The group was particularly successful with primary and early secondary school-aged girls, demonstrating how the concept of girlhood as power resonated with that demographic (Mitchell 2002, Byrne 2006, Woodyer 2013). The Spice Girls’ sexualised appearances, their origins as a “manufactured” band, their failure to question sexism in their lyrics or interviews, their citation of Conservative party leader Margaret Thatcher as “the original Spice Girl” and their seeming focus on individual development rather than collective action met with scepticism from feminists, academics, social commentators and music critics (Pozner 1998, Dent 2012, Taft 2001, Sweeney 2008, Powers 1997). Nonetheless, it is arguable that Girl Power’s unfailing positivity ensured its commercial success.

36 Unlike Riot Grrrl’s detailed manifestos, Girl Power dealt more in catchphrases encouraging girls to “be themselves” and remember, “friendship is forever.” Taft criticises Girl Power for positioning girls to “think about girlhood in purely cultural ways, rather than as a space for social and political action” (2004, 71). In order to be commercially viable, Girl Power in the 1990s and 2000s focused on gains feminism had made, rather than ongoing problems that needed addressing.

Girls Out of Control From the early 2000s, the notion of girls as empowered go-getters was largely eclipsed in the North American cultural imagination by images of girls as calculating and power-hungry. Media and scholarly representations which draw upon this discourse simultaneously glamorise, essentialise and condemn girls’ aggression, ignoring “sociohistorical, material, and discursive processes” which necessitate this adaptive behaviour (Gonick 2004, 397). The idea of girls in the 1990s and early 2000s as being more “out of control” than prior generations may be alternately viewed as a reaction against, or continuation of, an earlier genre of scholarly and popular writing on “girls in crisis.” During the 1990s, the publishing market was flooded with books and reports on the negative effects of body image, sexism, family breakdown and other factors on girls’ mental health (AAUW 1991, Brown 1992, AAUW 1992, Lees 1993, Larkin 1994, Mann 1994, Orenstein 1994, Sadker 1994, Taylor 1995, Brumberg 1997, Hey 1997, Pipher 1994). The most successful of these was clinical psychologist Mary Pipher’s Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls, which epitomises the movement to the extent that the girls in crisis genre and its key debates are often referred to as “Ophelia literature,” “the Ophelia industry” or “Ophelia narratives” (Hains 2012, Marshall 2007, Pomerantz 2006). Reviving Ophelia draws on the author’s professional experience as a clinical psychologist to examine the impact of societal pressures on American adolescent girls. Pipher argues that girls are encouraged to self-silence by social, cultural and environmental factors, including parental separation, beauty culture, media sexualisation of girls and the threat of sexual assault. Pipher argues that in order to gain social acceptance, girls must “be attractive, be a lady, be unselfish and of service, make relationships work, and be competent without complaint” (1994, 39). Girls are “trained to be what the culture wants … not what they themselves want to become” (Pipher 1994, 44) According to Pipher, this disconnect between what girls feel and the image they must present contributes to negative body image, self- destructive behaviours and suicidal ideation.

37 Pipher’s book was a runaway success and inspired numerous spin-offs (see Dellasega 2001, Shandler 2001, Shandler 1999). However, Pipher’s opus, and the wider canon of girls in crisis literature, has met with criticism. Since Pipher uses only case studies from her own private practice, the majority of girls discussed in the book are White middle-class girls (with one Lakota girl adopted by White parents, and several young women of colour included at the close of the book as examples of robust self-esteem) (Mastronardi 1998). Willis claims that the book “fed into existing cultural ideas about what it means to live in a female body in a patriarchal culture” (2008, 11). Pipher’s conclusions have been criticised for failing to take into account “the effect of social structural forces on individual lives” (Bettie 2003, 5). Pipher’s detractors also point out the absence of a language of resistance in her work (Brown 1998, Leblanc 1999). The cultural discourse of girls as aggressive, calculating and out of adults’ control arguably has its genesis in a ground-breaking study by Björkqvist et al., which concludes that cultural taboos against female aggression behaviours force girls and women to resort to indirect forms of conflict referred to as “alternative aggressions” (1992a). Later, Björkqvist et al. subsequently identify various subcategories for alternative aggressions, including relational, indirect and social aggression (1992b). Relational aggressive behaviour includes ignoring or excluding someone as punishment or revenge, or threatening to withdraw friendship unless a friend acquiesces to some request or ultimatum. By contrast, indirect aggression allows a perpetrator to avoid engaging with a target, by employing others to inflict pain on her behalf. Social aggression attacks self-esteem or social status within a group, using tactics such as rumour spreading. These findings reached the general population with the publication of various popular and parenting books on girls’ aggression in the 2000s (Hamilton 2008, Lamb 2001, White 2002, Simmons 2002, Wiseman 2002, Tanenbaum 2000, 2003). Academic and popular discourses of girls’ “meanness” tend to represent alternative aggressions as the weapon of choice for attractive, wealthy girls (Merten 1997, Wiseman 2002). Arguably, the implication that covert aggression is the reserve of the social elite positions it as desirable. Often, popular culture imagines girls’ covert aggression as “the ultimate form of power” (Currie 2009, 34). It is “supreme” because it is “invisible” (Miller 2008, 155). This somewhat paradoxical interpretation is borne out in much of the North American popular culture of the 1990s and 2000s, where popular girls or girl bullies “rule the school” by playing pranks, spreading rumours or attacking rivals’ self-esteem (Hentges 2006, Oppliger 2013, Scheg 2015, Sweeney 2008). Conceiving covert aggression as supreme power

38 neglects the historical precedent indicating that people who express their anger indirectly are more likely to be repressed than socially powerful. Historically, disenfranchised groups such as “slaves and indentured servants … women before legal divorce … and working women … [with] abusive bosses” have not been permitted to show aggression to the people who oppress them (Chesney-Lind 2004, 51). Sanctions against expressing aggression openly do not eliminate anger, but rather drive it underground. Marginalised people may only vent frustration without suffering retribution if there is a degree of plausible deniability to their actions. Hence, alternative aggressions do not constitute ultimate power, but rather a response to emotional and physical repression. A focus on aggressive behaviour as purely the domain of socially powerful girls obscures the issue by giving the impression that (to quote a young participant in one focus group), “You can’t be mean unless you’re pretty” (Landry 2008, 53). In reality, girls’ alternative aggressions often result from living in a culture wherein openly expressing negative emotions is unacceptable, and girls are not given tools for handling conflict effectively. However, popular literature around girls’ aggression essentialises “meanness” as simply “what girls do” (Wiseman 2002, 4). Parenting guides from the 2000s often state that girls’ friendships are not necessarily sinister, before devoting the remainder of the discussion to how girls’ friendships can damage self-esteem (Hamilton 2008, Shaffer 2005). For example, Wiseman asserts that homosocial friendship “sows the seeds for cruel competition for popularity and social status” (2002, 20). This suggests that girls are predisposed to such behaviours and so are inherently untrustworthy. For example, Simmons states, “[u]nlike boys, who tend to bully acquaintances or strangers, girls frequently attack within tightly knit networks of friends, making aggression harder to identify and intensifying the damage to the victims” (2002, 3). This implicitly privileges boys’ (physical) aggression as simpler or more benign. The discourse of girls out of control typically condemns female aggression as unnatural, uncivilised and unwarranted. Sweeney observes that girls’ covert aggression is often depicted as “absent of [the ]duel-like nobility” of boys facing off in a fistfight (2008, 120). Girls’ aggression is even given an air of conspiracy in statements such as, “These under the table tactics have been going on for years, and now females are finally being forced to admit to them” (Miller 2008, 56). This outlook fails to consider that, in many cases, girls’ physical altercations are sexualised, trivialised or decried as deviant, meaning that they cannot “just physically fight it out and get over it” without serious consequences (Miller 2008, 155; see L.M. Brown, 2003).

39 There are similarities between the discourse of girls out of control and the earlier narratives of girls in crisis. Both discourses are preoccupied with returning White, middle- class girls to a more socially acceptable state. Ward and Benjamin posit that the crucial difference between the two discourses is that “Ophelia” literature “depicts all girls as experiencing the same developmental crisis in the same way,” whereas the discourse of girls out of control “depicts each girl’s adolescence as her own unique hell, mediated or exacerbated by a host of social and demographic determinants” (2004, 21). Brown shows that representations of girls out of control also position girls as a homogeneous group, as the cultural obsession with “girlfighting” in the American news media of the late 1990s and 2000s shows:

YO! asked “Are girls turning meaner?” The Sunday Globe announced “Schools see rise in girls fighting.” An article entitled “Mean Streak” in the Tribune claimed “girls have a knack for cruelty.” Girls’ Life asked, “Do mean girls finish first?” and advised readers to “beat a bully at her own game.” … An article in New Moon Magazine for Girls and Their Dreams was entitled simply, “In Seventh Grade, All Girls Are Mean to All Other Girls” (Brown 2003, 15-16).

In narratives about girls out of control, aggression is sometimes positioned as empowerment gone awry (Blustain 2002, Chesney-Lind 2004, Ringrose 2008). A 2002 Times Magazine article describes a “mean girl” as “an amalgam of old-style -ism and new style girls’ empowerment, brimming over with righteous self-esteem and cheerful cattiness,” suggesting that giving girls increased agency is ultimately dangerous (Talbot 2002, para.21). The article also describes covert aggression as the reserve of “clever” girls. The reason that boys do not express frustration or anger in the same way, we are told, is because they are “not smart enough” (Talbot 2002, para.34). Discourses of girls out of control express resentment and suspicion of female empowerment by

making the story about girls attacking other girls, and not about boys or right- wingers going after them. If, after all this corrective social policy aimed at sports and academic achievement, the best girls can do is to spread false rumors about each other and impose “pink Tuesdays” on themselves, then why bother? … Didn’t girls need to be put back in their place? (Douglas 2010, 237)

40 The postfeminist influence on the discourse of Girls Out of Control makes bullying girls the fault of feminism, and not of patriarchy. Girls’ displays of negative emotion are essentialised as intrinsically feminine or attributed to their perceived intelligence and self-assurance, thereby implying that girls are better people when they do not assert intelligence or self- esteem. This indicates the sexist assumptions at the core of the discourse of Girls Out of Control.

Neoliberal Feminism Both discourses of empowered girls and girls out of control may be understood as occurring at the intersection of neoliberalism and feminism. In order to understand neoliberal feminism, it is necessary to distinguish between liberalism and neoliberalism. Liberal approaches to economics aim to empower public institutions, such as libraries and hospitals, in order to ensure that the greatest number of people have access to a standard of living considered acceptable. Historically, liberal politics have worked to ensure the civil rights of marginalised groups, such as African- in North America and Indigenous people in Australia. Hale argues that the premise of liberal thought is that “the past did not matter, that there were no limits on what the individual or the nation could accomplish, that the future would inevitably be better than the past” (2011, 92). This is consistent with a view of history wherein society moves naturally “from a state of relative ignorance, barbarism and injustice towards increased enlightenment and civilization” (Edley 2001, 450). According to Scharff, “[t]his account of historical change as automatically moving towards more egalitarian structures implies the inevitability of society’s progress, thereby undoing the need for social movements” (2011, 16). In the years following World War II, the Chicago School of Political Economy promoted what came to be known as neoliberalism as a means to “advocate market supremacy and competitive freedom against Keynesian state planning” (Chen 2013, 441). Reacting against liberalism’s focus on the common good rather than the advancement of the individual, neoliberalism advocates “free-market policies, pro-corporatism, privatization, and in particular, the transfer of public services to private organizations” (Bumiller 2008, 5). Neoliberal interpretations of feminism deemphasise second-wave feminism’s emphasis on collective action and the idea of a universal sisterhood in favour of women being able to compete economically with men. Neoliberalism had a marked influence on discourses of girlhood during the 1990s and 2000s. Gonick proposes that discourses of girls as empowered and girls in crisis represent

41 alternate viewpoints of the “neoliberal girl subject” (2006). The Girl Power discourse articulates the anticipation felt as a new breed of adolescent girl, an “idealized form of the self-determining individual,” became poised to realise the hopes of second-wave feminism (Gonick 2006, 2). The narrative of girls as emotionally frail “Ophelias” encapsulates the anxiety regarding the possibility that the girls might not succeed “in taking up these new forms of subjectification” (Gonick 2006, 15). In both discourses, girls are positioned purely as individuals, serving to “direct attention from structural explanations for inequality toward explanations of personal circumstances and personality traits” (Gonick 2006, 2). Neoliberal feminism is arguably premised on championing women’s individual life choices, an ideological stance apparent in the following paragraph:

If a female chooses to wear a business suit and carry a laptop, good for her. If a female chooses to wear an apron and carry a Household Hints handbook, good for her. If a female chooses to wear black leather and carry a whip, good for her. If a female chooses to wear Gucci and carry a Prada tote, good for her. If a female chooses to wear army fatigues and carry an army-issued gun, good for her. If a female chooses to wear whatever Beyonce [sic] is wearing and carry a microphone, good for her. And if a female chooses to wear fairy wings and carry a pink glittered wand, good for her. As long as it was her own choice (Pearce 2013, para.6-7, italics in original).

This invocation of “equal choices” indicates a belief that a woman’s choices should be treated as equally valid or deserving of respect compared with those of men, and of other women. Working from the understanding that gendered behaviours are not necessarily indicative of a person’s intrinsic worth is one of the central logics of this thesis. In considering neoliberal feminism, I also partially agree with the argument made by Serano that questioning choice feminism’s merits can marginalise women, in that discussions of choice feminism regard only women’s life choices as “remarkable, questionable, and suspect” (2013, 321). However, the neoliberal feminist stance articulated in Pearce’s passage neglects the consideration that equal access to choices is also crucial if all choices are to be afforded equal weight. Furthermore, within this choice-focused feminism, those occupying subject positions which are marginalised or ridiculed may be seen as having chosen to accept marginalisation or ridicule, rather than the onus being on those in positions of power to treat them with dignity (Gonick 2003).

42 The proliferation of choice-focused feminism has implications for the girl typing discourse, wherein the othering of certain girl types is framed as a matter of principle. Transgressive girls’ alienation from others is imagined as resulting from a conscious choice for which they must accept consequences. Conversely, normatively feminine girls’ gender expressions are often seen as symptomatic of untrustworthy, shallow and vindictive personalities. In both cases, there is little to no attempt made by other characters to discover commonalities in experience or outlook. Within a neoliberal feminist, choice-focused paradigm, empowerment is framed as the default state for girls. Girls and women are considered freely able to “choose when to be girly and when to be powerful, when to be mother and when to be professional, when to be sexy for male pleasure and when to be sexy for their own pleasure,” with outside pressures or strictures disregarded (Zaslow 2009, 2). Neoliberal feminism downplays structural inequalities rooted in classism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism or fat-phobia. To use Pearce’s example, while girls or women from many social strata may choose – or at least aspire – to occupy a range of subject positions, their access to these choices is not necessarily equal. For instance, a single, working-class mother of three is unlikely to have the resources to dress exclusively in designer clothing. The hypothetical “female” invoked in Pearce’s paragraph has sufficient resources to allow her to pursue any goal, and so is “made in the image of the middle class” (Walkerdine 2003, 239). This “female” is also not required to acquiesce to cultural, social or religious restrictions on her autonomy. Gonick observes that neoliberal feminist rhetoric’s emphasis on choice and stoic individualism, coupled with its dismissal of structural inequalities, may lead marginalised groups to “understand their own experience of successes and failures as a product of their individual effort” (2006, 6). Within neoliberal thinking, failure to achieve goals is largely attributed to not trying hard enough, or not wanting success badly enough. Analysing North American children’s television animation, Schlote finds that a neoliberal feminist outlook is particularly apparent in the tendency of children’s animated series to deemphasise or erase cultural, racial or socio-economic differences between characters, using “ambiguity … [as] a deliberate marketing strategy” (2012, 135). Class is represented as a non-issue, with characters largely assumed to be middle-class unless explicitly stated otherwise (Schlote 2012). This emphasis on suburban, White, middle-class perspectives renders rural, urban, working-class and non-White people virtually invisible (Lemish 2010). When characters are definitively non-White, they tend to be cast in the secondary role of supportive “best friend” to a White character. Ethnic or racial minority

43 characters, “situated as they are within a predominantly white animated cast,” are included in order to confer positive qualities on their White best friends, and imply a “postracial” media landscape (Banet-Weiser 2007: 153). In North American animated series such as Totally Spies and Bratz, characters are designed to be racially ambiguous, in order to “convey difference” while allowing characters to be marketed globally (Larian in Talbot 2006).

Gap Identification Differing perspectives on the representation of girlhood in children’s television animation of the 1990s and 2000s create several gaps in knowledge. The first gap comes from previous studies’ exclusive focus on particular kinds of girlhood to the exclusion of others. For example, Perea’s thesis disqualifies As Told By Ginger and The Wild Thornberrys (Astrof 1998-2004), Nickelodeon’s first two animated series with female leads, from its sample on the basis that the protagonists of these programmes “are thirteen … and then proceed to get older which inevitably leads to heteronormative romantic interests in boyfriends” (2011, 153). This focus on prepubescent characters may be considered an attempt to access a “purer” girlhood untainted by heterosexual concerns. This resembles “traditional notions of childhood as an original or primary, but irretrievably lost, state” (McCarthy 1998, 195). While Perea’s focus on “girls age eleven and under,” facilitates examination of “how little girls are represented in ways that subvert traditional forms of who … [they] are and what they do,” it leaves untouched many other stories about girls (2011, 5, emphasis added). My thesis will address this gap by including a full chapter on As Told By Ginger. By comparison, analyses which focus exclusively on animated series with normatively feminine adolescent protagonists and a “girly” aesthetic can imply that the girl typing discourse may be bypassed or negated by electing not to tune into any programme with adolescent protagonists or liberal amounts of pink. This fails to impress the pervasiveness of this discourse across multiple genres and demographics. Furthermore, this perspective emphasises the marginalisation of transgressively feminine characters. This is striking, considering that during the 1990s and 2000s, such characters often occupied central roles in animated series. The well-read and staunchly misanthropic eponymous lead of the series Daria was praised by MTV’s General Manager at the time the series aired as “a good spokesperson for MTV … intelligent, but subversive” (Kuczynski 1998, 8E). The poetic yet cynical tomboy character Helga was arguably the female lead of Hey Arnold!, appearing in 124 out of 185 episodes and prominently featured in most of the half-hour specials. There was even an episode-length special, “Helga on the Couch” (Bartlett 1999), which

44 sympathetically explored Helga’s anger by showing Helga visiting a psychologist. The compassionate, even admiring attitude toward these characters (and others like them) complicates the proposal that they represent a warning to young girls about the perils of gender transgression. During an era when real girls were expected to “be smart [and] demonstrate leadership … while being thin, pretty and wearing expensive jeans,” children’s television portrayed confrontational, sardonic girl characters in a positive manner (Rimer 2007, 1). I argue that the theories of Judith Butler and transgender activist Julia Serano are appropriate to consider this particular articulation of the girl typing discourse. Having been persuaded by Butler’s argument, I hold that gendered behaviours are typically employed in response to other people. However, I maintain that the understanding of gender as performative and the product of socialisation tends to be applied most consistently to people who exhibit normatively feminine gender expressions, which are considered a deviation from the masculine norm. The resulting sense of gender entitlement typically

casts nonfeminine women as having “superior knowledge” while dismissing feminine women as either “dupes” (who are too ignorant to recognize they have been conned) or “fakes” (who purposely engage in “unnatural” behaviors in order to uphold sexist societal norms) (Serano 2007, 338).

Many studies have explored popular culture’s uneasy relationship with discourses of female popularity and emphasised femininity (Currie 2006, 2009, Douglas 2010, Landry 2008, Shary 2002). There have been few efforts to explore deeply the simultaneous idealisation and rejection of feminised power apparent within youth media of the 1990s and 2000s. In this thesis, I argue that this ambivalence is often articulated through a subverted transformation narrative, wherein a protagonist is forced or persuaded to masquerade as a more feminine or popular girl. Upon attaining the empowerment associated with this subject position, the protagonist vocally rejects it as contrived or elitist. Clearly, this narrative represents a function of power. Yet, if normative femininity and/or popularity is an unambiguous sign of prestige, why is the transformation so often cyclical, rather than linear? To properly deconstruct this, power must be understood in a Foucauldian sense, as a “complex strategical situation in a particular society,” rather than an “institution” (Foucault 1990, 93). Conceiving power as emanating from all sections of a society allows me to determine why girl characters are expected to reject a supposedly empowered subjectivity in favour of a more marginalised one.

45 Although researchers have considered how “[f]emale identity in this culture takes shape in relation to a … set of two categories, one marked by relative privilege, the other by relative stigma,” there are many aspects of the privileging of certain feminine gender expressions over others that remain largely unaddressed (Nagle 1997, 5). For example, a common effect of the subverted transformation narrative is that efforts to transcend to a more empowered subjectivity are typically represented as negatively affecting relations with peers. This is only resolved with the reinstatement of the status quo. Consequently, certain girl types – and their corresponding behaviours and presentation – are depicted as more moral, perceptive or competent than others. Girl types are depicted as deriving their subjectivity from their differences to another girl whose gender presentation is counter to the form of girlhood positioned as favourable within a particular programme. In order to consider these constructs, I draw upon Derrida’s theory of violent hierarchy, wherein the two terms in any binary pair are rarely considered equal, creating a situation where one of these terms “governs the other … or has the upper hand” (1981, 44). This enables me to further deconstruct the girl typing discourse by considering the “systematic play of differences, of the traces of differences, of the spacing by means of which are related to each other” (Derrida 1981, 21).

Conclusion This chapter’s synthesis of literature relevant to a discussion of girl typing in North American children’s television animation has reviewed studies concerning the girl typing discourse, theories of gender and sexuality, female representation in animation and dominant discourses of girlhood in the 1990s and 2000s. The theories of gender performativity, hegemonic masculinity/emphasised femininity and the heterosexual script provide a basis for understanding representations of girlhood in children’s television animation as based in performances of gender. Literature on female representation in North American television animation shows a progression from token female characters in the 1960s and 1970s to gendered, toy-based animated series of the 1980s, which the Children’s Television Act of 1990 reacted against. These representational trends contextualise the typed girl characters in animated programmes of the 1990s and 2000s. While the dominant North American cultural discourses around girlhood during the time period of interest to my thesis provide sometimes starkly different views of the role of girls in society, each is influenced by a postfeminist view that girls are, for better or worse, uniquely powerful, due to their age and gender. Since the major studies of girl typing in children’s television animation since the early 1990s

46 typically concentrate on particular girl types to the exclusion of others, they have not yet produced a picture of the state of girl typing which can be generalised to a wider range of programmes, or to the representation of girls in other mediums at other times. My thesis addresses this gap in literature by surveying programmes featuring girls of different ages, with varying performances of gender, in order to generate results that can be more widely applied.

47 Chapter Two: Methodology and Methods Introduction My research thesis is a qualitative study which uses textual, discourse and narrative analysis to investigate the girl typing discourse in North American children’s television animation of the 1990s and 2000s. Animation texts were selected for inclusion in the study using a purposive sampling procedure. In this chapter, I outline how my research is structured in order to address the gap in literature described in Chapter One. I begin by discussing the methodology I use for my thesis, in order to select sampling and data analysis methods which can glean information necessary to answer my research questions. Secondly, I delineate my data analysis methods and discuss how I accounted for any shortcomings of these methods. I outline my sampling and selection procedures for gathering texts to analyse, and clarify how I compensate for any shortcomings of these processes. Finally, I outline my positionality as a researcher, in order to make visible the worldview which shapes my research outlook, so that I can be aware of any bias in my work.

Methodology One of the goals of academic research is to create new knowledge surrounding a particular topic, phenomenon, issue or question. This process begins with choosing a research methodology, which frames the research in such a way as to indicate “what the right questions might be; about how they should be framed to get meaningful answers; and about where and to whom questions should be addressed” (Sofaer 1999, 1103). The decision about which methodology to use comes down to what exactly a researcher aims to show or measure. Quantitative methodologies are concerned with studying phenomena which can be measured numerically. Quantitative methodologies and methods have been used in many studies of children and television, including surveys of television programs, food advertising, public service announcements and children’s responses to television (Lemish 2012, Byrd- Bredbenner 2002, Caronia 2008, Roberts 2007). Each of these studies broadly surveys the number of times something happens in order to assess its relative importance or prominence, thus distinguishing overarching themes in media texts. Following Parker, I maintain that applying essentially quantitative methods to a study of discourse represents a misunderstanding of how meaning is created (1999). Rukwaru’s account of the shortcomings of the quantitative content analysis research method applies here: quantitative methodologies

48 describe what is present in a text, but can be insufficient in exploring “underlying motives for the observed pattern” (2015, 155). According to Carter, this means that in and of itself, quantitative methodologies and methods such as content analysis may be more equipped to “comment on the manifest media content of specific images rather than wider structures of meaning” (2012, 373). My study is not concerned with the relative importance of various girl types in children’s television animation of the 1990s and 2000s, but rather seeks to uncover the systems of meaning informing media representation. Since “[w]ords and phrases do not come ready packaged with a specific delimited meaning that a researcher can be sure to know as if they were fixed and self-contained,” representation must be examined with a keen awareness of its social, cultural, historical, political and narrative context (Parker 1999, 2). Furthermore, texts must be considered in terms of the interplay of constituent elements such as medium, editing and dialogue (Kracauer 1952). Therefore, studies of subjective, historically situated meaning are often more suited to qualitative research strategies. Qualitative research deals in “meanings, concepts, definitions, characteristics, metaphors, symbols, and descriptions of things or people that are not measured or expressed numerically” (Berg 2004, 2-3). This research paradigm allows researchers to “understand a situation that would otherwise be enigmatic or confusing” (Eisner 1991, 58). My thesis aims to provide “deeper understanding” of the girl typing discourse as it articulates cultural understandings of gender (Johnson 1995, 4). For these reasons, I argue that a qualitative methodology is appropriate.

Data Analysis Methods To generate data for my study, I viewed episodes of a selection of animated children’s television series and transcribed the characters’ dialogue, as well as taking copious notes on all aspects of mise-en-scène. To enhance the validity of my findings, I triangulated my data analysis methods. Virtually any aspect of qualitative research can be triangulated, including data, theories, investigators and environments (Denzin 1978, Guion 2002). Methodological triangulation is defined as “the use of more than two methods in studying the same phenomenon under investigation” (Hussein 2009, 4). The methods I chose for my study are discourse analysis, textual analysis and narrative analysis. These methods are concerned with analysing different aspects of texts, and thus constitute a process of triangulation intended “as a means of cross-checking and corroborating evidence” (Rudestam 2007, 114). In the

49 following three sections, I outline each method individually, examining its theoretical underpinnings and usefulness for my thesis.

Discourse Analysis Discourse analysis aims to discover how systems of thought and meaning create social worlds. According to Fairclough, discourse analysis seeks “to investigate how … practices, events and texts arise out of and are ideologically shaped by relations of power and struggles over power” (1995, 132). By examining the conditions behind a specific discourse, researchers can show that any problematic elements and the resolution for these elements are created by the discourse’s assumptions. In foregrounding the underlying assumptions informing texts, discourse analysis seeks to create a more complete picture of the discourses in the text, and of people’s interactions with these discourses. Thus, this method aims to “provide a higher awareness of the hidden motivations in others and ourselves and, therefore, enable us to solve concrete problems – not by providing unequivocal answers, but by making us ask ontological and epistemological questions” (Daniel 2011, 56). One of the greatest strengths of discourse analysis is its awareness of the role of the cultural, political and historical context in which knowledge is produced. The paradigm of discourse analysis “views a prevailing social order as historically situated and therefore relative, socially constructed and changeable” (Locke 2004, 1). As my study addresses “social inequality and domination,” the discourse analysis method is well suited to my feminist poststructuralist, intersectional theoretical perspective (van Dijk 2001, 358-359; see Gavey 1989). Though much of our understanding of discourse comes from the works of Foucault, conducting an analysis based only on his works becomes challenging since, by his own admission, he provides analytical “tool boxes” rather than hard and fast rules for conducting discourse analysis (Droit 1975). This method, like other qualitative research methods, can be incorrectly characterised as subjective and “soft,” in comparison to understandings of quantitative approaches as more meticulous and rigorous (Finch 1986, 5). However, the salient feature of discourse analysis is that researchers must pay scrupulous attention to detail, since one of the core assumptions of this method is that “the efficacy of discourse often resides in the assumptions it makes about what is true, real or natural, in the contradictions that allow it interpretive flexibility, and in what is not said” (Rose 2007, 165). These cannot be discerned from a cursory analysis. A discourse analyst must be “attentive to the way delimitations operate” (Ifversen 2003, 64). Gill also stresses that, “the analysis of

50 discourse and rhetoric requires the careful reading and interpretation of texts, rigorous scholarship rather than adherence to formal procedures” (1996, 144). I use discourse analysis to examine how animation texts “reflect[ed] various theoretical perspectives” at this point in history (Albury 2002, viii). Different ways of seeing something create different possibilities for it. For example, if certain girl types are only shown doing certain things, and are punished, reprimanded or excluded in some way for trying to do something else, this reflects a certain perspective on what is proper, preferable or imaginable for girls inhabiting a particular subjectivity. Discourse analysis is an appropriate method for drawing conclusions as to how the girl typing discourse produces and articulates various meanings of girlhood and femininity. However, since my thesis investigates a discursive field situated within texts in a particular medium, I needed a method that takes into account the intersections of context, ideology and textual conventions.

Textual Analysis Textual analysis seeks to understand how texts articulate the sense-making practices of a particular culture. The method may be used individually and dialogically, focussing on individual texts and the significance of larger patterns. This research method is used to “uncover the content, nature or structure” of messages contained within texts (Dainton 2011, 21). A text may be defined as “material documentary evidence that is used to make sense out of our lives” (Brennen 2013, 193). Cultural theorist Stuart Hall defines texts as “literary and visual constructs, employing symbolic means, shaped by rules, conventions and traditions intrinsic to the use of language in its widest sense” (1975, 17). A text, therefore, is anything that indicates the meaning-making processes informing its creation. Thus, films, books, music, toys, games or, in the case of this study, animated television series may be textually analysed in order to interpret the relationships between media, culture and society. Textual analysis explores the diverse meanings of texts by considering the interplay of surface features and latent intentions. Textual analysis does not aim to judge whether a text is well written or constructed. Nor does it aim to predict or control how individuals will react to media messages (Brennen 2013). Rather, textual analysis combines the notion of the importance of context in analysing texts with the notion that entering into a dialogue with a text requires deconstruction of its discrete elements. As a method of investigation, textual analysis owes much to hermeneutics, the branch of knowledge dedicated to the interpretation of texts. Originating within Biblical scholarship, the central tenet of hermeneutic philosophy is that the interpretation of a text cannot be

51 divorced from the reader’s ideological standpoint (Edgar 1999, Thiselton 2009). Meaning can only be made by relating the text to something else, and hence entering into a dialogue with the text. It is not within the realm of possibility to fully comprehend a text without considering the context (social, cultural, historical, political, or otherwise) in which it was produced. This is achieved by using the researcher’s own context as a frame of reference (Esterberg 2002). The researcher is “not an objective, authoritative, politically neutral observer … but instead is historically positioned and locally situated as an observer of the human condition” (Bruner 1993, 1). Hermeneutics has informed multiple academic disciplines, including semiotic analysis. Semiotics is the study of sign processes, their forms of expression and their contents. Semiotics is organised around the concept that cultural signs (including ones which are constructed linguistically) are organized by their specific codes into forms of discourse in the same way that linguistic signs (letters and words) are imbued with meaning by grammatical and semantic codes (Scott 2006). Deely asserts that “at the heart of semiotics is the realization that the whole of human experience, without exception, is an interpretive structure mediated and sustained by signs” (1990, 5). The interpretation of a text requires that the categories inherent in the text’s initial production be systematically decoded. When decoding signs, it is imperative to understand that a sign and what it represents are not necessarily the same thing. Signs resemble, refer to, or are symbolically associated with the thing they represent. Hence, signs do not necessarily have anything to do with the “truth” of something, only with the way it is understood within certain contexts. According to Deely, human language has “power to convey the nonexistent with a facility every bit equal to its power to convey thought about what is existent” (1990, 17). This linguistic phenomenon is what allows humans to fear things they have never seen (Bopry 2002). Mutability and uncertainty are therefore endemic to sign activity. As a qualitative methodology, textual analysis owes much to French literary theorist Roland Barthes. In his early structuralist work, Barthes’ approach to the study of the use of signs and semiology involves distinguishing denotative meanings of signs from connotative meanings. Denotative meanings are derived from visual stimuli received by the brain which allow us to identify something by labelling it. Hence, denotation is more literal, involving “the communication of data, information, ideas, ethical values, cultural codes, argument and the like” (Darr 1998, 43). By comparison, connotations are more akin to ideological associations, which “effect the feelings, emotions, deep values, deep structures, archetypes [and] identity structures” (Darr 1998, 43). When connotations become so ingrained as to be

52 viewed as based on solid reasoning with basis in the real world, they serve as “conceptual maps of meaning by which to make sense of the world” (Barker 2000, 69). Barthes refers to such systems of connotation as “myths.” According to Barthes, myths confer a “natural justification” upon “historical intention … [thus] making contingency appear eternal” (1972, 155). That is, myth and ideology work by making certain conceptions of reality appear unquestionable. In my research project, I use textual analysis to produce an exegesis of animation texts which takes into account their specific generic and textual conventions. For example, the Nickelodeon animated series As Told By Ginger (Kapnek 2000-2004) is narratively similar to live-action North American teen “dramedies” (dramatic comedies) of the time, such as My So-Called Life (Holzman 1994-1995). Unlike many animated series, the characters change their clothes each time a new day begins, the passing of seasons occurs in a logical fashion, and the characters visibly age from twelve to fifteen years old over the course of three seasons. However, it is still an animated series. The characters are voiced by adults, and designed and animated to appear like young teenagers. The fact that the popular characters continue to look older than the unpopular ones throughout the series’ run is not the result of the child actors’ biology, as it might be on a live-action series featuring child actors. Nor are their appearances created with costuming and makeup. The characters’ appearances are constructed entirely by the series’ character designers, writers and/or animators, and reflect the ideology that people’s looks emphasise the difference in their social statuses. Analysing As Told By Ginger, it is crucial to consider the interplay of the possibilities and limitations of the medium of animation with the generic conventions of teen “dramedies” at the turn of the millennium. I apply this awareness of context, genre and medium to my discourse and textual analysis.

Narrative Analysis Narrative analysis is an interconnected group of methods for analysing texts with a “storied form” as they represent ways of interpreting human experience (Riessman 2006). Narrative is defined as “the organization of contemporaneous actions and happenings in a chronological, sequential order” (Gotham 1996, 483). A narrative “gives meaning to and explains each of its elements and is, at the same time, constituted by them” (Griffin 1993, 1097). One way of looking at this is that characters are brought into being by stories, but stories cannot exist without characters.

53 Although the multiplicity of methods which can be used within a narrative analysis framework does render it possible to use narrative analysis in a quantitative study, “[n]arrative inquiry that is more interested in how meaning is conferred onto experience … has traditionally leaned more toward the employment of qualitative research procedures” (Bamberg 2012, 78). Within the qualitative paradigm, narrative analysis can encompass elements of thematic analysis, case-based research, linguistics and grounded theory. Narrative analysis works to contextualise meaning socially, politically, historically and culturally, as “the product of interpretative strategies amongst which narrative is central” (McNay 2000, 95). Narrative analysis is particularly concerned with how a story is constructed: events are selected for inclusion in a narrative on the basis of importance, organised into a coherent structure, connected in terms of significance, and are given (or take on) cultural, psychological, social or political significance for audiences (Mishler 1995). Hence, stories or narratives are a meaning-making practice (Hinchman 1997). They constitute our understanding of reality and underscore our subjectivity by giving a greater meaning to what we do. This method is thus appropriate for further understanding the significance of the possibilities that are open to certain girl types, and the boundaries they are subject to. There are many different approaches to narrative analysis. For example, according to Schüpbach, a structural analysis approach focuses on the “linguistic structure of narratives (most often of narratives of personal experience) or investigates the use of specific structural features (such as tenses or direct/indirect speech)” (2008, 59; see Labov 1972; Labov and Waletzky 1967). A functional approach focuses on the work particular stories do in people’s lives, giving as much credence to what people say as to what they do (Bruner 1990). In this thesis, I draw on the “sociology of stories” approach, developed by Plummer to examine the cultural, historical and political context in which certain stories are told. This approach is

less concerned with analysing the formal structures of stories or narratives (as literary theory might), and more interested in inspecting the social role of stories: the ways they are produced, the ways they are read, the work they perform in the wider social order, how they change, and their role in the political process (Plummer 1995, 19).

Drawing on the sociology of stories approach to narrative analysis, I explore how certain characters are used to tell particular stories over a series’ run and within particular episodes. Furthermore, episodic television is characterised by a status quo, which established characters

54 must return to by the close of each episode (Abelman 1998). This structure provides a framework for considering systems of meaning: if this preferred status quo involves, for example, segregation of different social groups in a school, this is telling in terms of what is considered “preferable” in the context of the culture which produced this narrative.

Limitations of Data Analysis Methods Qualitative methods have subject to criticism for a perceived lack of rigour and failure to produce applicable knowledge. Willig asserts that “since language is constructive and functional, no one reading can be said to be ‘right’ or ‘valid’” (2001, 103). Furthermore, if all interpretations are equally valid, researchers cannot claim that oppression or marginalisation are real, since, in theory, the oppressor’s reading of the situation would be equally worthy of consideration (Burr 1995). For these reasons, policy makers can be disinclined to take qualitative research seriously (Finch 1986, Griffin 1994). To ensure academic rigour within quantitative studies, applicability, reliability and neutrality are used as benchmarks. Attempts to apply these criteria to qualitative studies are generally thwarted by the subjective nature of qualitative research. Some claim that the notion of quality criteria is incompatible with qualitative research (Smith 1984, 2000). Others venture that the “canons of ‘good science’ … require redefinition … to fit the realities of qualitative research” (Strauss 1990, 250). Healy and Perry suggest that each research paradigm should have its own quality criteria (2000). Reliability, for instance, hinges upon the existence of a “single tangible reality that an investigation is intended to unearth and display” (Lincoln 1985, 294). This is unsuited to theoretical frameworks premised around the existence of “multiple constructed realities” (Lincoln 1985, 295). Seale suggests substituting the reliability criterion with one of trustworthiness, a value which “lies at the heart of issues conventionally discussed as validity and reliability” (1999, 43). Text-based analyses can also uncritically imagine that all audiences read texts the same way, “regardless of age, gender, social class and race” (Creeber 2006, 82). In the article “Encoding/Decoding,” Stuart Hall provides a rubric for considering various interpretations of media texts (2006). Preferred readings correspond with the “dominant” meaning intended by the creators of the text and usually by the wider society as well. A negotiated reading involves acceptance of some aspects of a text and rejection of others. An oppositional reading “questions or contradicts the meanings encoded in the text” (Thomas 2002, 9). However, Creeber argues that the “concept of a ‘preferred meaning’ … still betrays … the belief that we can ever be sure of what meaning is ‘preferred’ or how a TV programme was originally

55 ‘encoded’” (2006, 82). To counteract the tendency to position the researcher as all-knowing, or to assume a “universal reader,” discourses can be categorized on the basis of being useful within particular circumstances, rather than “true” in every conceivable setting (Harper 2004). The researcher must be careful not to give the impression that their reading is a reflection of some universal truth, but instead must acknowledge other readings alongside their own. Qualitative data analysis methods also risk the researcher neglecting “to examine explicitly their role in the production of the discourse they are analysing” (Sherrard 1991, 181). Some have criticised qualitative methods for assuming that academic researchers are uniquely qualified to identify social and structural inequality (Abrams 1990). Since discourse analysis in particular aims to challenge dominant ideologies, the risk of imposing implicit assumptions is concerning. It is essential for qualitative researchers to practice self-reflexivity, “a metatheoretical reflection upon the activity of writing texts” (Probyn 1993, 53). It “asks us to pay attention to the very act of representation” (Kundu 2011, 46, emphasis in original). This involves “know[ing] the limits of … discourse” and “incorporat[ing] this information into a given text” (Fuhrman 1986, 300). Discourse analysts may acknowledge academic discourse, whose conventions “encourage authors to describe research in neat, objective, detached and sterile fashion, ignoring inevitably messy or subjective aspects” (Dennis and Prilleltensky in Parker 1997, 284). A researcher can also foreground the role of their own subjectivity in the trajectory of a thesis, rather than representing themselves as impartial and all-knowing. In the following section, I outline how my subjectivity and positionality as a researcher influences my research interests, questions and conclusions.

Positionality Bias is not inherently negative. Drawing on personal experience can foreground the real- world implications of a study (Reinharz 1992). It is unacknowledged bias which impacts negatively on academic research (Griffiths 1998). For example, were I merely to mention that I am a woman without specifying any of my “multiple overlapping identities,” I might position myself as the default woman, with all other qualities presumed “” (Klenke 2008, 162). Without acknowledging precisely “which woman” I speak as, “the strategy to speak as a woman is … re-essentializing” (Fuss 1989, 19, emphasis added). Supposing that my experiences are somehow a neutral and unbiased reflection of a universal reality would result in “theoretical imposition,” forestalling other potential interpretations of data and thus

56 interfering with my study’s results (Lather 1991, 67). Therefore, the “first imperative … of a non-essentialistic politics is the move … from subjectivity to positionality” (Martin 1992, 150). Explicitly stating my positionality offers “a way of responding critically and sensitively to the research” by acknowledging where my experiences, and those of others, differ from the images of girlhood presented in the texts (Griffiths 1998, 133). At the time of writing, I am a twenty-seven year-old, feminist, lesbian, cisgender, middle-class, able-bodied, agnostic, White woman working toward a doctorate in philosophy. My family emigrated from Kingston, England to Perth, Western Australia when I was four years old. Between the ages of nine and eighteen years, I attended a single-sex private Catholic school. In this environment, girls dominated every discussion, won every award and achieved every possible grade. Since all of my classmates were female, I did not internalise the dominant cultural notions that intelligence, humour or sporting ability were uncharacteristic of girls. In my adolescent mind, the default person was a girl, whereas boys and men represented the other. My secondary school’s outlook on sexuality and relationships was structured by compulsory heterosexuality and Catholic dogma. Although, as a teenager, I felt that girls represented the default, I simultaneously understood that I was inadequate as a girl because I was not heterosexual. Throughout my teens and early adulthood, I devoured films, books, television, comics and Internet in hopes of finding stories about girlhood that reflected my experiences and proved that I was not an aberration. This interest in media representation came to inform my postgraduate research trajectory. In this PhD thesis, my prior research interests and lived experiences (including, but not limited to, the marginalisation I am subject to as a lesbian woman and the privilege I am extended as a middle-class White person) inform my questions and interpretations. My particular worldview grew out of life experiences which contradict the prescribed androcentric norm in many cultures; namely, spending my youth in an environment where heterosexual girlhood was the default state of being (with boyhood and queerness positioned as “other”). This early sense of myself, as both within the perceived “dominant” group as a girl, and outside of it as a lesbian, drives me to interrogate media discourses of girlhood, and may be seen to influence my decision to concentrate on particular forms of girlhood in this thesis.

57 Sampling and Selection Procedures In this study, my purposive sampling entails selecting a range of children’s animated television series using the girl typing discourse, rather than studying a random selection of programmes or choosing to examine every animated series within a specific time frame. I do this because I wish to draw on “rich sources of data that can be used to generate or test out the explanatory frameworks” (Procter 2010, 149). Were I to analyse a random array of programmes, it would likely include series which did not feature girls in key roles, and thus would not glean useful data for analysing the girl typing discourse. The strategy of selecting sources which particularly “illuminate the research question at hand” is therefore “not only … economical but might also be informative in a way that conventional probability sampling cannot be” (Denscombe 2007, 17). Researchers using purposive sampling can “discover and describe in detail characteristics that are similar or different across the strata or subgroups” (Teddlie 2009, 186, emphasis added). This facilitates a study of the influence of context and ideology on gendered representations of girls. Children’s animated television series eligible for inclusion in my study must have been produced and aired in their entirety between 1990 and 2010. They should feature two or more girl characters who interact in meaningful ways on a regular basis. Girl characters may be either prepubescent or adolescent, but should be between the ages of roughly five and eighteen years old. In the writing of this thesis, I screened episodes of twenty-two North American animated television series for analytical purposes. I discuss the series As Told By Ginger (Kapnek 2000-2004), Recess (Germain 1997-2003) and Daria (Eichler 1997-2002) in detail. Relevant episodes of these series were selected on the basis of where they fall in the series’ run and how well they depict the typical dynamic of the characters involved. While the twenty-two animated series I refer to were produced and aired between 1990 and 2010, the three series I discuss in substantive detail originally aired over the period of 1997 to 2004. Analysing series from the approximate middle of the two-decade time period of interest to this thesis allows me to consider dominant discourses of girlhood during a time period of flux. My three key animated texts, As Told By Ginger, Recess and Daria, were selected to provide insight into three distinct ways that the girl typing discourse is used in animation of the 1990s and 2000s. Nickelodeon’s As Told By Ginger has a normatively feminine girl protagonist who ages from twelve to fourteen years old over the series run. She has a privileged position as the series’ protagonist because her form of girlhood is normatively

58 feminine, loyal to a fault and age-appropriate. Disney’s Recess features a tomboy protagonist who inhabits a floating timeline wherein she remains nine years old until the close of the series, when she and her classmates move up a grade level and will presumably turn ten years old. Due to the floating timeline of the series, Spinelli is never required to engage with the possibility that her tomboyism may be considered incompatible with proper adolescent female behaviour. As things stand, her form of girlhood makes her a deuteragonist in a field where boyhood and tomboy girlhood occupy centre stage. MTV’s Daria features a sarcastic outcast girl protagonist who ages from sixteen to eighteen years old over the series run. Since the environment the titular heroine inhabits implicitly privileges her for her intelligence and desire to be apart from the crowd, Daria always triumphs over the superficial people around her. These series show three different forms of girlhood, characterised by the ages and priorities of the characters, and by the differing identities of the networks which produced them. Examining in detail three series which differ in their approach to proper girlhood, enabled me to determine not only how they differ, but where their commonalities lie, thus laying bare what the expectations are for all girls, regardless of type.

Limitations of Sampling and Selection Procedures In the interests of trustworthiness, it is imperative to address the limitations of these criteria. Due to the selection criteria for animation texts, the focus of this thesis and the representational politics of the period 1990 to 2010, this thesis focuses disproportionately on White girl characters. While the portrayal of racial minorities in children’s television animation has been addressed in prior studies (Fulmore 2010, Schlote 2012), Fulmore’s 2010 study of the representation of African-American female animated characters shows that female characters of colour are likely to be relegated to a supporting role. Since my study’s focus is on everygirl, popular girl, girly-girl, tomboy and outcast girl types, all of whom tend to play protagonist or foil roles rather than supporting roles, I acknowledge that there is a significant risk of further marginalising girl characters of colour. To counteract the racist implications of a focus on White characters, my analysis addresses the racialised dimensions of the representation of each and every girl character mentioned. Since many of the named girl characters are White, this involves highlighting the construction of Whiteness as the norm in North American visual media. I aim to establish a rationale for understanding girl typing that I (and other scholars) can draw upon in analysing the representation of other girl types in the future (including girl characters of colour and girl

59 types which could not be analysed in detail in this study, such as the geek, the adventurer or the little sister).

Conclusion Since my thesis seeks to analyse the significance of representation within a larger sociocultural context rather than using its frequency to determine its overall importance, I use a qualitative methodology to choose my specific data analysis methods. I use discourse analysis to look at how the representation of girls as types draws on established ways of thinking about girls, and how these ways of thinking about girls are reinscribed or elaborated on. Textual analysis allows me to look at how the animation texts reflect the meaning-making practices of the culture they originate from, by taking into account the production contexts and capabilities and limitations of the animation medium. Narrative analysis addresses how character arcs over a series’ run and within discrete episodes articulate the girl typing discourse. Since qualitative methodologies can be perceived as less rigorous or widely applicable than quantitative ones, I practice the ethic of trustworthiness by acknowledging other readings alongside my own and foregrounding my own subjectivity and positionality. By choosing only animated series with prominent girl characters for analysis in this thesis, I maximise the likelihood of my generating new information regarding the girl typing discourse. To counteract the possibility of positioning the White, middle-class leads of my chosen animated series as representing a default or neutral girlhood, I do not take their identities as a given, but deconstruct how their race and class inform the representation of their gender.

60 Chapter Three: Agency and Power in As Told By Ginger Introduction The opening sequence of As Told By Ginger (Kapnek 2000-2004), Nickelodeon’s first animated programme aimed explicitly at young girls, is revealing in terms of not only the status quo of the series itself, but also of how “average” girlhood was conceived in North America at the turn of the millennium. Outside the suburban Lucky Junior High school stands Ginger Foutley, a twelve-year-old White girl with curly, bright red hair, who brightens as she spots two other White girls, Dodie and Macie, approaching her. Both are physically awkward; Dodie wears childish pigtails and is horsey-faced, and Macie has glasses, braces and buckteeth. As Ginger greets her friends, the darkened passenger window of a nearby limousine lowers to reveal a blonde twelve-year-old White girl, Courtney Gripling, eyeing Ginger and her friends curiously. Miranda, a tall, thin Black girl with sharp fingernails and a long, dark ponytail climbs into the limousine with Courtney. Noting that Courtney is watching Ginger, Miranda scowls. Out on the pavement, Ginger, Dodie and Macie stare after the departing limousine. A truck drives past, towing Ginger’s mother Lois inside her blue Volkswagen Beetle. Lois shrugs apologetically at Ginger, who buries her face in her hands. The scene dissolves to Lois paying the truck driver as Ginger rushes into her bedroom at home (decorated with a mobile, ice cream-print wallpaper, and a bookshelf with a collection of toy ponies), throwing herself down onto the bed to write in her diary. The sequence is scored with a pop-styled theme song with the lyrics:

Someone once told me the grass is much greener On the other side And I paid a visit Well, it’s possible I missed it It seemed different, yet exactly the same ‘Til further notice I’m in between From where I’m standing My grass is green Someone once told me the grass is much greener On the other side

In this sequence, and the series as a whole, each girl character derives her identity from her relation to the girls around her. Ginger is part of a group designated as socially inferior due to

61 a combination of their physical appearances and socio-economic backgrounds. Ginger’s status as the protagonist is imparted through the audience’s access to her point of view; in this short sequence, she is shown feeling uncertain when alone, happy in their community of her friends and embarrassed by her mother’s car. In this sequence, Ginger and her friends stare after Courtney’s limousine, unaware that a powerful, wealthy and beautiful girl like Courtney also defines herself in comparison to them. In the As Told By Ginger episode “Deja Who?” (Anthony 2001), Ginger is allowed the opportunity to experience “the other side” of girlhood. Everygirl Ginger’s transformation into a popular girl allows her to experience vicariously a subjectivity simultaneously idealised and derogated in contemporary media culture. This is followed by an enactment of discipline for transgressing outside acceptable femininity. The traditional female transformation narrative is subverted, becoming cyclical rather than linear. By analysing the depictions of gender, race, class, power and transformation in animated series such as Ginger, Hey Arnold! (Bartlett 1996-2004), Recess (Germain 1997-2003), Angela Anaconda (1999- 2002), The Proud Family (Smith 2001-2005), The Powerpuff Girls (1998-2004), X-Men: Evolution (Johnson 2000-2003), Totally Spies (2001-2014) and Kim Possible (2002-2007), I demonstrate that the differences in how the everygirl and popular girl types exert their power and agency indicate uncertainty regarding how properly feminine middle-class White girls ought to conduct themselves. These representations emerged in a neoliberal programme context, in which mastery of normative femininity grants social mobility (Zaslow 2009, Aapola 2005, Radner 2011). Within this formation of girlhood, the pursuit of empowerment is lauded, even expected – up to a sharply defined point. I begin by examining As Told By Ginger’s production context, as the first animated series primarily aimed at girls produced by the juggernaut children’s cable network Nickelodeon. I consider how Ginger prioritises girls’ concerns through the use of a linear timeline, heterosexual female gaze, a focus on fashion as a means of self-determination and most of all through the representation of Ginger Foutley as everygirl. I move into a discussion of the everygirl type as the arbiter of feminine normality, including the degrees to which the everygirl may move outside of normative class and race boundaries. I then explore the popular girl type as a figure of aspirational excess positioned through sour-grapes framing, considering in depth the gendered, racialised and classed dimensions of this subject position. I identify and define the subverted transformation narrative which is a staple of girlhood representation in animation during the 1990s and 2000s. Finally, analysing the

62 Ginger episode “Deja Who?”, I find that the competing ideologies of middle-class White niceness and popularity constitute a double bind which is deeply entrenched in girl culture.

As Told By Ginger (Nickelodeon, 2000-2004) As Told By Ginger (hereafter referred to as Ginger) is a North American animated series created by , an actress and writer who drew on her own experiences to craft Ginger’s storylines and themes (Beck 2007). It aired on Nickelodeon, the leading children’s cable network in North America at the time (Banet-Weiser 2007, Hendershot 2004).7 I selected Ginger as my main case study for this chapter for a number of reasons. Firstly, Ginger was produced by a network whose brand identity positioned children as the equals of adults, celebrating and empowering them rather than patronising them (Jenkins 2004). Secondly, Ginger presents a world where girls’ concerns are at the front and centre of storylines (Banet-Weiser 2007). Thirdly, Ginger aired during a time when girls were conceptualised as both the future of America and a lucrative market (Hains 2012, Harris 2004, Ward 2004). The series presents a compelling opportunity for considering how girls were addressed in media at the turn of the millennium. In this section, I briefly outline the field in which the girl characters of Ginger operate, including distinctive features of the diegetic world of Ginger in comparison to other animated series. At the outset of the series, Ginger, the protagonist, is a bright, sensitive twelve-year- old girl who is deeply loyal to her best friends, Dodie and Macie, who are considered “uncool.” Courtney, a popular girl, is intrigued by Ginger’s life and her genuine friendships, and seeks to befriend her. Thus, Ginger must reconcile her loyalty to Macie and Dodie with her desire to be included in the popular group. Miranda, Courtney’s second-in-command, seeks to discredit Ginger through sabotage and blackmail. In addition to these situations, Ginger must also contend with school, romantic relationships and her dysfunctional family. Ginger was carefully constructed to appeal to girls at the arguable risk of alienating boy audiences, which would have been unthinkable just fifteen years beforehand. Advertising mogul Cy Schneider summarises the dominant position regarding cross-gender identification in children’s television of the 1980s: “Don’t show an eight-year-old boy playing with an

7 As Told By Ginger premiered in 2000 and concluded production in 2003, with the third and final season intended to air in 2004. However, in the United States, Ginger was removed from Nickelodeon’s schedule in 2004, during its third season. The final eight episodes remained unaired on Nickelodeon in North America, although the , The Wedding Frame (Kapnek 2004b), was released direct-to-DVD in November 2004. On international versions of Nickelodeon (including Australia), all episodes of Ginger had been aired by 2005.

63 eight-year-old girl. For boys, that’s an unreal situation. Girls will emulate boys, but boys will not emulate girls. When in doubt, use boys” (Schneider 1989, 107). In light of attitudes such as these, Ginger’s focus on girls’ concerns is significant, and calls to be examined in greater detail. One of the ways that Ginger seeks to engage a target audience of girls is by using a linear timeline, where characters age and their personalities develop accordingly. This differentiates Ginger from animated series with floating timelines, where the characters do not age, seasons and holidays occur at the convenience of the plot and new characters are treated as though they have always been part of the cast. By contrast, Season Three of Ginger shows the characters graduating from junior high, enjoying summer vacation and then transitioning to high school. The adjustment to high school introduces conflict between Ginger and her boyfriend Darren, leading to their breakup, which colours the series’ remaining episodes. The final scene of the series is a flashforward, showing Ginger’s future as a successful writer. Darren appears, holding a toddler who resembles Ginger, indicating they will reconcile and have a child together. For the purposes of the series, Ginger is not an eternal twelve-year-old, but someone with a past, present and future. This artistic decision was arguably motivated by the understanding that the intended audience for the series are engaged in processes of identity formation and negotiation (Pomerantz 2008a, 64-65). Ginger’s decisions are understood as impacting her development and her autonomy. To impress the linearity of the coming of age narrative, the character designs in Ginger are changed subtly over the series’ run, in order to age the characters from twelve to roughly fifteen years old. The characters’ visible ageing differs according to gender, with the male love interest showing the most dramatic change in appearance. Darren begins the series as an awkward boy with braces. He grows into a confident athlete, whose looks Ginger rates “an eleven … maybe even a twelve” out of ten (Kapnek 2002a). The girls’ ageing is rather less noticeable, with their transition to high school signalled largely by hairstyle changes. Darren’s more noticeable physical development is an example of a heterosexual female gaze “which positions male bodies as desirable” (Taylor 2012, 2). Darren’s positioning as a love interest and his more aesthetically motivated ageing process may be seen as a presumption that the audience is attracted to adolescent boys. To ground Ginger in a reality that the imagined girl audience can identify with, the girl characters change clothes each time a new day begins. They also wear outfits in rotation, with new clothes added every so often. This differentiates the series from the vast majority of television animation (before, during and after the time period of interest) where costumes are

64 “simple and unchanging, [with] designers just occasionally adding an extra note to give a tweak to an established character” (Hayes 2013, 215). This also sets Ginger apart from live- action programmes where characters have unlimited wardrobes, which Perlmutter argues constitutes a “neo-realist approach” to the animated format (2014, 319). Designing a variety of outfits for each character doubtless incurred additional effort and expense for the production team, but arguably indicates an effort to reflect the reality of girls’ lives, where fashion is one of the few forms of self-determination available. The series’ preoccupation with fashion has been read as regressive. Banet-Weiser argues that this emphasis of personal style is at odds with Ginger’s strong-willed mother and artistic expression, thus “exemplifying the ambiguities that form the crux of postfeminism” (2007, 131). Criticism of fashion-consciousness as a girlhood attribute may be seen to arise from a long-standing understanding that young girls’ attention to clothing necessarily implies precocious sexuality, a lack of feminist awareness and/or a shallow personality (Henry 2012a, Kaiser 2003). In Ginger, image cultivation provides opportunities for both bonding and exclusion. In the episode “Cry Wolf” (Miller 2001), Miranda discovers that Ginger is not allowed to shave her legs and proceeds to blackmail her, warning Ginger to stay away from Courtney. After several miserable days, Ginger shaves only her ankles and wears trousers which expose them, giving the impression that she is allowed to shave. Courtney re-opens communication by praising Ginger’s fashion choice, thereby implying forgiveness without verbalising the rejection she felt or pressing Ginger for an explanation. Fashion offers Ginger “a means of expression and subversion” wherein she can refuse both Miranda’s control and her mother’s rules to carve out the social identity she wants (Hentges 2006, 116). Ginger ideologically situates its imagined girl audience through the use of linear continuity and the representation of style as liberatory. The positioning of the girl protagonist solidifies this position call. Ginger narrates the series through voice-overs (implied to be excerpts from her diary), meaning that the audience is allowed the most insight into her perspective of events. Figure 1, a piece of promotional art for the series, presents Ginger at the centre of a tableau evocative of her place in the series. In an image of the Lucky Junior High girls’ toilets, Courtney stands to the left, talking on her phone. Miranda is positioned at the right, leaning against a cubicle door and checking her watch. Dodie and Macie are visible peeping over two cubicle doors, covertly watching the popular girls. None of these four girls meets the eyes of the onlooker. Courtney and Miranda are outfitted in royal shades of purple, whereas Dodie and Macie’s clothing is not visible. Ginger is in the foreground. Wearing a yellow shirt, Ginger leans on the rim of a sink and bends forward in a way that gives the

65 impression that she is gazing into a mirror. Thus, depending on one’s reading of the image, the spectator is placed in the position of Ginger’s reflection, or Ginger is otherwise the reflection of the spectator. Ginger’s positioning in diegetic and non-diegetic material implies that Ginger’s perspective is assumed to mirror that of girls who are the main characters in their own lives – which is to say, every girl.

Figure 1 Promotional art for Season 1 of Ginger (Nickelodeon)

The series creates an animated world which foregrounds issues considered to be girls’ concerns – identity formation, appearance, fashion, heterosexuality and so on. Its positioning of Ginger as “every girl” illuminates much about how ordinary girlhood was conceptualised at the turn of the millennium. In the next section, I discuss the representation of Ginger Foutley, an average yet special girl, and outline her role in the girl typing discourse.

Everygirls To understand Ginger’s role in As Told By Ginger – and that of the everygirl in North American children popular culture generally – it is necessary to outline what, in American millennial girl culture, constitutes normative girlhood. Ginger is not the only North American children’s animated television series with an everygirl at its centre; everygirls appear as protagonists in Braceface (Clark 2001-2005), The Proud Family (Smith 2001-2005) and Kim Possible (McCorkle 2002-2007). To begin with, the everygirl is typically White, middle- class, able-bodied, slender, cisgender and heterosexual (Currie 2009). The overwhelming majority of girl characters in the history of children’s television animation are most, if not all,

66 of these things, but not all girl characters or even protagonists are everygirls. Gilligan argues that normative femininity hinges on connection, meaning that “female gender identity is threatened by separation” (1982, 35). Accordingly, the everygirl’s strategies for relating to others are typically “down to earth, unpretentious, realistic, empathetic, ordinary, connected and democratic” (Gains 2014, 120). The everygirl’s defining attributes are her positioning as the arbiter of normality and her prosocial attitude toward others. Virtually every facet of an everygirl’s characterisation is normatively feminine, including her struggles. Gleason argues that within normative girlhood, girls must reconcile their desire for autonomy with the expectation that they will “defer to the wishes of adults with psychological legitimacy” (1999, 91). In keeping with this, an everygirl character rarely rebels or questions the institutions that structure her life. Everygirl narratives are typically premised around “obeying the rules, being compassionate, helping the community, conflict resolution, and parent/child relationships” (Waters 2010, 38). The embodiment of normative girlhood, the everygirl is defined by her support of the status quo. The everygirl is usually surrounded by colourful characters, whose quirks render her even more normal by comparison. For example, Ginger’s intelligence and creativity is made more relatable by the presence of her brainy friend Macie, who is eccentric and awkward. Ginger, by comparison, achieves in a socially acceptable manner, endearing herself to teachers by being “studious, attentive, obedient, [and] polite” (Hains 2012, 135). Ginger demonstrates her perceptiveness and creativity by articulating these qualities through “the disciplining codes for whiteness and the social expectations for living out those codes” (Cherland 2005, 101). Gonick argues that the concept of normative girlhood requires the presence of girls who fail to live up to gendered standards of behaviour; that “in delineating the not-normal, the normal is able to know or recognize itself” (2003, 5). This rationale can be applied to most facets of Ginger’s character, including her appearance and her socio- economic status. As an everygirl, Ginger must perform femininity to White, middle-class standards. According to Bettis and Adams, physical attractiveness is a “nonnegotiable” attribute for properly feminine girls (2005, 8). Attractiveness confers legitimacy onto a girl’s experiences and allows her social mobility (Lemish 1998, Weitz 2001, Hesse-Biber 2004). It is imperative for Ginger to be physically attractive in an age-appropriate, nonthreatening way. Everygirls’ physical beauty is typically “performed seamlessly, as an authentic, effortless, and thoroughly uncontrived expression” of their inner goodness (Gilligan 2011, 170). However, as the protagonist of the series, Ginger must also stand out. Being White, slender

67 and of average height, with a small nose, a heart-shaped face and curly red hair, Ginger is designed to be more conventionally attractive than her best friends, but less sleek and sophisticated than the popular girls. Ginger’s combination of pleasant facial features and bright red, curly hair is significant. Ginger’s immediate family are the only red-haired characters in the series, but Ginger’s hair is a more vibrant shade than that of her mother and brother. Ginger’s red hair deviates from the masculine norm, but is also positioned as exceptional among the girl characters in the series (Götz 2012, 38). The depiction of an introspective and high-achieving girl with red hair reinforces and is reinforced by similar representations in other series. In series such as The Powerpuff Girls (McCracken 1998-2004), X-Men: Evolution (Johnson 2000-2003), Totally Spies (Chalvon- Demersay 2001-2014) and Kim Possible (McCorkle 2002-2007), redheaded girls are desirable as both friends and romantic interests. Hains observes that red-haired animated girl characters are uniformly “intelligent … excel in school … are tremendously levelheaded … [and] also exceptionally nice” (2007b, 71). As the most conventionally attractive member of her friendship group, and the only red-haired girl in the series, Ginger is marked as different, but exceptional. Ginger deviates from the everygirl norm in terms of her socio-economic standing and family background. While Ginger is White and lives in the fictional middle-class Connecticut suburb of Sheltered Shrubs, her mother Lois is divorced and works full-time as a nurse. Ginger’s father is largely absent, due to myriad personal problems, implied to include mental illness. This places Ginger in contrast to her friends and classmates, who are typically children of married, upper middle-class professionals. Foregrounding Ginger’s modest financial circumstances and mildly dysfunctional family positions Ginger as an “appealingly vulnerable” version of “the ideal girl” (Brown 2006, 3). The Foutleys’ financial limitations impact upon Ginger’s life and her pride in her background. In the episode “The Nurses’ Strike” (Casemiro 2002), Lois sets up a house- cleaning business after six weeks without pay depletes the family finances. That her mother performs menial work humiliates Ginger, but middle-class niceties prevent her from talking openly about this. The closest Ginger comes to verbalising this insecurity is by saying, “Everyone pretends that they don’t care, but they really do, and people will look for any excuse to pity you!” As Walkerdine argues in a discussion of what class means in an everyday sense, Ginger experiences her socio-economic standing as “an identity designation” more than “an economic relation to the means of production” (2001, 12).

68 Ginger’s lower middle-class roots are exceptional when compared with other animated everygirls, such as the title character of Disney’s Kim Possible, whose expository theme song announces her as “your basic, average girl ... here to save the world.” Kim lives in a comfortable house in the suburbs, and her parents are a rocket scientist and a neurosurgeon. Noting that “[t]here is little that is either basic or average about Kim,” Hains asks whether representations such as this intimate “that girl power is only available to girls who belong to a privileged race and class?” (2007b, 68). Willis contends that “[t]here is nothing exceedingly threatening about the femininity that [Kim] conveys” as a “white attractive young woman with long red hair” (2013, 59). Willis further criticises Kim Possible for relegating the “modernized construction of female agency” to the realm of and (2013, 59). Thus, it is significant that Ginger, positioned as the “basic, average girl” in her own series, is depicted as subject to economic restrictions and as the child of divorced, working parents. Although Ginger is White and has knowledge of middle-class manners and conventions, she experiences her socio-economic standing more precariously than her friends and classmates. This suggests potential ambiguity around what exactly constitutes a “normal” feminine perspective. For example, Penny Proud, the Black teenage girl protagonist of the Disney animated series The Proud Family (Smith 2001-2005), is the well-rounded daughter of middle-class professionals. Penny’s best friend Dijonay, also Black, is marked as working- class by her brassiness, “ethnic” name and eight siblings, all named after condiments and spices (Fulmore 2010, 32-33).8 Dijonay is represented as unreliable, to the point that in the episode “Adventures in Bebe-Sitting” (Hali 2003), Penny states that she “trusts [Dijonay] to be the one person I can’t trust.” By contrast, Penny, the middle-class, high-achieving Black girl, is eminently trustworthy. Considering Ginger and Penny, it becomes apparent that an everygirl character may be White or middle-class. However, the everygirl must be one or the other, since White, middle-class perspectives are positioned as the default. At the time of writing, there has not yet been a disabled, fat, trans or queer everygirl character in a children’s television animation series, suggesting that able-bodiedness, slenderness, cissexuality and heterosexuality are non- negotiable markers of femininity, whereas Whiteness and socio-economic class are negotiable.

8 Dijonay’s sisters are named Tabasco, Caramel, Cinnamon, Nutmeg and Paprika. Her brothers are Basil, Cayenne and Oran.

69 Ginger’s race, class, background, interests, perspective and relationships are aligned with what American culture at the millennium presumed to be “normal.” Everygirls are intended to represent a girl audience imagined as “white, very feminine, carefree, boy-crazy virgins” (Scanlon 1998, 188). Positioning the everygirl’s perspective as the default makes a statement about which behaviours typically “win positive reinforcement” for girls in their early teens, and which behaviours are considered “deviant, and therefore negatively sanctioned” (Lemish 2007, 104). An everygirl’s combination of normalcy, compassion and uniqueness allows the audience to make a “personal, social, or psychological connection” with the character by mentally assuming her role and reflecting on how they might respond in the character’s situation (Waters 2010, 38). This identification with the everygirl is “derived from experience and participation as subjects in the multiple discourses that make the social reality” (Sonderling 2001, 330). Since neoliberal femininities call for continual self- improvement on the part of the feminine subject, the everygirl cannot become complacent in her relatively privileged position; she must aspire to something better. This is where the popular girl type enters the frame.

Popular Girls Within discourses of youth in schools and in media, the word “popular” is used to refer both to children and teenagers who are “well-liked by their peers” and those who are in a “ruling” position in the peer group (Currie 2006, 163-164). By exemplifying a social group’s values and dynamics, a popular child or adolescent is “both part of the group and apart from it” (Bukowski 2011, 11-12). Popularity becomes the standard by which all girls are called upon to measure themselves. In media, popular students are often the villains or foils to the protagonist, placing popular students in “the paradoxical state of having a certain dominance over other students yet also bearing their disdain” (Hochman 2011, 219). Where everygirls are typically part of a small group of intimate friends, popular girls are often depicted in larger, less closely-knit groups, led by the ubiquitous “most popular girl in school” (see Oppliger 2013). Where everygirls have emotional connections with their friends, the popular girl is usually flanked by a number of “fawning adjutants” characterised by “slavish devotion to the rules of their clique” (Fox-Kales 2011, 121). These followers exist principally to illustrate the power and charisma of their leader. In terms of narrative, the figure of the most popular girl in school serves two distinct functions. Usually, she is an antagonist who victimises others and impedes the female protagonist’s access to her male love interest (Tringali 2006). Antagonistic popular girls are

70 often depicted as “shallow, vain, mean-spirited, selfish, and mindless slaves to the fashion and beauty industries” (Douglas 2010, 90). Alternatively, the popular girl serves as a of sorts, who facilitates an everygirl’s social betterment through “expert instruction” and the “use of specific cosmetics” (Mizejewski 2004, 168). In both cases, the popular girl has the power to aid or restrict the everygirl’s social mobility. The everygirl and popular girl types share certain characteristics. As the “normal” and “aspirational” models of girlhood, respectively, both are likely to be White, slender, able- bodied, cisgender, heterosexual, middle- to upper-class, conventionally attractive and fashionably dressed (Proweller 1998, Gonick 2003, Chesney-Lind 2008, Currie 2009, Hentges 2006, Nichter 1994). However, where everygirls are supremely empathetic, popular girls are typically self-interested and oblivious to the feelings of others. In the case of an antagonistic popular girl, this is due to callousness and entitlement. Benevolent popular girls have often led such a pampered existence that they have never experienced emotions or sensations such as rejection or mild physical discomfort, and thus do not recognise others’ hurt feelings. In Ginger, Courtney fits into the benign popular girl . Adults and classmates alike treat her as a local celebrity. As a result of this adulation, Courtney lacks human connection. While Courtney’s “best gal pal” Miranda shows some affection and regard for her, Miranda mainly values their friendship for the material/social benefits it affords her. Although Courtney has many fair-weather friends, she has never experienced childhood rites of passage such as sleepovers, summer camp or the fair. In an example of what Kendall refers to as “sour-grapes framing,” the series extensively depicts Courtney’s opulent surroundings and glossy confidence, while also pitying her for her isolation (2011, 61). The institution of popularity is shown to be unfair to popular and unpopular alike. However, Courtney’s blithe acceptance of her privilege and wielding of her power are the subject of both awe and vitriol. Discussing North American teen film, Shary observes that cinematic popular girls’ superficiality, insensitivity, wealth and stupidity are typically emphasised for comic or dramatic effect in order to “appeal to the majority audience who simultaneously desire and detest … popularity” (2002, 69). I argue that the same is true of popular girls in 1990s and 2000s children’s television animation, and that the contempt directed at popular girls in contemporary media arises from deep-seated class and gender-based resentments. Douglas suggests that the popular girl provides a locus for dissatisfaction regarding “the increasing maldistribution of wealth” (2010, 237). Holden proposes that in a culture where the popular

71 mythology holds that reinvention and self-advancement are the paths to happiness, “[b]eing born beautiful means being born bad” (1999, para.11, emphasis added). Building from these viewpoints, I argue that the existence of people with clear economic and genetic advantages contradicts the meritocratic neoliberal ethos of self-sufficiency and entrepreneurship. However, rather than seeking to dismantle systems of structural inequality, “it is easier to laugh at [rich teenage girls’] … pretentiousness and conspicuous consumption” (Kendall 2011, 61). It is significant that girls attract such venom for benefiting from privilege, given that many neoliberal discourses coalesce around the figure of the teenage girl. Popularity is a gendered discourse. Boys in North American teen film usually attain prestige through pursuing goals apart from popularity (Shary 2002, 62). This is also apparent in North American children’s television animation of the early 2000s; in the third season of Ginger, Darren’s popularity is a fringe benefit of playing on the Lucky High School football team and dating a cheerleader. By contrast, girl characters strive for popularity in and of itself. As a high schooler, Ginger’s friend Dodie is obsessed with joining the cheerleading squad. This is not from a particular interest in athletics, but because cheerleading will allow her to connect with popular older girls and thus achieve popularity herself. Discussing North American teen film, Shary argues that, as a result of being constituted through this gendered discourse, girl characters occupy “an odd position of always already being popular or denying their desire for popularity” (2002, 62). Whether because of the visual pleasures of watching feminine transformation onscreen, or the increased dramatic possibilities of the delicate negotiations inherent in female popularity, throughout North American film, television and animation, popular girl characters vastly outnumber popular boys. Popular girls’ gendered appearances are usually distinguished visually from those of unpopular girls. In Ginger, this is achieved by using differing standards for character design. Macie and Dodie are small for their age, with childish hairstyles and outfits. Popular girl characters in Ginger tend to be taller, with longer hair and fitted clothing. The popular girls typically have sardonic eyebrows and an oval eye shape, lending them a more mature and knowing appearance. As Figures 2 and 3 show, when minor character Hope overhauls her image in the Ginger episode “No Hope For Courtney” (McCreary 2002), her character design is altered to give her a more developed figure. The fact that Hope’s body changes literally overnight in order to transition her into popularity demonstrates how “girl identities” in media are “explicitly defined by the social appearance of the body” (Driscoll 2011, 73). Physical differences between characters therefore illustrate their social statuses.

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Figure 2 Hope’s character design pre-transformation (Nickelodeon).

Figure 3 Hope’s character design post-transformation (Nickelodeon)

Tellingly, Ginger has physical characteristics of both the popular and unpopular groups. In Figure 4, a piece of promotional art for the series, Ginger is positioned between the two groups, showing that she has the dainty nose and facial shape of the popular girls, but the rounded eyes, height and demure fashion sense of the unpopular girls. Her character design thus implies her conflicted loyalties and potential for transition.

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Figure 4 Promotional art for Season 2 of Ginger (Nickelodeon)

Popularity is also a classed discourse. In “No Hope For Courtney,” Ginger, Macie and Dodie agree that popularity requires determination, confidence, leisure time, “resources” and the ability to put others in their place. The euphemism “resources” refers to disposable income. The characters’ description of attributes crucial for popularity implies that girls must already be in a privileged position to be considered eligible for inclusion in the popular group. The discourse of popularity as a function of class privilege predates the proliferation of media set in high schools. From the 1920s, extracurricular activities in high schools “served to legitimise the peer group as a socializing agency, giving it an acknowledged role in the process of cultural transmission” (Comacchio 2006, 115). The success of extracurricular activities in schools was attributed to “the charm manifested in the personalities of the leaders,” and associated with high academic and social achievement (Comacchio 2006, 115). According to Thompson, parents in the 1920s and 1930s encouraged the organization of children and adolescents into peer hierarchies because they believed that competition and teamwork prepared girls for a future as the wives of professionals (1995, 48). Thus, there is a historical precedent for the “valuing of middle-class over working-class norms” endemic to popularity as a discourse (Gonick 2003, 112). A popular girl needs not only awareness of the pecking order, but also mastery of it. Popularity is also a racialised discourse. Given that Western cultures prize stereotypically White features such as straight hair, fine features and light skin as the ultimate markers of feminine beauty, “white girls from middle-class backgrounds seem to have the upper hand when negotiating their status among other girls” (Landry 2008, 31). These racialised dimensions are also apparent in media representations. The most prominent girl character of colour in Ginger is Miranda, who is Black. Miranda is shown to be “too

74 assertive,” snapping at her boyfriends and refusing to be nice (Collins 2000, 85). Fulmore highlights the racist implications of the persistent depiction of Miranda as a “recurring Black female villain” who is “highly vindictive, insecure, and submissive to only her white female friend” (Fulmore 2010, 35). Wanzo argues that have historically been racially stereotyped as both seditious troublemakers and docile helpers to Whites (2013). In light of this, Miranda may be read as both conforming to and resisting pre-existing stereotypes. While Miranda desires power, she never attempts to usurp Courtney as the most popular girl at Lucky Junior High. I argue that this is because of the understanding, discussed by Fulmore, that Black girls provide support or hindrance to White characters, but should not advocate for their own interests. While, in children’s television animation, the most popular girl in a given group is usually White, her hangers-on are often more racially diverse than the female protagonist’s friendship group. In Ginger, both of Ginger’s female best friends are White and her male best friend (later boyfriend) is Black. Figures 5 and 6 show screen captures from the first season Ginger episode “Sleep On It” (Katz 2000) and the third season episode “About Face” (Kapnek 2004a). In these scenes, Courtney’s group of popular girls is composed of fifty per cent White girls and fifty per cent girls visually coded as non-White, due to their skin colour, hair texture and styling and/or the racial backgrounds of their voice actors (such as and Jennifer Paz, who are multiracial and Filipino respectively).

Figure 5 The popular girls in the Ginger episode “Sleep On It” (Nickelodeon)

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Figure 6 The popular girls in the Ginger episode “About Face” (Nickelodeon)

The racial diversity of Courtney’s popular group would appear to be at odds with the tendency to emphasise their sameness and lack of depth as a source of comedy. In the episode “Sleep On It,” Ginger attends Courtney’s sleepover party. She memorises trivia about the other guests in order to successfully integrate, such as that Traci and Heather’s nicknames are “the Tracenator” and “Cuddles.” Traci and Heather are never referred to by these nicknames again. They have few distinguishing characteristics other than their looks. The fact that they look different and have such distinct nicknames calls attention to the fact that they are merely adjuncts to Courtney Gripling. Their identifying characteristics are merely pretensions to individuality. A commonplace gag in children’s television animation is to have all or most of the girls in a popular group (or who challenge the protagonists) be similar in some fundamental way. In Bratz (Klein 2005-2007), the protagonists are opposed by identical twins Kirstee and Kaycee, who can only be differentiated by the rhinoplasty bandage on Kaycee’s nose. In Daria (Eichler 1997-2002), the names of the popular Fashion Club (Tiffany, Sandi, Stacy and Quinn) imply trend-conscious, upper-middle class or wealthy parents. In Recess (Germain 1997-2003), the high-status fourth-grade girls are named Ashley Armbruster, Ashley Tomassian, Ashley Boulet and Ashley Quinlan. However, aside from Kirstee and Kaycee (who are contrasted with the multiracial Bratz), these groups of popular girls are each more racially diverse than the protagonists’ friendship groups. Tiffany in Daria (who is East Asian), Ashley Boulet and Ashley Tomassian in Recess (who are Black and Armenian- American respectively), and Miranda, Lonnie and Traci in Ginger are each some of the only named characters of colour in their respective series. Why is it that popular girls are more likely to be both exaggeratedly similar and racially diverse?

76 Typically, the presence of characters of colour conveys positive attributes on White characters through racialised stereotypes. Brown and Lamb observe that characters of colour in series such as Hey Arnold!, Jimmy Neutron (Davis 2002-2006), All Grown Up (Boutilier 2003-2008) and The Fairly Odd Parents (Hartman 2001-present) are included to bestow “street credibility” or “a softer side” on the White lead characters (2006, 74). Characters of colour are also used to signify a “postracial” environment (Banet-Weiser 2007, 153). Since the concept of race is widely considered “the product of a corrupted adulthood,” characters’ racial identities are rarely mentioned in “children’s media, games or toys” (Pitcher 2014, 98). This stems from the pervasive idea that children do not notice race, and that discussing race with children will “poison their minds” (Winkler 2009, 1). Herein lies the incentive for children’s television animation to depict a world where characters never encounter racism. Beyond lofty ideals goes the simple incentive to sell merchandise. Discussing the Bratz television series, McAllister argues that racial diversity or ambiguity is used to facilitate international marketing, creating a unified look across ethnic borders (2007). Isaac Larian, head of MGA Entertainment, concurs with this view, explaining that the rationale behind the Bratz dolls’ racially ambiguous appearances was constructed so that children of various backgrounds could assume that the dolls were intended to resemble them (in Talbot 2006, 75). Regardless of their race, popular girls’ hangers-on are usually depicted as blank slates whose principal motivation in life is fawning over their leader. For example, in Angela Anaconda (Rose 1999-2002), the tomboy title character despises the manipulative, snobbish Nanette, who is flanked by two simpering followers, January (African-American) and Karlene (White). An interaction representative of the trio’s dynamic can be seen in the episode “Model Behavior” (Kramer 1999). When Nanette demonstrates her modelling expertise, Karlene sighs, “I wish I could be you, Nanette!” January hastily adds, “I wish I could be you even more!” Nanette’s followers exist primarily to participate in this running gag. The principal difference between Karlene and January is their physical appearances, specifically racial characteristics such as skin colour. Thus, the depiction of groups of popular girls as more racially diverse than the protagonists constitutes a form of “storytelling shorthand in a visual medium that has difficulty making sense of multiple characters” (Sweeney 2008, 118). The depiction of groups of popular girls as racially diverse helps audiences to distinguish them from one another, since their personalities are homogenous. In light of these gendered, classed and racialised implications, it seems odd that Ginger finds popularity tempting, when popular girls are so often presented as something of

77 an amorphous mass. At Lucky Junior High, the only possibility of standing out among the popular girls is by being the most popular girl. This is illustrated when Hope briefly deposes Courtney as the most popular girl in school in “No Hope For Courtney.” At the conclusion of the episode, Hope is absorbed into the larger group of Courtney’s hangers-on, where she remains for the rest of the series. Hope never has another line, let alone another featured episode. Prior to her featured episode, Hope was a silent background character, appearing mostly in crowd scenes. After achieving popularity, Hope is a background character of a different sort. Hope becoming popular makes her no more visible than when she was nameless. Popular girls are differentiated from one another only to emphasize their sameness and superficiality. This narrative convention serves to other both children and women. Discursive constructions of these groups foreground the lack of qualities perceived as “normal” within the dominant culture. This perceived lack “renders the subject of discussion less of a full person than are members of the dominant population” (Nash 2006, 19). According to Nash, “the commonest form of emptiness in these representations is a lack of intellect” (2006, 26). Nash argues that the enduring representation of attractive, outgoing, fashionable girls as intellectually inferior “allows boys and men to appear smarter” (2006, 26). I would add that these representations also function to make female protagonists appear more intelligent than the privileged, self-interested girls who either assist or oppose them. While the mantle of popularity confers considerable social prestige upon a girl, popularity is also represented as synonymous with stupidity, cruelty and an inability to have meaningful relationships with other people. Popularity grants visibility, but only on the most powerful girls. Despite this, the popular girl represents an exceptional perspective which the everygirl audience surrogate aspires to. However, the everygirl is able to connect with others, a crucial skill in a culture which measures girls’ value by how successfully they can establish relationships. Each of these girl types has what the other lacks. They are depicted as opposite, yet inextricably linked. Crucially, the racial and class similarities between these girl types allow the possibility for transition between these gendered subjectivities.

Girl Typing and the Subverted Transformation The contrast between empathetic, connected everygirls and unsympathetic, powerful popular girls permeates North American popular culture. The representation of these girl types articulates deeply ingrained perceptions about “differential positions of power within class relations in a wider social context” (Gonick 2003, 111). In light of the visibility and influence

78 of these two girl types, it is significant that a common narrative in North American children’s television animation involves the transformation of a female protagonist into a popular girl. As in many girl-centric popular cultural offerings, girl characters’ identities in Ginger are depicted as subject to frequent change. In Ginger episodes such as “Family Therapy” (Greenberg 2002), “And She Was Gone” (Kapnek 2002b), “Detention” (Cohen 2004a) and “Dodie’s Big Break” (Cohen 2004b), girl characters engage in masquerades, deception or transformation, to the extent that they often briefly forget who they are. The representation of girlhood identity as mutable ties in with a prevalent conception of girlhood as a state of “mobility preceding the fixity of womanhood and implying an unfinished process of personal development” (Driscoll 2002, 47). According to Warren-Crow: This is the cultural work that girls are expected to do. Their discursive duty is performed by their blossoming physiques, unstable body images, and variable identities – all of which are generated and exploited by an image culture obsessed with youth and transformation (2014, 18). In these Ginger episodes (and episodes of other series), the stated motivation for a transformation, makeover or masquerade may be a desire for attention or power, to beat the popular girls at their own game, to be included by them, or being asked or forced to remake one’s image. What matters is that the female protagonist is somehow called upon to become something else, something both better and worse than she is. Whatever the motivation, the transformation and its effects tend to be represented in fairly standard ways, which are potentially revealing of American culture’s relation to femininity and class privilege. Popular culture generally depicts performing femininity as an acquisition of skills. In media representations, this process can include a sequence akin to the training montage in sports and martial arts films, “in which a young apprentice must learn the skills necessary to become a warrior” (Gaine 2011, 115). Filmic female transformation stories, such as My Fair Lady (Cukor 1964) and The Devil Wears Prada (Frankel 2006), will often depict the character in question trying out new ways of dressing and relating to others, faltering before learning to perform normative femininity flawlessly. These training montages appear in episodes of Hey Arnold! and Recess, where the primary school-aged female protagonists transition to socially sanctioned forms of femininity. For example, in the Hey Arnold! episode “Helga’s Makeover” (Lipman 1996), Helga, a brash nine-year-old tomboy, stands before the bathroom mirror, turning the pages of Preteen Miss magazine. Squinting into the mirror, Helga wonders aloud, “Hmm, am I a fire-engine red or a pearly pink?” Helga sticks on fake

79 nails, applies mascara and plucks her single eyebrow. When Helga emerges from the bathroom, her dramatic new look causes her mother to faint dead away. Animated series with older, more normatively feminine heroines tend not to include scenes of characters struggling with feminine trappings. They present only the stunning results of the makeover. This is an example of the visual of the “invisible transformation,” wherein “the actual work required to render the woman altered is not seen … in order to create suspense or surprise” (McDonald 2010, 48). An invisible transformation occurs in the Kim Possible episode “Stop Team Go” (Weldon 2007), in which the villain Shego ends her life of crime to become a teacher. Shego is not shown hanging up her cat suit, selecting an appropriate ensemble for her first day at work and taming her hair with a demure headband. The audience only sees the after-effects of these sartorial decisions. This is consistent with a postfeminist transformation narrative wherein “the female protagonist is neither trapped in, nor rejecting of, her femininity … [but] uses it in order to gain control over her own life” (Gilligan 2011, 168; see Brunsdon, 1997). Within this articulation of the girl typing discourse, taking up normative femininity is not represented as an imposition of the patriarchy upon a girl’s body, but a freely chosen tactic allowing her to move between identities. It could be argued that the presence or absence of a makeover montage is due to time constraints. Each episode of Ginger or Kim Possible runs to around 21 minutes without commercials. Yet transformation-centred episodes of Hey Arnold! or Recess usually incorporate a training montage, and they can run as short as 10 minutes long. The presence or absence of a training montage is attributable to the versions of femininity presented in these programmes. Narratives about adolescent, normatively feminine, heterosexualised girl characters tend to assume that “consumption and feminization” as strategies for attaining “social mobility, popularity, and … heterosexual romance” are central to the lives of average girls (Gilligan 2011, 167). Thus, “the production of oneself as image” is assumed on the part of the girls these series address, both as characters within the story and as an imagined girl audience (Stacey 1994, 217). Within this framework, showing a girl expending effort on her appearance is seen as unnecessary, since all girls are expected to be actively cultivating their images. Whether the work necessary for the transformation is presented or not, children’s television animation episodes usually represent a transformation as temporary. The narrative invariably ends with the protagonist rejecting her newly attained feminine subjectivity as repressive or elitist. Having been “fooled by falseness,” the protagonist is guided “towards a

80 greater understanding of the acceptable faces of femininity” (Gilbert 2013, 75). This narrative occurs across a number of children’s television animation series, including Daria (Eichler 1997-2002), Dave the Barbarian (Langdale 2004), Hey Arnold!, Recess and Ginger.9 The subverted transformation narrative comes with different implications, depending on the form of femininity situated as appropriate within the programme in question, and the cultural tropes the programme draws on. To begin to unpack this, I deconstruct the subverted transformation in Ginger, where the preferred form of femininity is normative and empathetic. This brings me to the Ginger episode “Deja Who?”

Episode Analysis: “Deja Who?” According to Abelman, episodic television typically follows a five-step narrative structure: status quo, pollution, guilt, redemption and purification (1998). In “Deja Who?” the “state of normalcy” which constitutes the status quo is Ginger’s conflicting desires for popularity as part of Courtney’s inner circle, and connection as Dodie and Macie’s best friend (Abelman 1998, 55). Ginger must also contend with the indignities and limitations imposed upon her by her background. The status quo is further imparted in the episode’s opening scene, where a food fight in the cafeteria immediately halts when Courtney appears. The students are so invested in her approval that they cease misbehaviour as soon as she enters the room. In this episode, the status quo is polluted by the impending visit of a senator’s son, Michael, whom Courtney wishes to date. However, Courtney becomes ill and cannot attend school, meaning that be unable to charm Michael into attending Lucky Junior High. She asks Ginger to impersonate her while she is absent. Ginger agrees as a favour to Courtney. Ginger dresses in Courtney’s clothes, straightens her normally curly hair, and performs Courtney’s daily duties of dispensing romantic advice and critiquing people’s fashion choices. Ginger’s move from obscurity to popularity excites Dodie, who tells Ginger, “Yesterday, you were in Courtney’s inner circle. Today, you are the circle! And if you’re the circle, that means Macie and I are inner circle!” As the most socially mobile of their friendship group, Ginger provides a focal point for Macie and Dodie’s understanding of their own identities as girls. People at school react positively to Ginger’s change, causing Ginger to buy into her own masquerade and truly believe she is Courtney. Macie and Dodie find themselves unable

9 In the Dave the Barbarian episode “Civilization” (Hopps 2004), teenage princess Candy makes over her tomboyish, borderline feral younger sister Fang in order to render her “civilised.” This backfires when their kingdom of Udrogoth is attacked by giant insects; Fang, usually the most competent fighter in the royal family, declines to fight until the insects have almost won, at which point her original personality returns.

81 to talk to Ginger, since Ginger is now constantly surrounded by Courtney’s circle of admirers. Dismayed by this turn of events, Macie doubts her own identity, saying aloud, “Ginger’s become Courtney. And if Ginger is Courtney, who am I? … if Ginger isn’t Ginger … I could be anyone, or no-one.” The only way Macie and Dodie can approach Ginger on the morning of the luncheon is by couching their confrontation as a request for advice. Ginger stands at her locker, fixing her hair and makeup in a small mirror, as Dodie and Macie appear behind her.

Figure 7 Macie and Dodie approach Ginger at her locker (Nickelodeon)

Dodie: “Hi, um, Courtney? We need some advice. We have this friend, but she’s turned into someone else.” Ginger: “Maybe it would help if you didn’t think of her as gone, but as away on vacation.” Dodie: “A person can’t just come back from vacation and act like she was never gone! What sort of friendship would that be?” Macie: “No friendship at all.” Macie and Dodie: begin walking away. Ginger: “No … no, that’s not true. She can come back. I mean, I can! Guys, let me come back from vacation!”

Softening, Dodie informs Ginger of another problem: Ginger’s performance has been so impeccable, Courtney now wants Ginger to fill in for her whenever she is absent. Ginger frets, “Oh, no! How am I going to prove to Courtney I’m really bad at being her?” She groans, and then brightens. “It’s all coming back to me. What Ginger would do, I mean.” In order to convince Courtney to let her be herself again, Ginger meets Michael at a highly publicised, televised luncheon sporting her signature curly hair, telling anecdotes

82 about her own chaotic family and wearing a mismatched outfit borrowed from Macie and Dodie. In a twist, Michael finds this intriguing, remarking that “Courtney” is better than he could have imagined. Ginger merely being herself is not sufficient proof of her contrition. Spotting Ginger’s friends in the crowd, Michael scoffs that he cannot wait to transfer to Lucky Junior High, in order to have the opportunity to make fun of “those girls.” Ginger upbraids him furiously, shouting, “I may be Courtney Gripling, but I’m no snob!” Ginger’s public rejection of snobbery (a core value of Courtney’s) sets Ginger free to be herself once more. This brings about purification, wherein “the program … reverts back to the status quo in which it began,” thus allowing a new series of events to begin (Abelman 1998, 56). Taking this particular episode as an example of Abelman’s five-step narrative, it could be argued that the subverted transformation results entirely from the standard episodic television plot structure. To have Ginger transition permanently into the popular group, or even impersonate Courtney on a regular basis, would change the series’ status quo to the extent that the audience could lose interest. However, the problematisation of a socially sanctioned form of femininity, which grants considerable power on those who embody it, is worthy of discussion. Why should Ginger want to become popular, and why should she change back? To answer this, it is necessary to outline the forms and functions of the traditional female transformation narrative. According to McDonald, the archetypal examples of female transformation narratives are the myth Pygmalion and the fairy tale (2010). In Ovid’s narrative poem Metamorphoses, the sculptor Pygmalion falls in love with an ivory figure, Galatea. The goddess Aphrodite brings Galatea to life, so that Galatea may become Pygmalion’s wife (Joshua 2002). In the various versions of Cinderella, the heroine is assisted by magical allies to thwart her stepmother and stepsisters and gain the love of a . McDonald argues that the primary difference between the Pygmalion and Cinderella templates is “the identity of the agent for change” (2010, 26). In the Pygmalion tradition, it is a “man himself who has wrought the things he desires,” whereas in the Cinderella narrative, “the heroine is aided by magic” (McDonald 2010, 27). These archetypal narratives both use transformation as the catalyst for a heterosexual union. This convention has continued into the present day. films which revolve around female transformation narratives include Pretty Woman (Marshall 1990), She’s (Iscove 1999), The Princess Diaries (Marshall 2001) and My Big Fat Greek Wedding (Zwick 2002). In each of these, a woman’s transition from a marginalised gender identity (such as sex worker, high school geek or “old

83 maid”) to a more socially accepted form of femininity is rewarded with the attentions of a suitable man. Transformation and heterosexual romance are thus ideologically linked. The transformation in “Deja Who?” does not have the straightforward heterosexualised motivation of Cinderella, Pygmalion or My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Ginger initially transforms so that someone else will have the opportunity to date Michael. Having never met Michael, Ginger has no particular interest in him. In her week of being Courtney, Ginger is not shown being asked out or admired by popular boys. By the time she meets Michael, Ginger is herself again in all but name. Michael is attracted to Ginger, but turns out to be unworthy of her favour. From a heterosexualised perspective, the transformation was pointless. Why is Ginger transforming, if not to attract Michael? The answer lies in Ginger’s interactions with other adolescent girls and adult authority figures. As long as she is Courtney, Ginger’s “obvious” advice for capturing the attentions of a crush is deemed “brilliant” by the popular, powerful girls who previously looked upon her with scorn. As long as she is Courtney, Principal Milty takes – and later in the episode, actively seeks – Ginger’s advice on dressing like a “power principal.” Miranda ordinarily despises Ginger. Yet when Ginger is Courtney, Miranda praises and includes her. As in the classic Cinderella narrative, the heroine is able to resolve her lack of agency by taking on a different appearance. Here, the transformation is not undertaken to attract a male love interest, but to enhance Ginger’s position among other girls her age. Yet, despite the power that being Courtney grants her, Ginger eventually rejects this opportunity. Again, examining components of traditional transformation narratives indicates Ginger’s motivation. In fairy tales premised around transformation, heroines “[are] shown to be what they really are” (Opie 1980, 14). In the Cinderella tradition, “superficial external changes are signs of an internal moral transformation” (Ferriss 2008, 41). Herein lies the reason for Ginger to reject popularity. Rather than the transformation revealing Ginger’s goodness (which was always apparent), it foregrounds the limitations imposed by her lower- middle class roots and loyalty to her uncool friends. In a supposedly post-class, neoliberal society, class should not hold someone back in the slightest. Within a neoliberal paradigm, social advancement is derived solely from individual effort “rather than from structural supports or systemic change” (Zaslow 2009, 7). However, fashionable clothes and makeup are essential for inclusion in Courtney’s popular group. As someone from a family of limited means, Ginger cannot rely on her parents to buy her expensive clothing and accessories. Due to her young age, she cannot work in order to

84 obtain the money herself. Access to Courtney’s material resources gives Ginger a taste of what it means to be privileged, but also highlights the disadvantaged position she was in previously. In all its incarnations, the transformation narrative has profoundly classed dimensions. Angela McRobbie argues that makeover programmes such as What Not to Wear produce forms of gendered class warfare, wherein the hosts hector working-class and lower-middle class women who do not possess the mastery of elegance and style of richer people, encouraging them to admit their folly by changing themselves (2009). Those who acquiesce to the recommendations of the elite are bestowed “improvement of status and life chances through the acquisition of forms of cultural and social capital” (McRobbie 2009, 128). However, admission that any aspect of subjectivity might prove a structural obstacle to social advancement is unacceptable within the culture of girlhood that “Deja Who?” emerged from. Within millennial girl power culture, girls are encouraged to be true to themselves at all costs – provided “that self concentrates on being thin, pretty, unintimidatingly smart, and boy- friendly” (Zeisler 2006, 20). Explicit calls for girls to reinvent themselves in order to access social mobility come into conflict with the girl power discourse’s call for self-acceptance. Girls are meant to elide social constraints as an expression of their intrinsic empowerment. Capitulation to any sort of outside influence weakens the thesis that girls are uniquely empowered. Moreover, Ginger’s desire to transcend her status makes her characterisation as an empathetic everygirl precarious. In the postfeminist girl power culture Ginger emerged from, girls’ friendships are typically depicted as “uncomplicated and lasting forever,” ignoring the changing dynamics and circumstances that occur over the course of a long-running friendship (Kon-yu 2013, para.1). This arguably stems from the essentialist conception of women as inherently “creative and nurturing” (Serano 2007, 333). Portraying girls’ friendships as susceptible to conflict or tension would undermine the girl power discourse’s central tenet of strength through perfect female friendship. I do not suggest that it is negative for Ginger to take Dodie and Macie’s feelings of rejection into account, apologise for abandoning them and defend them when they are publicly snubbed. However, it is significant that Ginger and her friends fixate upon a particular kind of gendered power incompatible with the friendship they are also called to define themselves by. The expectation for girls to maintain ironclad friendships is derived from the overwhelming expectation that girls must be polite, congenial and caring at all times. Even within a culture which assumes they are uniquely empowered, “girls get power

85 by who likes them, who approves, who they know, but not by their own hand” (Simmons 2002, 157). A properly feminine girl should not desire power more than connection, however strongly the culture urges her to pursue popularity. Discussing representations of bullying in teenage horror films, Berns et al. point to a tendency in youth media to depict girl characters disavowing the aspects of their subjectivity which “threatens the formation of her new identity” in order to transition into popularity (2015, 140). This usually involves abandoning loyal yet unpopular friends. This is typically portrayed as entirely necessary, but also as a betrayal. This articulation of the girl typing discourse is premised around contradiction: calling for girls to be self-interested but also to feel shame for it. The imperative for everygirl Ginger to be unselfish and democratic emphasises the importance of interdependence and consensus in girls’ lives. This recalls the dynamics of animated series targeted toward preteen girls in the 1980s (Hendershot 2004). Series such as My Little Pony (Bacal 1984-1987) and The (Denham 1985-1988) are premised around “community building through verbal conflict resolution and motivational leadership” (Perea 2015, 191). Characters’ agency was curtailed by the need to support the group’s consensus (Schine 1988). Those who roamed out of bounds would invariably run into trouble and require rescue (Perea 2011, 103). Seiter observes that in series such as My Little Pony, characters struggle with feelings of “unhappiness, suffering, and … worthlessness” after letting down the group, “a narrative motivation unheard of … in the boys’ cartoons” of the same period (1993, 151, 165). Perea notes that children who viewed these 1980s “girl cartoons” (either in their original airings, reruns or on home video) “grew up to be the teenagers and young adult women of the 1990s” (2013, 1). From girls born in the mid to late 1970s to those born in the early 1990s, it is likely that many of the viewers of programmes such as The Care Bears were still of an age to be watching cartoons in the 1990s and early to mid-2000s. Thus, the thematic similarities between the girl-focused programmes of the 1980s and series such as Ginger should be read in dialogue with one another. While 1980s programmes such as The Care Bears and My Little Pony were targeted to a younger female audience than Ginger, there is a common theme of the danger of contradicting the peer group’s values. The difference is that in Ginger, the girl characters are also encouraged to aspire to power in the school. This goal is, in many ways, incompatible with the imperative for girls to be connected to others. The use of these narratives in series geared toward young girls speaks to the socialisation processes girls are subjected to and participate in. Ginger is being encouraged to

86 do two, arguably opposite, things at once. She is made well aware of how much more exciting her life would be if she were popular, and is encouraged to pursue this subject position by people’s positive reactions to her. However, Ginger must prioritise others’ feelings and needs at all costs or it would mean there was something very wrong with her. “The message … is that while a girl should attempt to be pretty and popular, it is just as important to be nice” (Conaway 2007, 54). Since most popular girls are not represented as particularly “nice” people, this uncovers tension. Ginger makes the choice to be herself again when Dodie and Macie tell her that she cannot resume her friendship with them if she chooses to keep being Courtney. They take issue not just with what Ginger has done (ignoring them), but also with her motivation (gaining power in the school). Ginger has as good as proclaimed that she cannot be popular if she is their friend, which is not a “nice” thing to admit. Macie and Dodie may be awkward, neurotic unpopular girls, but they have knowledge of the correct ways to enact White, middle-class girlhood in the context of America at the turn of the millennium. As such, they have the moral high ground. Thus, although Ginger has a great deal of influence in the school when she masquerades as Courtney, her unpopular friends have considerable power in this interaction. This provides an example of the place of Foucauldian power relations within girl typing. Michel Foucault argues that mechanisms of power and identity intersect in all areas of people’s lives. Punishment prior to the Enlightenment involved disciplining a person’s body by inflicting pain. Due to the failure of these disciplinary modes to control people’s behaviour, the meaning of punishment changed to depriving a person of something they would ordinarily have the right to; rather than “an art of unbearable sensations,” punishment was reconceptualised as “an economy of suspended rights” (Foucault 1977, 11). For example, execution deprives a person of the right to exist, imposition of a fine deprives someone of the right to keep their money, and imprisonment deprives someone of the right to move freely through society. The body is no longer the object of punishment, but an instrument for punishment to be enacted through, rather than on. Within this formation, power emanates from all sections of a society, not simply from the top to the bottom. People lower down in society can exercise power by emulating societal values. We see this when adolescent girls assert their own heterosexuality by labelling girls in close, exclusive friendships as “unnatural” (Brown 2003, 141). By depriving Ginger of her right to think of herself as “nice,” Dodie and Macie bring her back into line. This punishment

87 “acts in depth on the heart, the thoughts, the will, the inclinations” by positioning Ginger’s actions as a threat upon who she considers herself to be (Foucault 1977, 16). When we are deciding whether someone should be punished, we are more likely to ask not just what they did, but what caused them to do it. “Certainly the ‘crimes’ and ‘offences’ on which judgment is passed are juridical objects defined by the code, but judgment is also passed on the , instincts, anomalies, infirmities, maladjustments, effects of environment and heredity” (Foucault 1977, 17). Dodie and Macie voice the observation that Ginger has “turned into someone else,” the sort of person who would abandon them. In other circumstances, the experts are people like “psychiatric or psychological experts, magistrates … educationalists [and] members of the prison service” (Foucault 1977, 21). Experts diagnose when someone has gone wrong. Dodie and Macie, as “nice” girls, are the experts in this particular interaction. “Deja Who?” lays bare the conundrum that Ginger faces throughout the series. Ginger is the only one of her primary group of friends who could potentially attain the empowered subjectivity that all three girls are chasing. Of the trio, Ginger is the most conventionally attractive, well-adjusted and able to connect with Courtney. However, to truly capitalise on these things would make Ginger a bad person, like the popular girls. The conflicted outlook on popularity “seems therefore to be about a thwarted identification” (Benjamin 1988, 111). Additionally, the assumption that, were Ginger to become as popular as Courtney, Macie and Dodie would be granted popularity as a result of their bond with her, is proven wrong. If Ginger is to become popular, she simply cannot have the best friends she currently has. Here, the transformation narrative is subverted because a permanent transition would reveal an unpleasant truth about the protagonist’s own nature, and about the multiple and contradictory demand Western culture makes of its girls: to be “passive and powerful at the same time” without these competing identities ever impacting on one another (Simmons 2002, 166). The conflict between these identities creates the fascination of the popular girl for the everygirl – and vice versa. The key to the seductiveness of this storyline lies in the power – and vitriol – heaped onto popular girls in contemporary culture. Ginger’s lack of material resources and the power they convey on a young adolescent girl is “resolved through a magical transformation that allows … her successful taking up of a higher-class position” (Gonick 2005, 49; see Spence, 1995). The subverted transformation allows the audience surrogate to experience feminised power, legitimising this exploration by vocally distancing oneself from it. This articulates “both an acute desire for an identification with what is understood as a socially highly valued

88 form of femininity, and a corresponding powerful fear of the losses such an identification might incur” (Gonick 2003, 113; see also Luttell, 1993; Urwin, 1984; Walkerdine, 1990). Ginger must ultimately reject popularity because power is ultimately incompatible with the version of White, middle-class, “nice” girlhood that everygirls represent.

Conclusion In this chapter, I have examined the relation of the normatively feminine middle-class White everygirl to the wealthy upper-class White popular girl in As Told By Ginger, a millennial Nickelodeon cartoon geared toward preteen and young adolescent girls. In Ginger, girls who have power in the school environment are represented as unable or unwilling to foster true friendships. This is a sobering prospect in a culture which holds that girls are nothing without mutually supportive friendship. However, the characters that have connection and support keenly feel the lack of access to power. The subverted transformation offers a temporary avenue to social advancement, but cannot ever be a permanent solution, since taking up power implies rejection of everything girls are meant to stand for. This chapter’s episode analysis provides several key considerations which I apply in the next chapter to Recess. “Deja Who?” represents Ginger’s everygirl identity as mutable. Ginger is able to shift from being a considerate and community-minded everygirl to a popular girl because of her Whiteness, access to a wealthier girl’s resources and willingness to entertain Courtney’s values. Ginger’s identity is not only mutable but performative. “Deja Who?” could be viewed as an exaggerated and farcical treatment of Butler’s theory of gender performativity, as Ginger comes to perform her role as popular girl “in the mode of belief” (1990, 141). Her self-making as popular girl is aided by her friends and classmates’ favourable responses to her. Finally, Ginger does not transition to popularity in isolation; she draws on Courtney’s resources and is reprimanded by Dodie and Macie for her abandonment of them. Her transformation has wide-reaching implications for the girls around her and makes a powerful statement about her loyalties, not only to her friends but to the gender constructs which are applied to girls. In the next chapter, I explore the relation of transgressive femininity to emphasised femininity in the Disney animated series Recess (Germain 1997-2003). This series is aimed at a younger audience than As Told By Ginger and has an arguably androcentric perspective. By applying the girl typing rationale to a different programme, I uncover an alternative set of perspectives on girlhood, gender, race, sexuality and class, thus showing that the normative femininity of the everygirl is not hegemonic.

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90 Chapter Four: Androcentrism and Gender Entitlement in Recess Introduction In “First Name Ashley” (Huckins 1997a), an episode of Disney’s successful animated series Recess (Germain 1997-2003), the tomboy protagonist Spinelli is forcibly made over after being required to join a clique of snobbish girly-girls, the Ashleys. The traditional female transformation narrative is again subverted, becoming cyclical rather than linear, but differs in terms of the implications of the transformation. This difference is due to the series’ stance on gender, which deviates from that in the previous chapter on Ginger. In Recess, the girl typing discourse constructs girlhood identity by positioning masculinity as the default gender expression, placing value judgments on girls in accordance with this paradigm. In this chapter, I analyse representations of tomboys and girly-girls in Recess and in other animated series, including Hey Arnold! (Bartlett 1996-2004), Dave the Barbarian (Langdale 2004) and Avatar: The Last Airbender (DiMartino 2005-2008), in order to show how girl typing can operate using androcentrism and gender entitlement. I begin this chapter by outlining the field the girl characters of Recess operate within, including distinctive features of the diegetic world of Recess, the series’ production context as a Disney programme arguably emulating Nickelodeon’s animated output in terms of its form and content, and the conceptual tools I will use to approach the tomboy/girly-girl formation. I then examine how the characters of Spinelli and the Ashleys are positioned through discourses of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class and life stage, as reflected through the ideologies of androcentrism and gender entitlement. In this chapter, I argue that the girl typing discourse constructs girls’ identities in similar ways, even across series with varying contexts and ideologies. I also show that binarised notions of girlhood identity which are such an intrinsic part of the girl typing discourse can have the effect of creating a double bind, regardless of the contexts and ideologies.

Recess (Disney, 1997-2003) I selected Recess as my main case study for this chapter for a number of reasons. Firstly, Recess was produced by a network which was diversifying its programming in order to stay competitive with rival networks, such as Nickelodeon. Secondly, Recess features a tomboy girl among its central group of protagonists. Tomboys do not appear in Ginger, since this animated series trades in discourses of normative middle-class White femininity. As a result, Recess provides a counterpoint to the previous chapter, showing the diversity (at least in

91 regards to girlhood gender expressions) among protagonists in North American children’s television animation of the 1990s and 2000s. Furthermore, the tomboy character in Recess shows the extent to which the network was trying to stay relevant in the late 1990s and mid- 2000s, considering that Disney’s female leads in film and television are primarily normatively feminine (which I discuss more a little later on). In light of these circumstances, Recess presents the opportunity to uncover the conditions which allow particular forms of female gender transgression to be represented positively in children’s television animation. In this section, I briefly outline the field in which the characters of Recess operate, including distinctive features of the diegetic world of Recess in comparison to other animated series. Recess is a North American animated series aimed at preadolescent children. The series was created by and , UCLA graduates who had previously worked producing various animated series for Nickelodeon, including Rugrats and Hey Arnold! (Klickstein 2013, Erickson 2005). Recess originally aired on ABC-TV and subsequently on the Disney Channel. The series was produced by Animation, the television animation arm of the Disney-ABC Television Group, a unit of Disney Media Networks, which is a division of . Beginning in 1990, Walt Disney Television Animation’s Disney Afternoon block broadcast some of the studio’s most well-received programming, including DuckTales (Barks 1987-1990) and Gargoyles (Paur 1994-1997). ended in 1997 after arguably derivative series such as (Humphrey 1996-1997) and Mighty Ducks (Isenberg 1996) performed disappointingly (Erickson 2005). In order to be competitive with other children’s cable networks, Walt Disney Television Animation made a renewed commitment to “serving as an independent contractor and banker for independent productions à la Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network” although the network’s name was always included in the official titles of its animated series, such as Disney’s Doug and Disney’s Recess (Perlmutter 2014, 278). As part of its focus on creator-centred animation, “program concepts themselves would, from now on, reflect the individual mindsets of their inventive producers as opposed to traditional studio group-think” (Perlmutter 2014, 278).

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Figure 8 Promotional art for Recess (Disney)

Recess revolves around six nine-year-old fourth graders at the suburban Third Street School: timid Gus, athlete Vince, gentle giant Mikey, wily T.J., tomboy Spinelli and brainy Gretchen, shown clockwise from top left in Figure 8. The playground at Third Street School is a society unto itself, with its own laws and social structures. One example is the rule that the most recent transfer student is always addressed only as “New Kid,” and ostracised socially (Ansolabehere 1997). King Bob, a sixth-grader who surveys his kingdom from a throne atop the play equipment, is responsible for upholding playground laws. He is bombastic but respected by the other children, even as he upholds laws that make their lives difficult. Only boys are ever seen in the position of playground ruler. Bob refers to prior kings Al, Wally and Chuck, and passes down his crown to a boy named Freddy before his departure for junior high school. In the one-off episodes “King Gus” (Gaffney 1997) and “Prince Randall” (Illes 2001), male regular characters briefly assume rulership over the playground. There is no implication that a girl has ever occupied the throne, or that anyone expects one to in the future. None of the characters ever question this system. While Third Street School’s system of playground royalty remains steadfastly male, there is one occasion in which a group of girls attempts to govern through other means. In the episode “The Ratings Game” (Wernick 2000), the Ashleys institute a new system of clique organisation, where all Third Street students are given a number score out of ten (based on their popularity) and may only associate with others of the same number. This proves disastrous, splitting up friendship groups and causing those with low scores to be shunned by others. T.J., the male protagonist, immediately appeals to King Bob to overrule the Ashleys,

93 but King Bob is too flattered by his own score of ten to abolish the ratings system. In this episode, the boy protagonist responds to being controlled by girls by trying to reinstitute a system of control by boys. Third Street School students wholeheartedly accept Bob as their king, but the girly-girls’ attempts to exert power are considered sinister. In this way, it is plain to see that access to power in Recess is gendered. Within this field, characters’ inclusion depends on their ability to play with boys. In films, television, games and toys targeted to children, most male central characters are normatively masculine, wearing short hair and jeans, enjoying video games or comic books, and being uninterested in schoolwork (Brown 2009, Wooden 2014). While girls (such as Spinelli and Gretchen) and gender-atypical boys (such as Gus and Mikey) are included in the core group, the group spends each recess doing activities typically gendered masculine in children’s television animation, such as playing sports, pulling pranks and enacting schemes. In North American children’s television animation, boy characters who enjoy typically feminine pastimes like poetry or dancing are rarely central protagonists in the way that the charismatic alpha boy T.J. is. In this way, normative masculinity is presented as a prerequisite for mastery over one’s surroundings. Although it is acceptable for girls and feminine boys within this discursive field to partake in activities perceived as masculine, “by and large, there is no transfer the other way” (Kimmel 2000, 126). Characters who are afforded respect within their narratives, and a point of view seen as legitimate, must have masculine gender expressions. Within this field, emphasised femininity is seen as shameful or strange in boys and girls alike. In the episode “Dance Lessons” (Walsh 1999), Spinelli is sent to ballet class as a punishment for fighting. Her friend Mikey, a physically large and sensitive boy, is also part of the class, and is ecstatic at the prospect of being Spinelli’s dance partner in an upcoming recital. Spinelli must overcome her embarrassment regarding dancing in public to avoid letting Mikey down. The lesson of the episode is not that ballet is not “,” but that sticking by one’s friends is important. The friend in question happens to be a boy – a gender- transgressive boy, but a boy nonetheless. The catty, shrill-voiced girls at the ballet class are not humanised by their love for dance, but exist merely to provide Spinelli with a reason not to want to attend the class. In this episode, dance is not just for girly-girls … although the presence of girly-girls is a valid reason not to want to dance. Recess has notable thematic and artistic similarities to Hey Arnold!, an earlier Nickelodeon series. Aside from having creators who worked on both series, they also have cast members in common: Anndi McAfee and Francesca Marie Smith, who played Phoebe

94 and Helga on Hey Arnold!, voice Ashley Armbruster and Ashley Boulet respectively. Toran Caudell, one of the child actors who voiced the title character in Hey Arnold! also provides vocals for King Bob. Both series cast children to voice the child characters, rather than adult women, which is the more common choice in animation. Hey Arnold! and Recess use many of the same character archetypes, including the streetwise African-American boy, the girl geek and the tough tomboy. Both series also use similar plots, such as in the Arnold! episode “Ms. Perfect” (Viksten 1997) and the Recess episode “Here Comes Mr. Perfect” (Birnbach 2000), both of which feature a “perfect” new student being disliked by their classmates. Spinelli in particular has many similarities to the Hey Arnold! character Helga, a tomboy with a tortured crush on the series’ title character, Arnold. Both girls are nine years old, forthright and intelligent, enjoy playing sports and watching wrestling, have hidden artistic sides and wear their hair in pigtails.10 They are also united in their distrust and dislike of girly-girls. Helga despises her high-achieving, college-aged older sister Olga, as well as Arnold’s love interests, Ruth and Lila, for being what she cannot be, and/or being the objects of Arnold’s affections. However, her antipathy for other girls is generally completely one- sided. Ruth and Lila are unaware of Helga’s loathing, and Olga wishes that she could be closer to her “baby sister” Helga. Helga’s dislike of girly-girls is shown to stem from her own feelings of inadequacy and insecurity. She has been neglected by her parents and made to feel both unfeminine and unworthy, especially in comparison to Olga. Helga has internalised the idea that having feelings is a sign of weakness which she must conceal. In Recess, there is less complexity to the relationship between the tomboy and the girly-girls. Spinelli is contemptuous toward the Ashleys because they are feminine bullies, whereas the Ashleys loathe Spinelli for being uncouth and unfeminine. There are two girl lead characters in Recess: Spinelli and Gretchen, a gangly, kind and intelligent girl geek. The girly-girl Ashleys appear mainly as antagonists. Due to time and space constraints, I concentrate mainly on Spinelli and the Ashleys, rather than on Gretchen. This might be seen as an effort to reinscribe or reify a distinction between masculinity and femininity by focusing only on the most stereotypically masculine and feminine characters. However, my aim here is simply to show the difference between the discursive formation in

10 In the episode “Mama’s Girl” (Drop 1998), it is revealed that Spinelli regularly gets high marks on her book reports. Her class teacher privately congratulates her for the “sensitivity” of her writing. Spinelli chooses to conceal this from her friends because good grades and a sensitive outlook on literature might contradict her tough image. Furthermore, in the episode “Spinelli’s Masterpiece” (Hamill 2000), she creates a chalk drawing on the asphalt in the playground whose beauty causes her friends to try and preserve it at all costs. Like the earlier character Helga, Spinelli’s literary and artistic talents are intended to juxtapose her outward aggression.

95 Recess, and the one in Ginger. In Ginger, the assumption is that girls want to be normatively feminine. Popular girls such as Courtney and Miranda flout acceptable femininity by being self-interested and excessive in their tastes. However, these attributes are seen as admirable by the other girl characters, even as they learn over and over that popularity is not what they should aspire to. In Recess, the assumption is that sympathetic girls should not want to be overtly feminine. The Ashleys flout Recess’ expectation for acceptable girlhood by being cliquish, insular, homosocial, fashion-conscious and power-hungry. In light of the fact that Disney created the series, Recess’ prizing of masculinity is noteworthy. The Walt Disney Company’s investment in discourses of normative femininity has been the topic of much critical and academic debate (Brooks 2008, Giroux 1999, Amador 2016, Condis 2015, Zipes 2008, Do Rozario 2004, Murphy 2008b). The corporation has played a significant role in the reproduction and dissemination of discourses of femininity and girlhood for the better part of a century (Davis 2006, Craven 2016, Blue 2016, 2013, Cheu 2008, Hains 2014). Typical criticisms of Disney’s films and merchandise are that “beauty and femininity are of utmost importance” (Williams 2010, 202) to its female characters, who often “remain incomplete without a stable heterosexual romance” (Charlebois 2011, 106). While the company has copyright ownership of hundreds of female characters, the most normatively feminine characters (such as the Disney and Disney Princesses) tend to be the most commercially successful and the most heavily marketed, with their personalities and appearances softened and prettified for maximum appeal (Child 2013, McKinstry 2013). With these factors in mind, it is striking that Disney’s television animation division created a character who was depicted as being opposed to the version of girlhood that the Disney company had been promoting for decades. It shows the extent to which Disney was diversifying in the 1990s, in order to stay competitive with Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network and Kids’ WB. The representation of Spinelli as central female character is arguably achieved through a perspective on normative femininity which positions masculinity as the default or “natural” gender, projecting overwhelmingly negative understandings onto “girly” symbols and practices. Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Julia Serano offer conceptual tools with which to understand this formation. I will now explain their concepts of androcentrism and gender entitlement, the better to position my forthcoming discussions of Spinelli and the Ashleys. The term “androcentrism” was introduced by the American writer and social reformer Charlotte Perkins Gilman in her feminist work The Man-Made World: or, Our Androcentric Culture (1911). According to Gilman, masculine patterns of life and masculine mindsets are

96 positioned as universal, while female ones are marginalised and considered deviant. Androcentric ways of thinking have several profound implications. The first is masculinity as the default mode of being. A basic example is the use of the words “man” or “mankind” to denote all of humanity (Dugger 1996, 29). In studies of literature and culture, male authors and directors have been considered more able to write about “the fundamental problems of the human condition” than female authors, whose perspectives are more likely to be considered subjective (Pippin 2010, 17). Androcentrism can also be seen in the tendency in medical studies to examine exclusively male test subjects, due to the belief that women’s hormonal fluctuations are an aberration which “ruin the data” (Brizendene 2011, 25). These examples demonstrate that, within androcentric thinking, “males are taken to be the normal type or the exemplar, while to the extent that they differ from the male type, females are invisible” (Lloyd 2005, 233). Masculinity is positioned as a natural, neutral and intrinsic state, which has the effect of “defining women in terms of their sex and extolling men as the bearers of a body-transcendent universal personhood” (Butler 1990, 9). From this point, it is relatively easy for masculinity to be positioned as not only the default, but as morally superior. The androcentric understanding of femininity as necessarily contrived (and symptomatic of the kind of personality which would be quite happy being inauthentic) demonstrates what the transgender feminist activist Julia Serano terms gender entitlement: the privileging of one’s own perspective of other people’s genders over the way those people understand themselves (2007, 2013). Serano details the assumptions that play into gender entitlement:

(1) femininity is not a natural form of expression, but rather one that is socially imposed; (2) most women are “duped” into believing that their femininity arises intrinsically rather than due to extrinsic forces such as socialization or social constructs; (3) people who are “in the know” recognize that gender expression is artificial and easy malleable, and thus they can purposefully adopt a more radical, antisexist gender expression (e.g. androgyny, drag, etc.); and (4) because feminine women choose not to adopt these supposedly radical, antisexist gender expressions, they may be seen as enabling sexism and thus collaborating in their own oppression (2007, 337).

While Serano principally uses gender entitlement in discussions of adult women’s experience of their gender, the concept of gender entitlement also has profound implications for

97 analysing the representation of girls in media. As an outgoing and physically active girl, Spinelli’s positive qualities “come at the expense of other girls” who are depicted as “ditsy, passive, mean and shallow” (Brown 2003, 23). Arguably, androcentrism and gender entitlement in Disney’s Recess results from efforts to compete with Nickelodeon by aping the themes, styling and characters of the successful Nicktoons. The diegetic world of Recess is organised around an androcentric understanding of masculinity as the default gender. Within this field, children who exhibit traits and enjoy pastimes gendered masculine are positioned as more suited to leadership. The androcentrism which Disney drew upon to compete with Nickelodeon informs gender entitlement. Accordingly, these concepts provide appropriate frameworks for examining the representation of tomboys and girly-girls in Recess.

Tomboys From the mid-1990s to the early 2000s, tomboy characters became more visible in North American children’s television animation, appearing in Hey Arnold! (Bartlett 1996-2004), Arthur (Brown 1996-present), The Powerpuff Girls (McCracken 1998-2004), Angela Anaconda (Rose 1999-2002), Mike, Lu & Og (Shindel 1999-2001), Jackie Chan Adventures (Rogers 2000-2005), Dave the Barbarian (Langdale 2004) and Avatar: The Last Airbender (DiMartino 2005-2008). In these series, tomboys engage in behaviours which have traditionally been gendered masculine, such as physical fighting, playing pranks, making irreverent jokes, using profanity, playing contact sports and identifying with male heroes. However, textbook definitions of the tomboy are insufficient to understand Spinelli’s role within the girl typing discourse. Spinelli is not only a girl who enjoys sports and fighting. Spinelli is prepubescent, heterosexual, working-class, Italian-American and positioned as an exception to the rules of both boyhood and girlhood. In this section, I explore how Spinelli’s tomboyism is represented through her sexuality, class, ethnicity and gender, in order to better understand the ideologies that shape Spinelli’s representation in Recess, and to situate the character within a socio-cultural context.

98

Figure 9 Promotional art of Spinelli (Disney)

In Recess, Spinelli engages in numerous behaviours consistent with the popular understanding of the tomboy. In the grand tradition of fictional tomboys such as Louisa May Alcott’s Jo March and Carson McCullers’ Frankie Adams, Spinelli is normally addressed by a gender-neutral name, in this case her surname. In the episode “The Beauty Contest” (Bideau 1999), Spinelli is said to fight anyone who dares call her “the G word” – which, depending on her mood, is either “girl” or “guy”. This dislike of her female first name and resistance to being labelled as a boy or a girl could facilitate a queer reading of Spinelli’s character. In a possible attempt to pre-empt queer readings, nine-year-old Spinelli is represented as precociously heterosexual, much like her predecessor Helga in Hey Arnold! In the episode “Parents’ Night” (Huckins 1997b), Spinelli’s mother embarrasses her by loudly mentioning to Spinelli’s father that T.J. is “the one our little honey-bunch has the crush on.” In the episode “The Experiment” (Kite 1997), T.J. and Spinelli’s classmates persuade them to kiss, which the two are implied to enjoy. In the episode “That Stinking Feeling” (Einbinder 1999), Spinelli gets her first conscious crush (on an older boy, Johnny) and wrestles with the indignity of being labelled a “boy-liker.” Heterosexuality is portrayed as incongruous with tomboy identity, but not as incompatible with it. In any case, while girl characters like Spinelli and Helga do experience heterosexual attraction prior to the onset of the physical changes that come with puberty, their performances of heterosexuality tend to align with the expectations for appropriately heterosexual pubescent girls and adult women. Both girls direct the majority of her romantic feelings toward a singular male love interest, rather than developing crushes on a number of boys or worshipping media heartthrobs in a way that male viewers could find off-putting. These tomboys’ love interests are White boys of the same age as them, which is in line with a conception of interracial relationships as taboo. Their crushes remain largely unspoken and unrequited, so that the possibility of sexual experimentation

99 remains far in the characters’ futures. They do not typically use cosmetics and designer clothing to try and appeal to their crushes. Finally, while their sexualities are not left up to audience interpretation, they are at an age in which they understand that romantic feelings should not be spoken about openly if they wish to avoid teasing. While Spinelli’s sexuality is represented as normative, foreclosing any possibility of queerness, her class is shown as non-normative and therefore as a possible explanation for why she behaves the way she does. Since the 1970s, North American film and television has typically represented tomboyism as an adaptation to a difficult, dysfunctional or non- normative home life. The rising divorce rate in America during the late 1970s and early 1980s was reflected in the representation of tomboys as the children of broken homes. It was assumed that working and/or divorced parents could not supply adequate parental care and support, resulting in more self-sufficient daughters who “did not have the luxury of being femininely passive, delicate and naïve” (Abate 2008, 197). In Recess, Spinelli’s parents are happily married, and yet her gender expression is implied to have its roots in aspects of her home life, specifically her class background. The Spinelli family engages in pastimes stereotypically associated with working-class people, such as watching television and following (Henry 2012b, 144). The Spinellis have at least one son, who Spinelli mentions is currently studying auto repair in prison (Kramer 1998). They are shown to have a large extended family, with various relatives who have nicknames stereotypically associated with working-class people, such as Vito, Manny, Gordo and Angie. The size of their family, their interests in and wrestling and son in prison learning a blue-collar trade are used to signify that the Spinelli family are solidly working-class. The representation of Spinelli’s class background is significant, given that the working class are more likely than the middle- or upper- classes to be read as excessively masculine (Halberstam 1998, 2). This informs the cultural idea that working- class communities regard tomboyism favourably or at least neutrally (Cahn 1994). For hundreds of years, working-class women have been regarded as less feminine than their middle- or upper-class counterparts (Dabhoiwala 2012, Williamson 2014). In this way, Spinelli’s gender expression is reflected through, and attributed to, her class.11

11 Working-class or impoverished status is occasionally used to inspire pity for a formerly despised, normatively feminine girl. In “Ms. Perfect” (Viksten 1997), an episode of the Nickelodeon series Hey Arnold!, tomboy protagonist Helga and her clique of girl friends are threatened by the arrival of new girl Lila, who effortlessly outdoes them in every respect. The girls publicly humiliate her in order to punish her for making them feel inferior. Wanting to gloat at her misery, they volunteer to take Lila’s homework to her when she is absent from school. They feel remorse for their actions when they find Lila living in a rundown apartment with her jobless, apparently single father, with nothing to eat but tinned beans. While Lila is normatively feminine, in

100 Spinelli’s tomboyism is also reflected through her culture and ethnicity. Spinelli’s full name is Ashley Funicello Spinelli. Spinelli’s full name is a reference to the wholesome Italian-American singer-actress Annette Funicello, who began her career as a child performer on The Club, a Disney variety programme in the 1950s (Folkins 2008). That Spinelli’s full name includes two Italian surnames implies that Spinelli is of Italian ancestry on both sides. Her father is paunchy, hirsute and overweight, and has heavy black eyebrows and a moustache. Spinelli’s mother has a flip hairdo and pink cat’s eye glasses, drawing associations of Italian-Americans with bygone times and migrant narratives. The representation of Spinelli’s parents as dark-haired, comparatively uneducated and interested in combat sports such as wrestling is in line with a filmic tradition of representing Italian- Americans which dates back to silent cinema (Benshoff 2009, 61).12 Examining her tomboyism through this lens, Spinelli’s quick temper is implicitly attributed to a popular understanding of Americanised Italianate masculinity as demanding swift retribution for any slight on familial or personal honour (Gardaphé 2014). Spinelli’s propensity for fighting is gendered masculine and thus represented as somewhat unusual in a nine-year-old girl. However, it is also ascribed to her working-class, Italian-American background, through an understanding that physicality and confrontation are accepted, or, indeed, promoted in her culture. Tomboyism is a gendered subject position. In Recess and in the North American animated series examined in this thesis, tomboy subjectivity is represented as opposed to normative girlhood and thereby exceptional. In this way, tomboys recall the everygirls of the previous chapter, who are represented as the arbiter of normative girlhood and thereby exceptional. However, this is one of the few major similarities between these two girl types. Where the everygirl’s gender identity is premised on connection and community, tomboy narratives typically involve isolation from other girls.13 Describing tomboy narratives in popular culture, McEwen observes: this instance her (temporarily) impoverished home life is used as an explanation for her upbeat, uncomplaining nature, and in order to evoke sympathy from the girl characters. Similarly, in the final episode of As Told By Ginger, popular girl Courtney’s family loses its vast fortune when her father is arrested for insider trading (Kapnek 2004b). Courtney’s most devastating impetus for change is depicted in the final scenes of the series finale, so the series does not explore how she adjusts to the newfound limitations. However, it is implied that Courtney will re-evaluate her priorities and become a more thoughtful, considerate person as a result of losing her wealth. 12 In the twist ending of the Recess episode “Parents’ Night” (Huckins 1997b), Spinelli’s parents are revealed to be secret agents, but this is not an ongoing storyline and does not contribute significantly to their characterisation. 13 A Freudian reading of animated prepubescent tomboys such as Spinelli, Helga and Francine would place them in the “latency period” of development, typified by “the dissolution of the Oedipus complex, the creation

101 The range of such stories was enormous, from the girls who always wanted to be boys, to the girls who wanted not to be girls as “girl” was then understood, to the girls who despised all such distinctions and wanted simply to be free and genderless. For some solitude was crucial. … For others, company was an integral part of the dream. But in almost all cases, such company was male. The notion that another girl might also be a tomboy seemed almost unimaginable (1997, xii, emphasis in original).

In accordance with the idea that tomboys are necessarily an exception to the status quo of normative girlhood, Spinelli’s best female friend is geeky Gretchen, who is represented as a well-behaved, normatively feminine girl in contrast to Spinelli. This is apparent in the episode “More Like Gretchen” (Jennett 2000), in which Spinelli’s parents are charmed by Gretchen’s good manners and intellect, causing Spinelli to become resentful of her friend. While there are several other girls at Third Street School who could be considered tomboys, such as the recurring characters Swinger Girl, Upside-Down Girl and the bully Kurst the Worst, the possibility of a group of tomboy girls playing together remains unexplored within the series. Swinger Girl and Upside-Down Girl play mostly alone, and Kurst plays with a group of other bullies who number four boys to two girls. Tomboys like Spinelli are positioned as deriving their identities from being isolated and misunderstood, even within a group of supportive friends. Spinelli is often shown as being angry and confrontational. This is significant, given that the normatively feminine everygirls in series such as Ginger so rarely express negative emotions. Scenes where Spinelli threatens other children physically are played for comedy, rather than drama. However, the comedy does not arise from the spectacle of a nine-year-old girl foolishly believing she could actually intimidate the people around her, but from her shouting, colourful language, and the fear shown by the individual who has crossed her. However, despite her propensity for fighting, Spinelli is never positioned as a bully, unlike the majority of boy characters in children’s television animation series who threaten their

or consolidation of the superego and the erection of ethical and aesthetic barriers in the ego” (Freud 1926, 114). In a practical sense, the latency period is one in which a child’s sexuality lies dormant. Within a Freudian understanding of child psychology, this would account for the differences in how prepubescent tomboys and young adolescent everygirls in series such as Kim Possible and As Told By Ginger regard normative femininity. However, a latency argument does not account for every aspect of tomboy subjectivity. For example, it fails to explain tomboy characters’ spurning of same-sex friendships. In reality, the latency period is commonly understood as a life stage in which children often abandon the “cross-sex friendships” of toddlerhood and early childhood, as “each sex professes disgust for the other” (Levine 2014, 31). In children’s television animation of the 1990s and 2000s, tomboy characters usually clash with other girls and prioritise boys. Freudian psychology provides some context, but not a wholesale explanation.

102 classmates with violence. Indeed, boy bullies such as Harold in Hey Arnold! and Binky in Arthur (1996-present) tend to start out as generic thugs and are later softened to facilitate their inclusion in the core group of characters. Tomboy characters such as Spinelli, Helga, Buttercup in The Powerpuff Girls (1998-2004), Fang in Dave the Barbarian (2004) and Toph in Avatar: The Last Airbender (DiMartino 2005-2008) remain boisterous and confrontational throughout their respective series, indicating that their propensity for fighting does not constitute inappropriate aggression, but an acceptable mode of expression. Following Adams, I propose that the spectacle of girl characters venting their anger physically allows them “the opportunity to engage in a formal system of persuasion, invincibility, and power, thus gaining entrance into a spiritual and psychological realm usually reserved for males” (2005, 107). According to Simone de Beauvoir, when men vent their physical aggression, this is seen as “the authentic proof of … [his] loyalty to himself, to his passions, to his own will” (1953, 331). Spinelli is willing to fight not just to defend others, but also on her own behalf. Physically expressing her anger shows that her anger exists, a powerful statement in a culture wherein girls are encouraged to conceal their negative feelings at all costs. There exists an idea that tomboy characters are girls who want to be, or are pretending to be, boys (Ludwig 2007, 92). Much of the literature on tomboys reproduces these assumptions by positioning tomboyism as cross-gender identification or androgyny (Burn 1996, Plumb 1984). It is unsurprising that tough girls are typically perceived to be acting “like boys,” given how mass culture positions toughness as a male trait. Hills proposes that this idea of active, heroic females as figurative men arises from psychoanalytic models which theorize sexual difference around linked binary oppositions (1999). Since much of the pioneering feminist work in film studies has involved applying psychoanalytic models, this can run into the pitfalls of that particular discipline: namely, the conceptualisation of sexual difference as premised entirely around binary oppositions, which “necessarily position normative female subjectivity as passive or in terms of lack” (Brown 2004, 51). Examining tomboy characters from this standpoint tends to position them as “figuratively male” (Hills 1999). Miller and Swift ask:

But why must a girl be defined in terms of something she is not – namely, a boy? Where is the word that would bring to mind a lively spirited girl without the subliminal implication of imitation or penis envy? Most girls who like

103 sports and the out-of-doors or who have intellectual or mechanical abilities are not trying to be boys. They are trying to be themselves (1976, 71).

Additionally, the idea that tomboys should not be thought of as girls can imply that it is somehow unnatural for girls to “be physically engaged with their bodies, to move and play in the outdoors, to be involved in sports, to be competitive, to be loud and boisterous, and to have cross-gender friends” (Legge 2011, 28). For Halberstam, “[t]omboyism tends to be associated with a ‘natural’ desire for the greater freedoms and mobilities enjoyed by boys” (1998, 6). How, then, can we analyse gendered representation of Spinelli, and similar girl characters, without falling into the trap of thinking of her as a boy? I argue that Spinelli should be thought of not as a girl who wants to be a boy, but as a girl who identifies more with the aspects of her gender which could be considered masculine. Discussing cinematic action heroines, Jeffrey A. Brown argues for an interpretative strategy “that does not deny the engendered elements of these traits but incorporates them into a solitary figure that effectively critiques the very notion of stable gender identities” (2004, 49). Considering the ways that tomboys have been used to both reinscribe or challenge gender norms, it becomes clear that to dismiss the tomboy as phallic or “embrace them uncritically as liberatory” is insufficient (Owen 2007, 56). Rather, as Sturken argues in her discussion of the politics of memory, the tomboy girl type should be viewed as a union of seemingly contradictory traits (1997). This is where the girly-girl – portrayed as just a singular emphasised femininity in a single body, and thus as the tomboy’s natural adversary – enters the frame.

Girly-Girls In this section, I explore how the girl typing discourse constructs the girly-girl identities of the Ashleys through discourses of gender, race, class and radical otherness. The girly-girl type has many superficial similarities to the popular girls of the previous chapter, but due to Recess’ differing perspective on girlhood, the Ashleys become the collective feminine “other.” This is because the characters are at a prepubescent life stage inhabiting a field organised around androcentrism, rather than popularity. With this in mind, I show how context, ideology and the animation medium influence the representation of the Ashleys’ gendered subjectivity as girly-girls. Like the everygirl-popular girl formation in Ginger, the tomboy and girly-girl derive the meaning of their own girlhoods from their differences to one another. Almost all of the

104 tomboys mentioned thus far in this chapter are contrasted with a more feminine girl: Helga of Hey Arnold! has her sister Olga and romantic rivals Ruth and Lila, Francine of Arthur has her friend Muffy, Michelanne “Mike” Mazinsky in Mike, Lu & Og has the island princess Lu, Angela in Angela Anaconda has her enemy Nanette, Buttercup of The Powerpuff Girls has her sisters Blossom and Bubbles, Fang in Dave the Barbarian has her sister Candy, and Toph in Avatar has her friend Katara. While characters like Blossom, Bubbles and Katara are depicted as dynamic and competent heroes, most of the other girly-girl characters have much in common with the socially powerful yet narratively maligned popular girls discussed in the previous chapter. One similarity between popular girls and girly-girls is the emphasis on appearance. For example, Duits claims that girly-girls could be described as having a “very strong attachment to everything traditionally coded as feminine,” including the colour pink, a propensity for being well-groomed, a preference for skirts and dresses, a tendency to giggle and an interest in clothing and soap operas (Duits 2008, 141). Girly-girls’ adherence to normative gender grants them social acceptance. Participants in Legge’s study described girly-girls as “popular,” as “fitting in,” and as belonging to “the in-crowd” (2011, 215). Finally, like the popular girls in the previous chapter, girly-girls are characterised through an assumed “lack of personality or intelligence” (Holland 2013, 6; see Driscoll 1999).

Figure 10 Ashley A, Ashley B, Ashley Q and Ashley T, L-R (Disney)

Examined through this lens, the girly-girl characters in Recess have many similarities to the popular girls of the previous chapter. The Ashleys are a clique of nine-year-old girls who attend Third Street School. The leader is Ashley Armbruster, a White, blonde girl who dresses in pink and grey. She is flanked by Ashley Boulet (African-American, dressed in yellow and white), Ashley Quinlan (White and red-haired, dressed in blue, black and white) and Ashley Tomassian (Armenian-American, dressed in shades of green). All four girls are

105 rich, spoiled and shallow. They spend much of their time gossiping and scheming inside their lavish underground clubhouse, built underneath a tyre pile in the Third Street School playground. The interior of the clubhouse has cream walls with pink and gold drapery everywhere, deep red carpets, framed portraits on the walls and chintz sofas. Although the series never shows the Ashleys’ homes, it is reasonable to imagine that their home surroundings are similar to the interior of their clubhouse. The implication of wealth is further impressed by the Ashleys’ references to being spoiled by their parents. In the episode “Outcast Ashley” (Biddle 1999), when informed that the earth revolves around the sun, Ashley A is bemused: “Daddy always said the world revolved around me.” Skipping in the playground in the episode “Gretchen and the Secret of Yo” (Biddle 1998), the Ashleys chant, “In the shopping mall I stand, Daddy’s charge card in my hand! If some shoes should catch my eye, how many of them can I buy?” The Ashleys’ pampered and privileged existence is comparable to characters such as Courtney Gripling in Ginger. However, there are differences between the girly-girl and popular girl types, which necessitate specifying two distinct types. First and foremost, the Ashleys (and most other characters who are situated as girly-girls) are not teenagers, but prepubescent. According to Legge, there is less of a cultural tendency to refer to adolescent girls as “girly,” since emphasised femininity is considered the default gender expression for female teenagers (2011, 215). While popular girls and girly-girls are both self-involved, their relation to the people around them – and the people in their social group – differs. In Ginger, the majority of characters treat Courtney Gripling with awed deference. The Ashleys, by contrast, are viewed with disdain and suspicion by Spinelli and her friends. The politics of the Ashleys’ clique also differ from the representation of Courtney’s group of popular girls. Although Ashley A is ostensibly the leader, the other Ashleys do not vie for her attention and approval. She does not hand down the law to them, and her fellow Ashleys band together with her out of shared interests and priorities. Ashley A is also the only one who is depicted suffering punishment for flouting the rules of the clique. In the episode “Outcast Ashley,” Ashley A is ostracised from the group for failing to remember Purple Day, the anniversary of the four Ashleys’ first meeting in preschool. Ashley A is not deposed by an interloper or overthrown by one of the other Ashleys, but excluded by popular vote. Discussing Ashley A, it is thus crucial to remember that she is only nominally their leader, in the sense that she is the most vocal, and the one most often contrasted with Spinelli. Certainly, she is never addressed or referred to as the Ashleys’ “leader” within the series. The other Ashleys agree with her not out of obligation or a desire to impress her, but out of genuine consensus.

106 Regardless of whether she functions as the Ashleys’ leader, the fact that the blonde, White girly-girl dressed in pink is the most vocal member and the Ashley who is most often placed in direct opposition to brunette, Italian-American tomboy Spinelli is significant. In animation, hair colour is often used as shorthand for personality type, but also as a way to gender characters. This aesthetic representation is in line with a “classic blonde/brunette opposition so often used to figure sexual difference in the face of its apparent absence” (Merck 2004, 56). Thus, when two girl characters face off against each other, brunette is typically used as shorthand for “boy,” whereas blondeness signifies “girl.” Of all the Ashleys, blonde Ashley A is therefore the ultimate example of girliness, which is why she is situated in opposition to Spinelli.

Figure 11 Screen capture from the Recess episode “The Beauty Contest” (Disney)

Character designs nonetheless draw a comparison between Spinelli and the Ashleys, tying them together. Like the Ashleys, Spinelli is of medium height, thin and conventionally pretty. Her combination of black hair and olive skin is unseen in the Ashleys’ clique (which otherwise draws on the “one in each colour” trope), constantly threatening that she will be subsumed into the group by being physically like and unlike the Ashleys, in order to fulfil the role of “Ashley S,” “the one with the black hair and olive skin”. Figure 11 shows that when Spinelli is dressed and styled similarly to the Ashleys, she looks like she is part of their clique. By virtue of her physicality, Spinelli fits in much more easily with the Ashleys than, for example, Gretchen would. Spinelli is so easily transformed into a beautiful and feminine girl that she must constantly be on her guard to prevent this. In Ginger, Courtney Gripling’s mastery of clothing, hair and makeup is depicted as a highly valued skill set which Ginger and her friends seek to emulate, whereas the Ashleys’ knowledge of feminine beauty rituals is represented as contemptible. Spinelli often refers derogatively to the Ashleys as “girlies” or “powderpuffs.” Having these views articulated by

107 a sympathetic and “cool” character such as Spinelli could thus be seen as a rejection of the “late modern demand for girls to (want to) be fashionable” (Driscoll 2002, 245). However, according to Douglas, girls and women are made well aware that beauty skills and fashion savvy are essential for inclusion, “yet they also see it ridiculed as a frivolous and useless knowledge base” (2010, 123). Reflecting on her own experiences, Douglas recalls the double bind this association of image-consciousness with vanity created:

We learned … that we had to scrutinize ourselves all the time, identify our many imperfections, and learn to eliminate or disguise them, otherwise no one would ever love us. But we also learned that we had to be highly secretive about doing this: we couldn’t appear to be obsessed with our appearance, for then no one would love us either (1994, 31, emphasis in original).

The belief in the triviality of fashion may be attributed to an overwhelming cultural idea that form and content are separable, and that form is relatively unimportant (Barnard 2014, 15). However, the importance of conventional attractiveness for women and girls is reinscribed in other ways. Discussing the contemporary cultural phenomenon of “real beauty,” articulated through a supposed desire to “see the woman underneath the makeup,” West argues that this does not amount to a desire to “see your leg stubble and greasy bangs” but a warning to conceal the act of concealment, because “the maintenance spoils the fantasy” (2012; para.4). Blank agrees, asserting that since female beauty is expected to be simultaneously “natural” and representative of a woman’s character, “all the hours, effort, and money she spent on her appearance had to be, by general agreement, invisible” (2012, 108). The cumulative effect of these differences between popular girls and girly-girls is that, within girl typing discourses premised around emphasised femininity, the popular girls’ excess and bombast is positioned as aspirational for the other girl characters, including the everygirl whose perspective the audience is expected to share. By contrast, within girl typing discourses which excoriate normative femininity, a girly-girl character who displays many of the same behaviours as the vaunted popular girl will be positioned as someone to look down on. In Recess, the Ashleys’ approval is positioned as a badge of shame for Spinelli. For example, in the episode “That Stinking Feeling” (Einbinder 1999), Spinelli struggles to reconcile her first conscious crush on a boy with her tough image. The Ashleys respond by showing Spinelli pinups of their various heartthrobs, assuming that she will enjoy this since she is a now a “boy-liker,” as they are. They admittedly do this in their usual insensitive way, but the idea that other girls have crushes too is not comforting to Spinelli, who exits their

108 clubhouse muttering, “Lousy, rotten Ashleys and their lousy, rotten wall of boys!” Similarly, in the episode “The Beauty Contest” (Bideau 1999), the Ashleys enter Spinelli in a pageant as a prank. Spinelli is determined to beat them at their own game by mastering the trappings of normative femininity – until she realises she is becoming “just like them.” This is an odd conclusion for her to come to, as Spinelli has not bullied or excluded anyone. She is her usual gruff, quick-tempered self – with some knowledge of feminine beauty practices. However, the fact that she is availing herself of the Ashleys’ knowledge is sufficient reason to fear becoming a contemptible person. The girly-girl moniker is thereby constructed as pejorative. Girly-girls are invoked as straw figures to articulate resentment and bewilderment regarding the imperative for girls to emphasise their femininity. Holland argues that cultural representations of hyperfeminine girls and women draw on “vague but extreme representations of the girly-girl, building an almost fantasy figure, one that most real women would find hard to maintain” (2013, 10). For instance, a participant in one study describes a girly-girl as one who “would prefer to spend money on her hair and make-up than buying food” (Holland 2013, 8). While a certain amount of hyperbole is likely being knowingly employed by the respondent, this response nonetheless invokes the image of a girl who places a greater importance on maintaining her image than on basic human needs. The positioning of girly-girls as coercive and threatening figures is achieved through othering strategies. Aspects of the girly-girl’s behaviour are depicted as excessive, inexplicable and/or embarrassing. One such aspect is the feminine tendency toward outward displays of emotion. In the Recess episode “The Experiment” (Kite 1997), the four Ashleys wear bridesmaids’ dresses and weep openly at T.J. and Spinelli’s mock wedding in the playground, despite disliking both T.J. and Spinelli. This representation is consistent with a tradition of representing the ways girls behave as odd and unnatural. As Nash argues, girls’ public emotional displays, like their “strange slang, their allegiance to peer groups, their immoderate consumption, their obsessions with popular culture, their fashion eccentricities, and their incomprehensibly mad reaction to teenybopper idols,” are positioned as freakish, giving an overall impression of “radical Otherness” (2006, 22). Another strategy for othering girly-girls is depicting femininity and its attendant beauty rituals as akin to torture. One such scene occurs in the Hey Arnold! episode “Helga’s Makeover” (Lipman 1996), where tomboy Helga’s decision to remain true to herself is articulated through her vocal rejection of wearing a guacamole face mask at Rhonda’s sleepover party. Helga walks into Rhonda’s kitchen and gasps at the sight of the other girls, whose beaming faces are smeared with guacamole. A screeching scare chord plays,

109 suggesting that Helga finds this sight alarming or ridiculous. Helga tries to put on a brave face as she is ushered into a chair. Rhonda lowers a ladleful of guacamole towards Helga’s face. Helga’s grin becomes forced. She glances sideways at her best friend Phoebe, who winces. Both Helga and Phoebe act as though the guacamole will burn Helga if it makes contact with her face. Helga bats away the ladle of guacamole, shouting for Rhonda to stop. Rhonda assures Helga that “this mask will help reduce wrinkles and signs of ageing.” “We don’t have wrinkles! We don’t have signs of ageing! We’re nine years old!” shouts Helga, wiping off her lipstick and tugging her hair back into pigtails. Phoebe smiles proudly. Minutes later, the girls discover that their male classmates have been spying on their sleepover. They take one of the boys prisoner, tie him to a chair and plaster him with makeup as he howls for mercy – again, behaving as though this feminine ritual is physically painful. While capitulating to mainstream beauty norms is uncomfortable for many women, such representations are rooted in an idea that using makeup (and thereby, being normatively feminine) is painful because it is duplicitous and therefore, morally wrong. This notion has its origins in mid-nineteenth-century associations of women’s cosmetics with sex workers and actresses (Felski 2014). During this period, there was also cultural concern regarding the use of makeup by social climbers wishing to advance their class status and light-skinned “octoroons” (to use the racist terminology of the period) seeking to pass for White (Peiss 2011, 39). Throughout the twentieth century, makeup was gradually naturalised as something that women of all ages and social backgrounds should wear (Essig 2010). However, makeup styles which are not minimal, muted, or in line with certain ideas about class are ridiculed; as Jeremy Butler notes, contemporary advertising campaigns for makeup and beauty treatments are generally characterised by “promises to transform a person’s natural face … while hiding the artificiality of that transformation” (2012, 164). It is not my intention to make a value judgment on women wearing or forgoing cosmetics for whatever reason. Rather, I wish to illuminate that feminine gender expressions are typically those that are portrayed as an imposition, “as if only women had gender” (Kimmel 2000, 5). Within a media discourse which prioritises boys, all children should naturally want to play sports and pranks, but no-one – not even girls – should want to play dolls or tea parties. This reifies masculinity as something natural and intrinsic, rendering it invisible and outside of a potential discussion (Kimmel 2000, 5). This cultural positioning “eschews any structural explanation for … behaviour and instead blames the individual women for making the wrong choices” (Railton 2011, 31).

110 Keeping in mind that women are largely expected to prioritise physical attractiveness, the cultural antipathy toward girly-girls seems bewildering. Despite the call for women to cultivate their appearances, due to misogyny, femininity is increasingly seen as a badge of inferiority, and normatively feminine girls as asking to be judged harshly for engaging in it. For example, within contemporary culture, girls and women who are cheerleaders are often the targets of “[e]xplicit sexual commentary and schadenfreude,” for no discernible reason other than their choice to take part in a sport designated feminine (Jane 2012, 9). This and other forms of culturally acceptable misogyny arise from the idea that those who “act the part of a subjugated person” should “expect to be treated accordingly” (Tweedy 2009, 41). Within North American children’s television animation, the denigration of normative femininity in girls represents an inversion of binary masculinities for boys, whereby conforming to normative masculinity is expected, and transgressing normative masculinity is frowned upon. Interviewing Australian secondary school students, Martino and Pallotta- Chiarolli report that:

traditional or normative femininity, based on constructs of compliance, being a ‘good girl’, and sexual passivity, are derided by many girls as ‘uncool’ and ‘loserish’. However, transgressive femininity, based on traditionally normative masculinist constructs such as sexual aggression, risk-taking behaviours and resistance to authority, are increasingly being viewed by girls as desirable and ‘cool’ (2005, 98).

According to Paechter, within this understanding of what it means to be feminine, disavowing femininity “becomes an act of renouncing powerlessness, of claiming power for oneself” (2006, 257). This places the representation of Spinelli’s desire to distance herself from normative femininity within a specific cultural context; one in which girls can gain esteem by positioning themselves as exceptions to the “rule” that girls, girlhood and femininity are lesser. That this form of girl typing existed in television during the same time period as the girl typing in Ginger is noteworthy. In the girl typing seen in Ginger, the everygirl character and her companions are fascinated by popularity, a feminised form of power conferred on girls with the correct class and/or race who demonstrate mastery of emphasised femininity. By contrast, Recess depicts a field where emphasised femininity can contaminate strong-willed and independent people. This articulation of the girl typing discourse also involves a subverted transformation narrative, but uses it to different ends, as I demonstrate in the following section.

111

Episode Analysis: “First Name Ashley” In this section, I analyse textually, discursively and narratively the representation of the tomboy and girly-girl types in the Recess episode “First Name Ashley,” in order to show how girl typing works on a micro level. “First Name Ashley” hits similar narrative beats to “Deja Who?”, the Ginger episode analysed in the previous chapter. In both episodes, a girl protagonist is required by outside forces to perform a version of girlhood contrary to her personal values. In order to move into the redemptive phase of the narrative and reset the status quo, the girl protagonist must disavow any connection to the differing gendered subjectivity she has experienced. However, in Ginger, the girl protagonist masqueraded as a popular girl in order to vicariously experience power. In Recess, Spinelli’s forcible co-option by the Ashley clique robs her of the power she ordinarily gains from her identification with masculinity. The following episode analysis thereby shows that the girl typing discourse constructs girlhood identity similarly, whether the girls involved are adolescents operating in a field organised by the pursuit of popularity, or prepubescent and operating in a field structured by androcentrism. This indicates an overarching discourse which incorporate diverse performances of girlhood across multiple programme contexts and ideologies. At the start of “First Name Ashley,” Randall, an unpopular boy, prowls through the cafeteria of Third Street Elementary School, trying to record students’ conversations. At one table, the Ashleys sit and gossip. Ashley A addresses the others: “So then, like, Hilary goes, ‘Really?’ and then like, I go, ‘As if!’ and she’s all, ‘Totally not even!’” Spotting Randall, another Ashley orders him, “Get out of here, you little snitch!” and all four chorus, “Loser!” as he slinks away. At another table, Spinelli commands everyone’s attention. She is on her feet, telling an anecdote with crumbs spraying from her mouth. “And then I says, ‘That’s Mr Girly to you!’ and I let ‘im have it! Pow!” Spinelli punches the air and her friends (four boys and one girl) laugh appreciatively. Spinelli then reaches under the table and hauls Randall out, yelling, “Hey, look what I found. A spy, and he’s wired for sound!” She wrests Randall’s tape recorder from him and shatters it, shouting, “Scram, you little monkey booger!” In each of these instances, a child is telling her friends an anecdote about a confrontation with a third party. The Ashleys’ slang, homogenous appearances and tendency to speak and act in unison positions them as “representative of the gendered characteristics that are intentionally not present” in Spinelli, the protagonist (Perea 2011, 164). Regarding the representation of gender-transgressive girls in children’s animation,

112 Perea argues that a female protagonist’s “strength is then represented as counter to the presentation of these [feminine] foils” (2011, 164). Here, Spinelli’s strength is shown through her impulsive and forceful personality, her vivid storytelling and her physical retribution for a perceived slight. Read in conversation with one another, Spinelli’s articulation of her identity takes on meaning in comparison with other girls’ gender expression, and vice versa: there are many Ashleys, but only one Spinelli. Seeking revenge for Spinelli’s treatment of him, Randall finds her permanent record in the school files and publicly reveals Spinelli’s first name to be Ashley. Among the children of Third Street School, this name is inextricably associated with the Ashley clique, who represent the antithesis of Spinelli’s brash tomboyism. Spinelli feels utterly humiliated, but maintains that she cannot change her name, as she was named after her great-aunt, a “family hero” and “the first woman to win the Iditarod.”14 “Besides, it’s not that I hate the name Ashley,” Spinelli tells her friends. “It’s just that as long as I can remember, every other girl named Ashley has always been one of them.” She points to where the Ashleys sit, on a pink blanket, having a tea party. “Snotty, prissy, and a member of their stupid, snotty, prissy club! … So, now that everybody knows my name, I’m gonna have to join their stupid club, and wear makeup, and play dollies, and drink –” Spinelli shudders audibly “– tea.” Spinelli might reasonably be expected to dislike playing with children whose interests are the polar opposite of her own. However, it is striking that dolls, makeup and tea parties are the aspects of being an Ashley that Spinelli finds objectionable, given that the Ashleys have been shown to be spiteful bullies. The Ashleys’ enjoyment of feminine activities is used to show that they are not morally upright people. Within this articulation of the girl typing discourse, the idea that people could enjoy dolls, makeup or tea parties in resistant or subversive ways is not explored. The idea that those who unabashedly enjoy feminine pursuits might be perfectly worthwhile people is outright forbidden. In this way, femininity and meanness are depicted as inextricably intertwined. In light of these associations, Spinelli’s friends understand why she dreads joining the Ashleys. They reassure her that the Ashleys hate her too much to ever demand that she join their clique. At this, Spinelli softens: “Aw, guys, that’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me. What am I so worried about? They can’t do anything to me, right?”

14 The Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race is an annual long-distance sled dog race run in the US state of , from Anchorage to Nome. In reality, the first woman to win the Iditarod was Libby Riddles in 1985 (Buchanan 2009).

113 However, the Ashleys are also discussing the revelation of Spinelli’s first name. Here, as in the opening scene of the episode, the Ashleys speak in a way distinct from Spinelli and her friends, drawing on speech patterns and slang associated with teenage girls, particularly the word “like” to indicate a paraphrase. This usage of the word “like” is generally traced to Valley Girl speech, of the type used by upper-middle class girls living in the in the early 1980s (Ballantyne 2008). In one study, recordings of interviews with high school boys and girls who were academic achievers found that “spontaneity of speech, not insecurity” was more strongly correlated with the use of the word “like” (Andrews 2006, 41). Despite this, the use of “like” and similar vocal trends is typically seen as heralding “immaturity or even stupidity” (Quenqua 2012, para.2). With its repeated use of the word “like,” references to beautifying practices and made-up words such as “specialness,” the dialogue which ensues is a fairly representative example of the tone of the Ashleys’ interactions, and of this branch of the girl typing discourse’s outlook on girly-girls generally:

Ashley T: This is, like, a major tragedy! Ashley Q: That creature, an Ashley? How could it be? I mean, just look at her hair! She doesn’t even mousse. Ashley T: All these years of primping and blow-drying the Ashley name to perfection, and now this? It’s a disgrace! Ashley A: Girls, we have to do something. Ashley Q: Like what, Ashley A? Ashley A: Our only choice is to make Spinelli into one of us. Other Ashleys: Ewwww! Ashley A: What choice do we have, Ashleys? I mean, if we let her go around being her crude, disgusting Spinelli self, the name Ashley will be ruined forever. No longer will it stand for beauty and specialness. Soon, other girls will be considered cooler than us, and if we’re not careful, by the time we’re in junior high, our first dates will be with guys named Paul or Joe!15 Ashley B: screams and buries her face in her hands. Ashley A: Ashleys, we have no choice. We must make Spinelli into one of us. It’s like, the only way.

15 This is a reference to the series’ creators, Paul Germain and Joe Ansolabehere.

114 Citing an “obscure, rarely-used” rule from the playground’s constitution, the Ashleys demand that Spinelli join their club. Spinelli is taken to the Ashleys’ underground clubhouse. She marvels briefly at her lavish surroundings, before noticing the Ashleys looking at her strangely. The Ashleys take out various implements – a mirror, a hairdryer, hairspray and scissors – and advance on Spinelli. Moments later, the Ashleys unveil “Ashley S” to the children of the playground. Figure 12 shows her appearance after the forcible makeover: Spinelli appears downcast and sheepish, wearing a red plaid skirt and blazer with a sunhat. As “Ashley S,” Spinelli also has visible eyelashes, a signifier of femininity which her character design does not ordinarily include. She looks every bit an Ashley, showing how easy it is for her identity to be subsumed into her name, her very gender.

Figure 12 Screen capture from “First Name Ashley” (Disney)

This is followed by a montage of the Ashleys applying polish to Spinelli’s nails as she struggles, forcing her to view a My Little Pony tape, taking a football out of her hand and replacing it with a doll, and requiring her to wait on them hand and foot. Eventually, Spinelli breaks down, begging them to let her go. Ashley A is unmoved, telling Spinelli, “Before you know it, you’ll be blow-drying and moussing just like the rest of us.” That being one of the Ashleys is incompatible with Spinelli’s personality could have been shown by depicting the Ashleys forcing Spinelli to bully other children. Instead, what Spinelli risks in remaining with the Ashleys is, essentially, forced feminisation. Spinelli’s friends liberate her by persuading every student at Third Street School to descend upon the clubhouse, all claiming to have changed their names to Ashley. Faced with the possibility of hundreds of patently unsuitable new clique members, Ashleys agree to release Spinelli if the other children leave. Outside the clubhouse, Randall jeers, “Hey, Ashley S, where’s your dolly?” Freed from the containment that comes with being an Ashley,

115 Spinelli chases him across the playground. Watching her, T.J. enthuses, “There are a lot of Ashleys out there, but there’s only one Spinelli!” Here, as in other episodes of the series, Spinelli’s worth and agency comes from not being an Ashley. This is an odd outcome, since Spinelli is, and always has been, an Ashley. Spinelli’s Great-Aunt – a fearless sportswoman and feminist pioneer – is also an Ashley, but neither of these facts disrupt the characters’ image of girls named Ashley as hyperfeminine bullies. The subverted transformation from everygirl to popular girl which I described in the previous chapter allowed the girl protagonist to try out a different kind of power while remaining fundamentally good. Within a girl typing discourse premised around valorisation of female masculinity, the subverted transformation from tomboy to girly-girl becomes about the fear of forced feminisation. Here, girl typing is driven by the pervasive fear that girly- girls are set on forcibly making over anyone who does not conform to their way of doing things – that, in fact, the Ashleys very much can “do something” to Spinelli if she does not comply with their wishes. The girly-girl constitutes such a profound threat to other girls’ freedom that she becomes a contaminating influence who might force others to become like her, against their wills. Within children’s television animation, masculinity is rarely represented as artificial or coercive. The most pertinent example of a masculine transformation narrative within children’s popular culture dating between 1990 and 2010 is the Disney animated feature film (Bancroft 1998). In this film, the title character, a teenage Chinese girl, must masquerade as a male foot soldier in order to save her father from certain death. Mulan is depicted struggling with the arduous military training, as well as having to modify her hairstyle, voice, body language and clothing. Through diligence and resourcefulness, she becomes a highly valued member of her unit. Mulan’s experience of femininity (in her training to become a bride at the film’s opening) and her experience of masculinity (as a soldier) leads her to a more unified sense of her own gender and a greater sense of self-belief. In fact, in the film’s climatic sequence, Mulan wears a comparatively gender-neutral outfit and defeats the villain Shan-Yu using both a sword and a fan, symbolically uniting her masculine and feminine sides. I argue that the representation of Spinelli’s temporary transformation plays out differently to Mulan’s because Spinelli is called upon to exhibit femininity, rather than masculinity. It is not just that Spinelli is forced to do something she is not intrinsically drawn to, but what she is forced to do which is the issue. The audience for Recess in its first run is

116 assumed to understand that feminine pursuits are uncool and twee, that the only students at Third Street School who like “girly things” are the hated Ashleys. Granted, many people do experience the pressure to embody gender expressions and standards which are not their own as an unwelcome imposition. Exploring the impacts of this pressure on gender-nonconforming children can be a worthy and even feminist act. However, the representation of femininity in “First Name Ashley” is arguably derived from an overwhelming assumption that most people identify principally with masculinity. This assumption derives from androcentrism. Femininity, by comparison, is situated through gender entitlement as being performed primarily by those who either do not realise that they are inferior, or who are content to be inferior. The differences between the representation of girlhood in As Told By Ginger and in Recess show that girl typing constructs girlhood identity around girls’ performances of gender. However, due to the influence of context, ideology and the animation medium on different animated programmes, what constitutes a “correct” performance of gender is subject to change. In Recess, both the female protagonist and the female antagonists are represented as opinionated and confrontational. This subverts historical narratives of femininity, in which a “good woman’s traits are aligned with conventional femininity … and the bad one’s personality is associated with masculinity” (Fischer in Hollinger 1998, 31). However, despite this subversion, this girl typing discourse still articulates a gender-normative bias. Spinelli is positioned as the heroine due to the series’ androcentric perspective; she can keep up with the boys, which means she is a good person. The Ashleys are othered because they are too focused on appearance and consumerism to be appropriately masculine, and too power- hungry to perform femininity in a fashion complementary to masculinity. Spinelli’s gender expression is positioned as natural and thus superior to the Ashleys’ normative femininity. The girl typing of the Ashleys entails a refusal to acknowledge that girls who are drawn toward feminine presentation and pastimes may also struggle with gender roles. Using normative femininity as a narrative shorthand for deviousness implies that “the only way [for girls] to be valid human beings” is to emulate supposedly male traits and cultivate masculine interests (Zettel 2005, 98). Spinelli’s agency is dependent upon maintaining distance from the contaminating influence of feminine girls. This forbids the possibility of collective action that could overturn the “tyranny of niceness,” or the pervasive idea that to be considered worthy, girls and women must not profess negative thoughts or feelings (Brown 1992). Both brash Spinelli and the opinionated Ashleys buck against the imperative to “be nice,” but the series’ othering of femininity disallows the notion of girls working collaboratively to achieve

117 common goals. As Gagné and Tewksbury argue, the conception of masculinity as necessarily opposed to femininity illustrates that while gender resistance can challenge sexism, this does not mean it necessarily will (1998). In this way, the risk of assuming that “some genders or sexualities are … inherently subversive and others conservative” becomes clear (Serano 2013, 245). The positive media portrayal of female gender transgression is compromised when female agency is contingent upon maintaining distance from normative femininity. This formulation hinges on the understanding that value judgements may be assigned to gendered behaviours and interests. Recess’ tomboy narratives advocate for freedom from the expectation for all girls to display normative femininity, but achieve this by representing femininity as inextricable from meanness. Within this framework, overwhelmingly negative assumptions are non-consensually projected onto people who exhibit femininity and privileged above feminine people’s own experience of their gender. Portraying this attitude as common sense plays a role in perpetuating internalised misogyny, which “refracts girls’ anger or disappointment through a culture that denigrates the feminine” (Brown 2003, 88). Tanenbaum provides a rationale for considering how internalised misogyny operates: “When power is withheld, those with power are resented. Yet their values and norms are internalized” (2003, 29). Girls can access this power by either embodying or venerating normative masculinity, “casting off marginal status, and moving to the center” (Brown 2003, 154). In criticising androcentrism, there must be efforts not to castigate people who object to the imperative for all girls to be girly, and have no way to express this other than shunning femininity. The most seductive aspect of patriarchal power structures is that they do not hurt all people all the time. If this were the case, there would be no incentive to internalise patriarchy. Rather, patriarchy serves to “benefit many boys and men, and even some girls and women” (Wanamaker 2008, 20). Embodying normative and transgressive femininities can both give girls avenues to power, and desiring power is not inherently negative. Serano suggests that the most effective strategy for combating gender entitlement is to accept “that there are certain gender and sexual expressions and desires that we cannot know, that we will never experience firsthand” (2007, 91). Following from Serano, I argue that not having experienced a particular inclination does not mean the inclination itself is loathsome. By understanding this, people’s performance of their gender identity can be uncoupled from assessments of their worth as individuals.

118 Conclusion In this chapter, I have examined the representation of the tomboy and girly-girl types by analysing the animated series Recess, a Disney cartoon geared toward primary school-aged boys and girls. In Recess, boyhood and hegemonic masculinity are the standards by which all characters are measured. The field the characters operate in is structured by a system of control by boys. This means that normatively feminine, homosocial girls who desire power are positioned as aberrant. They are constituted through othering strategies which render the things they do as strange and threatening to the female protagonist, Spinelli, a tomboy. The tomboy character has historically been used to address the perceived needs of a particular culture; in the late-1990s context, Spinelli is used to combat the imperative for all girls to emphasise their femininity. However, this is achieved by denigrating normatively feminine girls who do not prioritise the needs of their male classmates, positioning Spinelli as exceptional for being a plain-spoken, physically active and expressive girl. While the field in which the characters of Recess operate is different to that in Ginger, the effects on the girl characters are strikingly similar. Spinelli’s identity is able to be changed without her consent or intention, meaning that she must be vigilant for any signs of girly-girlness. Her forays into girly-girldom are substantiated by both the Ashleys and the larger group of children, whose capacity to rescue her from having her identity changed against her will is subject to the rules of the playground. Finally, her identity is portrayed as dependent on the Ashleys’ articulation of girlhood for its context and meaning. This indicates that the girl typing discourse operates in similar ways across programmes with superficially different characters. In the next chapter of my thesis, I explore the representation of the intelligent adolescent girl outcast MTV animated series Daria (Eichler 1997-2002). This series is aimed at an older audience than either As Told By Ginger or Recess, and constitutes its characters through the American myth of the romance of the outsider. Daria situates outsider girlhood as aspirational and popular girlhood as aberrant. However, the outcast girl/popular girl formation does offer possibilities for expanding the girl typing discourse to depict more girl types in an equitable fashion.

119 Chapter Five: The Romance of the Outsider in Daria Introduction Sixteen-year-old Daria Morgendorffer, the title character of MTV’s animated series Daria (Eichler 1997-2002), is terminally unpopular. In a social landscape where cultivating image is of utmost importance, Daria openly displays her prodigious intelligence and her contempt for small-minded people. Daria’s alienation from others is in stark contrast to the seemingly charmed existence of her ultra-popular younger sister Quinn. In the Daria episode “Monster” (Beber 1998), Daria is determined to publicly expose Quinn as the villain that Daria views her as, due to a combination of high school popularity and sibling rivalry. However, in learning about her sister’s life, Daria finds that she and Quinn are more alike than they know. The themes of binarised oppositions between girls and gender performativity in “Monster” recall the Ginger episode “Deja Who?” and the Recess episode “First Name Ashley”. However, “Monster” uses these themes to deconstruct girlhood identity, indicating the girl typing discourse’s potential to tell diverse stories about girls. In this chapter, I analyse how adolescent female outsiderhood is constructed through the gender, race, class, sexuality and life stage of girl characters in animated series such as Daria, The Proud Family (Smith 2001-2005) and All Grown Up! (Boutilier 2003-2008). In so doing, I argue that Daria’s articulation of the girl typing discourse constructs girlhood identity using the romance of the outsider, a cultural ideology that imagines marginalised people to live more authentically than people in the mainstream. Within this construction, middle-class suburban Whites appropriate the styles and postures of marginalised groups in order to assert individuality and forge connections. This chapter also demonstrates that, in addition to the ideology of the romance of the outsider, the gendered subjectivities of girl characters in Daria are influenced by a cultural turn to irony within a neoliberal feminist context, and by the series’ . I begin by examining Daria’s production context, as a product specifically of MTV and of the cultural climate of the 1990s. I outline the field that Daria operates in, placed in opposition to a dominant group of popular students but still holding the moral high ground. I discuss how the medium of animation is used to underscore Daria’s outsider status, in particular her unwillingness to interact with others. I move into a generalised taxonomy of the outcast girl type, particularly in terms of her engagement with discourses of gender, class, race and sexuality. This leads to an exploration of how the outcast girl fulfils the romance of the outsider in a postfeminist context. I identify and discuss my concept of “sameness panic,”

120 a narrative device which informs many of the animation episodes discussed in this thesis. Finally, I analyse the Daria episode “Monster” (Beber 1998), arguing that its challenge to dominant ideas regarding girlhood identity not only has a significant impact on treatments of girlhood in Daria, but indicates the girl typing discourse’s potential to tell diverse stories about girls.

Daria (MTV, 1997-2002) In this section, I outline Daria’s production context as an MTV animated series of the late 1990s. I provide relevant information about the premise and diegetic world of Daria, including how its limited animation style positions the girl protagonist favourably to question the institution of popularity. Daria is a product of MTV, a North American basic cable and satellite television channel. Launched in 1981, MTV’s original mission was to broadcast music videos around the clock and throughout the week. Initially, the network operated with a narrowcast album- oriented rock format, “based on tradition and legacy, and a belief that young audiences wanted to hear familiar music … drawn from an unchanging canon” (Tannenbaum 2011, 9). By the early 1990s, the network had diversified, playing not only rock but also rap, , R&B, dance, grunge and heavy metal (Tannenbaum 2011). At this point in US cultural history, MTV represented the cutting edge of cool. Expanding its focus to include wider youth culture in addition to music, MTV began producing animated series in the early 1990s. Their first animated programme was (Asher 1991-1994), a showcase for animated shorts which gave birth to two of MTV’s signature animated series: the avant-garde Æon Flux (Chung 1991-1995) and the gleefully asinine and Butt-Head (Judge 1993-1997, 2011). The latter was a sitcom about two socially maladjusted, sex-obsessed teenage boys. A recurring character on this series was Daria Morgendorffer, a bespectacled “straight-A student” who hung around the protagonists because she found their stupidity amusing. In her first featured episode, “Scientific Stuff” (Felton 1993), Daria was partnered with Beavis and Butt-Head for a science project. Protesting that they are “complete imbeciles” who have nothing of value to contribute, Daria then has the idea to use the boys as a case study. Indicating Beavis and Butt-Head, Daria addresses their class: “Idiocy - genetic or environmental? I think our examples of Beavis and Butt-head indicate that both are contributing factors.” In her subsequent appearances throughout the series, Daria treats the boys as her personal entertainment, exploiting their dim-wittedness for her own gain.

121 In 1995, plans were made to give Daria her own series. MTV’s decision to focus on an intelligent girl character living in the suburbs may have been influenced by the mixed reception of their prior animated series. Taylor argues that Daria was MTV’s effort to appeal to girls after Æon Flux failed to resonate with female audiences (2014). Dyess-Nugent proposes that producing Daria constituted “a self-conscious attempt by MTV to counteract the bad publicity [Beavis and Butt-head] earned for its supposed role in the dumbing-down of America by providing a good role model for hip, alienated youth” (in Adams 2013).

Figure 13 Promotional art showing Jake, Helen, Quinn, Daria and Jane, L-R (MTV)

At the opening of the series, Daria, her sister Quinn and their corporate-minded parents, Jake and Helen, move to the nondescript mid-Atlantic suburb of Lawndale. Similarly to Ginger, the social structure at Lawndale High is premised around the concept of popularity. However, unlike Lucky Junior High in Ginger, the popular students at Lawndale are not confined to a single clique, but are instead spread over a number of sub-groups. There are the football jocks and cheerleaders, such as the vapid and hormonal Kevin and Brittany, who are characterised by extreme stupidity, unsophistication and frequent malapropisms in their speech – for example, in the episode “Quinn the Brain” (Lipman 1998), Brittany suspects Kevin of being unfaithful and accuses him of being a “high school Casablanca.” There are the academic and social high achievers, namely Jodie and her boyfriend Mack, two of the only Black students at Lawndale (of whom more later). Finally, there is the Fashion Club, of which Daria’s sister Quinn is Vice-President, with conniving Sandi as President, insecure Stacy as Secretary and vapid Tiffany as Treasurer. The Fashion Club members are defined by their exclusivity and their unending devotion to fashion and beauty. Students and staff alike treat the Fashion Club with deference. They appear to be a school-sanctioned club rather than an informal clique –

122 the episodes “The New Kid” (Johnson 1998) and “I Loathe a Parade” (Vebber 2000) show the Fashion Club girls with their own page in the yearbook and their own float in the homecoming parade – but operate without the direct supervision of a school staff member. The Fashion Club members pride themselves on achieving low grades at school, prioritising their physical appearances over shows of intellectual prowess. At Lawndale, people who display intelligence are at the bottom of the social ladder. They are referred to as “brains” and treated as social outcasts. The premising of the series around a perceived opposition between brain and body as part of teenage girl subjectivity extends to the animation and art style, which has been criticized as having a quality of “weird lifelessness” (Ozersky 1997, 47). Regardless of the legitimacy of this criticism, I agree that the animation style and character designs in Daria are not fanciful or detailed. Each character is drawn in thick black lines, in comparison to series such as Ginger or Recess, where the characters are rendered in thinner, more unobtrusive lines. Despite the lack of stylised animation techniques such as exaggeration or squash-and-stretch, Daria’s animation style cannot reasonably be called realistic, as “the characters showed little movement and were visually unchanging” (Newman 2005, 193). Daria’s face, in particular, is almost expressionless. Her cheeks flush slightly when she is embarrassed, and on rare occasions, she will give a small . While Daria can occasionally be moved to anger, she never exhibits unbridled joy. As a vehicle for representing an outcast girl character, the limited animation style is thematically appropriate. Daria the series tests the limits of animation by not testing the limits of animation, just as Daria the character disrupts her environment by refusing to engage with it. Her refusal to participate is arguably as defining an attribute as her intelligence or sarcasm: in the series’ opening title sequence, Daria is shown sitting almost motionless in various social environments, such as a comedy film, a sports game, Physical Education class and a wedding. In the P.E. lesson, Daria refuses to jump or run after the ball, instead waving one hand vaguely in its direction. This frustrates the popular girls on her team so much that two of them knock themselves out attempting to compensate for Daria’s lack of participation, causing Daria to give an enigmatic half-smile at the chaos she has wrought. The humour in this sequence, and much of the series proper, arises from Daria’s expressionless face and inert body, even as the people around her cheer, laugh, cry or play sports. Daria’s animation style contradicts the conception of animation as an art form which flouts “the restrictions of live-action television and film, annihilating rationality,” working to render “the unimaginable imagined” (Perea 2011, 1). Considering the cultural tendency to

123 represent teenage girls as hysterical, awkward, volatile or sexy, a preternaturally composed and withering adolescent girl could be situated in the realm of the near unimaginable. Cahn argues that societal disapproval of girls’ emotional-sexual displays (such as screaming or swooning) stems from an expectation for girls to be “innocent of sexual feelings, or at least responsible and concerned enough about pregnancy and loss of reputation to keep their desires well in check” (2007, 264). However, while dominant Western culture prefers girls to be emotionally reserved, they are also expected to be welcoming, self- effacing, trusting and friendly, “nice to all people at all times, regardless of circumstances” (Veltman 2008, 602, emphasis in original). Asked how “good girls” were expected to comport themselves, attendees at Rachel Simmons’ Girls Leadership Institute described an imaginary girl who was

socially and academically successful, smart and driven, pretty and kind. But she was also an individual who aimed to please … toed the line … and didn’t take risks. She repressed what she really thought … and did not handle her mistakes with humor (Simmons 2009, 1).

In this political climate, representing a sixteen-year-old girl as the most physically and emotionally reserved person in her environment constitutes a powerful statement; Daria quietly manages to frustrate everyone around her by taking the expectation for girls to curtail their emotions to its logical extreme, while also refusing to be warm and approachable. The animation style of the series impresses this by rendering the world of Lawndale in a way that helps the Daria character to be as physically inexpressive as possible. Conaway argues that the reason a series starring a bespectacled, sarcastic teenage girl character was able to succeed is due to two intertwined cultural phenomena: the rise of “geek chic” in the 1990s, and the increasing social currency of ironic detachment. As the Internet became a cultural and economic force, “those who could do knowledge work on computers were wealthy and, therefore, chic” (2007, 58). Furthermore, as Conaway notes, Daria premiered during a cultural turn to irony in North America. During this period, the “smart humour” of comics such as Ben Stiller and Jerry Seinfeld, late-night TV hosts such as and the writers of The Simpsons (Groening 1989-present) articulated an increasing awareness of the machinations of media and society – and an increasing need for this awareness to be acknowledged and showcased. By the turn of the millennium, the tone of ironic detachment was seen in

124 logo-parodying t-shirts … advertising meticulously crafted to anticipate and derail cynicism about advertising … getting your news via late-night-TV monologues … the so-bad-it’s-good movie … [and] the dominant tone of the discussions in so many online forums (Turner 2004, 223).

One way in which the North American cultural turn to irony and intellectual posturing was realised was through the use of the outcast girl character in animation aimed at children and teenagers. Daria’s dry wit allows her to express disdain, exasperation or hostility through deadpan humour. For example, in the episode “The Invitation” (Bernstein 1997b), Daria has the following exchange with a boy who approaches her and Jane at a party:

Boy: So … where you girls been all our lives? Daria: Waiting here for you. We were born in this room, we grew up in this room, and we thought we would die here, alone. But now you’ve arrived, and our lives can truly begin.

The use of sarcasm is part of the ironic detachment so typical of the 1990s and early 2000s. In teen films such as Jawbreaker (Stein 1999), Bring It On (Reed 2000) and Mean Girls (Waters 2004), the popular girl characters gain mastery over their surroundings through the use of wit, wordplay and put-downs. However, since the girl characters in these films are socially powerful, conventionally beautiful, and use their sarcasm crudely, they are more likely to be positioned as “bitches” than Daria is. Daria, speaking as she is from a more fringe social position, is represented as simply being honest. Giving free rein to her aggressive impulses while avoiding condemnation, Daria draws on her marginalized outsider status in order to experience the best of both worlds.

Outcast Girls In this section, I discuss animated girls’ outsider status is constructed via their gender, race, class and sexuality, as well as through the ideology of the romance of the outsider. Intelligent, nonconformist girl characters were present in a range of North American animated series at the turn of the millennium, including Daria, X-Men: Evolution (2000- 2003), (2001-2002), Kim Possible (2002-2007), Fillmore! (2002-2004), Teen Titans (2003-2006) and Avatar: The Last Airbender (2005-2008).16 As for every girl type,

16 As members of the class in a fantasy nation which draws inspiration from both feudal Japan and China, the Avatar characters and Mai are neither White nor middle-class. Rogue of X-Men: Evolution is coded as working-class by her Mississippi accent, but lives in a mansion as part of an elite team of teenage superheroes.

125 there are exceptions, but on the whole, these characters are typified by a sarcastic outlook, keen intelligence, dark hair, pale complexion, an alto deadpan voice, gothic or grunge-styled clothing in dark colours and a White middle-class subjectivity. I refer to these characters as “outcasts” or “outcast girls.” In a televisual landscape where everygirls and popular girls are the most visible models of girlhood, outcast girl characters occupy key roles where, by most understandings of normative girlhood, they should be relegated to the background. They are not kind, community-oriented and humble, as a properly feminine everygirl should be, but since they do not measure themselves by the standards of normative masculinity, they do not fulfil the androcentric expectations to the extent that tomboy characters often do. In this section, I show that Daria interprets girlhood identity through a fantasy of privileged disaffection known as the romance of the outsider. Similarly to the tomboys of the previous chapter, outcast girls flout standards for normative femininity by electing not to embody them. Where adolescent girls are expected to emphasise their heterosexualised femininity by appearing attractive and welcoming, Daria is bespectacled, unsmiling and permanently clad in the most utilitarian of outfits: a green zip-up jacket, black knee-length pleated skirt and combat boots. Despite being in her mid-teens, Daria is drawn without breasts or any discernible hips or waist. Daria and Jane are the only pubescent female characters in the series to be drawn this way, which distinguishes them visibly from the other girls.

Figure 14 Promotional art of Jodie, Quinn, Brittany, Daria and Jane, L-R (MTV)

In one instance, circumstances persuade Daria to present herself as conventionally attractive. In the episode “Quinn the Brain” (Lipman 1998), Quinn writes an essay above her usual lazy

Outside of these deviations, these characters exhibit all the other characteristics of the outcast girl type, and thus are included in the sample.

126 standard, which causes the entire school to laud her as an intellectual. Daria feels that Quinn is encroaching on her territory. Eventually, Daria removes her glasses, dons Quinn’s clothes and pretends that she is about to go out on a date with Joey, Jeffy and Jamie, three besotted boys who cater to Quinn’s every need. With makeup and fashionable clothing, Daria appears to rival Quinn in attractiveness, to the extent that Quinn immediately abandons her intellectual persona and tells Daria outright that she has “won.” Having called Quinn’s bluff, Daria assumes her dark clothing and round glasses again. In this scene, it is made clear that Daria could be just as conventionally attractive as Quinn, but chooses not to be. By electing not to pursue beauty, Daria ensures that her interests are not subjugated to those of boys, popular students and adults. Outcast girls’ colouring further distinguishes them by, again, flouting commonly held wisdom about what girls aspire to. Outcast girl characters typically have dark hair (black, dark brown or auburn rather than bright red or blonde), pale skin (rather than a rosy complexion or “healthy” tan) and wear dark colours. This contradicts a deeply entrenched Eurocentric, Christian value system in which light or bright colours are considered emblematic of purity, goodness, cleanliness and virtuosity. Due to this association of light with goodness, embodying or choosing darkness in terms of physicality or dress means “being unable to attain, or rejecting, prevailing values and standards of attractiveness, being an outsider” (Brienes 1992, 149). Due to these deeply entrenched ideological associations, embodying darkness means standing out, refuting “the denial of difference so central to conceptions of whiteness” (Brienes 1992, 151). By being seen to choose darkness, outcast girl characters throw into doubt ideas about what it means to be good, attractive, visible and properly feminine. In considering the dark/light binary that girl characters are so often constituted within, I find it necessary to discuss the racial homogeneity of the outcast girl type. Most of the outcast girl characters catalogued in this chapter are canonically White. Hentges points out that Black girls are not typically used as the dark component in the dark/light girlhood binary, perhaps out of concern for the potentially racist implications (2006). Miranda from Ginger is a rare example of a Black mean girl character who is opposed to a White protagonist. The more usual scenario is the one seen in Rugrats and its sequel series All Grown Up! (Boutilier 2003-2008), wherein the kind and overachieving Black girl Susie is a friend of the blonde, White, spoilt and scheming Angelica. Versions of this dynamic in which neither character is White are thin on the ground. In The Proud Family, the Black everygirl Penny Proud clashes with her sometimes-friend,

127 often-enemy LaCienega Boulevardez, a popular and nasty Latinx mean girl. In Avatar, the brave and warm-hearted Katara (of the Inuit-inspired Water Tribe) is increasingly contrasted with one of the series’ main antagonists, the sadistic Azula (princess of the Japan-inspired Fire Nation), to the point that it is Katara who subdues Azula during the series’ climactic final battle in the episode “Avatar ” (DiMartino 2008). However, the depiction of girls of colour as worthy adversaries is an exception to the overall rule, in which both the light and the dark sides of this particular binary pair “are contained within white images, further cementing whiteness as the norm” (Hentges 2006, 28). Since rivalries are a prime source of drama in girl-centric media, this leaves the potential for girl characters of colour to be relegated to the role of supportive best friend to a White girl, rather than advocating for their own interests. The racialised dimensions of the outcast girl type are made visible in the comparison between Daria and Jodie Landon, a Black classmate of Daria’s. Jodie is president of the French Club, vice president of Student Council, yearbook editor, tennis player and an aspiring entrepreneur. Jodie and her boyfriend Mack are two of the only Black students at Lawndale High (aside from unnamed background characters). Since Jodie is accustomed to being judged first and foremost on her race, her interactions with others are often polite, measured and strategic. In the episode “Partner’s Complaint” (Eichler 2000a), Daria and Jodie collaborate on a school project where they have to try and obtain a loan to start a business. Their contact at the bank turns to only Daria and recommends that her father co- sign on the loan, assuming that because Jodie is Black, she cannot rely on her parents’ assistance in financial matters. Jodie is incensed at the insinuation, both because of the racist implications and because her family are actually wealthy and influential: her father is a well- known entrepreneur and her mother a former corporate senior vice-president. At the next bank they visit, Jodie opens by name-dropping her father, in order to capitalise on her class privilege. Daria is rankled by what she sees as hypocrisy on Jodie’s part. In Daria’s eyes, it would be more ethical to present themselves the exact same way each time, in order to be assessed purely on their merits, rather than on Jodie’s connections. However, Daria has never experienced what it is to be judged by her race. Since Daria is White, she is viewed as a complex individual who is allowed to make mistakes and behave poorly on occasion. This is a privilege Jodie does not have. For example, in the episode “I Loathe a Parade” (Vebber 2000), Jodie is crowned homecoming queen. Riding on a float during the Homecoming parade, Jodie and Mack have the following exchange:

128 Jodie: Isn’t it great how they keep electing us Homecoming King and Queen every year? Mack: Yes, it’s such a generous and enlightened gesture. It completely makes up for the town’s utter lack of diversity, in my mind. Jodie: And we’re playing into it. Mack: Damn college applications. Jodie: This is so humiliating.

Resenting the of the exercise, Jodie tries not to participate during the homecoming parade – tries, in essence, to behave as Daria does every day. However, when Jodie spies a Black preteen girl in the crowd looking enraptured at the sight of a Black homecoming queen, Jodie immediately stands and waves, as she feels immense pressure to serve as a positive example of what Black girls can achieve. Jodie articulates the difficulty of her position in the episode “Gifted” (Nicoll 1998), during a conversation with Daria:

Jodie: You realize your negative approach to everything is self-defeating, right? Daria: Well, it’s nice to know there’s someone I can defeat. Jodie: I mean, you may spare yourself some pain by cutting everyone off, but you miss out on a lot of good stuff too. Daria: Look, Jodie, I’m too smart and too sensitive to live in a world like ours, at a time like this, with a sister like mine. Maybe I do miss out on stuff, but this attitude is what works for me now. Jodie: Then you’ll understand what works for me now. At home, I’m Jodie – I can say and do whatever feels right. But at school I’m the Queen of the Negroes, the perfect African-American teen, the role model for all the other African-American teens at Lawndale. Oops! Where’d they go? Believe me: I’d like to be more like you.

Jodie wants to be more like Daria – to say whatever is on her mind, regardless of who is listening, and to not have her successes or failures be viewed as representative of her race. Despite being just as aware of the ridiculousness of the system as Daria, Jodie does not have the option of lashing out with disdain and sarcasm. In Ginger and Recess, the cluelessness and/or ruthlessness of popular or girly-girls are attributed to their upper-class origins through sour-grapes framing. In Recess, Spinelli’s temper and tomboyism are implicitly ascribed to her working-class, Italian-American background. By comparison, Daria is considered without

129 racial/ethnic identity or affiliation. As Dyer argues, “The claim to power is the claim to speak for the commonality of humanity” (1997, 2). Daria’s unmarked status as a middle-class White girl gives her a certain amount of autonomy, which she primarily accesses through modes of communication which would be viewed as sedition or aggression if Jodie were to employ them. Where Jodie must participate and compete in almost every arena possible, Daria shies from positions of responsibility, visibility or influence. In various episodes, comedy arises from Daria being required to take part in activities considered de rigueur for adolescent, White, North American girls in the 1990s: babysitting in “Pinch Sitter” (Bernstein 1997a), taking part in a schoolwide poster contest in “Arts ‘N’ Crass” (Eichler 1998a), doing volunteer work in “The Old and the Beautiful” (Romberg 1999), having an after-school job in “It Happened One Nut” (Lipman 1999), or competing for a college scholarship in “Prize Fighters” (Beber 2001). In “It Happened One Nut,” a career aptitude test advises that Daria become a mortician: “Your lack of interest in personal interaction makes you an ideal candidate for working with the dead.” As a protagonist, Daria does not conform with dominant ideas of what girls aspire to. Hains argues that Daria’s refusal to temper the impact of her intellect with excessive niceness places her in a disadvantaged position, making cleverness appear unappealing to girl audiences (2007b, 80). However, approaching Daria from this perspective assumes that girls do not consider defiance or subversion to be attractive or admirable qualities, whereas the presence of so many outcast girl characters in commercially successful television animation for children and teenagers would seem to imply otherwise. With this in mind, I argue that Daria’s extraordinary appeal, and the appeal of similar characters, lies in her embodiment of the romance of the outsider. In order to understand how Daria’s identity is constructed within the girl typing discourse, it is necessary to outline how rebellion is gendered, classed and racialised through the romance of the outsider. This term refers to America’s infatuation with outcasts in the decades after World War II. The postwar period was characterised by a general feeling of what activist David McReynolds calls “disorganized disaffection” (in Kercher 2006, 6). Simply put, the young people whose parents had lived through the violence, instability and deprivation of the and World War II were often subjected to “constant and prescriptive messages about how lucky we were to be living in a peaceful and affluent time and how important social order was” (Glamuzina 1991, 48). Against a background of class- consciousness, conservatism and rhetoric, there emerged an overwhelming

130 impression “that the culture was rife with hypocrisy, everyone keeping up appearances in one form or another, [which] generated a yearning for genuine feeling” (Brienes 1992, 136-137). Reacting against what was felt to be “the sterility, conformism, and lack of passion in the lives of the dominant suburban-based middle class,” popular culture began to explore narratives of resistance to authority and alienation from the older generation (Edsforth 1991, 4). The figure of the outsider became widely visible in many popular cultural offerings, including J.D. Salinger’s book The Catcher in the Rye (1951), films such as The Wild One (Benedek 1953) and Rebel Without a Cause (Ray 1955), Beat poetry and the music of Elvis Presley (Hale 2011, Gosse 1993). The romance of the outsider arises from simultaneous yearnings for connection and distinction. In a post-war cultural landscape predicated upon conformity, people felt “curious about and energized by difference” (Brienes 1992, 16). Arguably, this curiosity derives from the idea that people living outside the dominant, privileged culture – whether of the suburban middle-class, White people, or simply discourses of popularity in schools – have access to a more meaningful perspective on life, which it is possible for more privileged people to access. This was an ideology already entrenched before the post-war period, apparent in the practice of middle-class Whites “slumming” in working-class or ethnic neighbourhoods from the 1900s onward, in order to find “pleasure, leisure, or sexual adventure” (Mumford 1997, 143). In the context of the twentieth-century North American girl culture of which Daria is a part, the idea of the outsider perspective as necessarily suffused with meaning is apparent in the tendency to represent outsiders as having much closer, more devoted friendships than popular people, as in films such as The Hairy Bird (Kernochan 1998) and Can’t Hardly Wait (Kaplan 1998).17 Idolising outsiders reconciles a deeply felt contradiction between wanting to stand out from one’s peers as an exception, and wanting to belong to something greater than yourself. Girl characters such as Daria did not appear in North American popular media in the immediate postwar period, as it was popularly understood that true rebels were necessarily “lonesome, misunderstood, brooding, and male” (Raha 2008, 22). In films such as Rebel Without a Cause (Ray 1955), Gidget (Wendkos 1959) and Grease (Kleiser 1978), girl characters could only rebel by attaching themselves romantically and sexually to nonconformist boys, “rather than by refusing heterosexual courtship or renouncing femininity altogether” (Halberstam 1999, 170; see Hale 2011, Hatch 2011).

17 The Hairy Bird was retitled Strike! in Canada and All I Wanna Do in the United States, but retained its original title in Australia.

131 By the time of Daria’s airing between 1997 and 2002, female rebellion had become much more palatable to mainstream tastes. The tenets of second wave feminism were transposed into youth culture by the Riot Grrrl movement and the girl power discourse. The niche occupied by Riot Grrrl bands in the early 1990s was later occupied by R&B/pop artists such as Pink, who traded on her rebellious outsider image, and the rock band Evanescence, whose lead singer Amy Lee was positioned as both ethereal gothic siren and outcast girl tortured by the hypocrisy of the dominant culture. Female protagonists of successful films such as Resident Evil (Anderson 2000) and television series such as Dark Angel (Cameron 2000-2002) flouted dictates for normative femininity by being not only physically and verbally confrontational, but also living outside of the bounds of conventional society. Their isolation gives them a keen moral sense; they are heroes because they are outsiders. Using a term coined by Meenakshi Gigi Durham, I propose that this turn in popular culture represents a “girling” of the romance of the outsider in a postfeminist context (2003). While Daria was not a science fiction or action heroine, she fulfilled the desire for self- determination and autonomy central to the romance of the outsider. Crucially, Daria and Jane are the only characters in Daria to experience deep, mutually supportive friendship. In the series premiere, “Esteemsters” (Eichler 1997), Daria and Jane initially meet because their refusal to conform and give of themselves is regarded as an attitude problem in need of correction. Both girls are sent to a self-esteem course, where they connect and find that they have a similar sense of humour and outlook on life. It is clear that Daria has found a kindred spirit when Jane tells her the reason she has taken the course six times already: “I like having low self-esteem. It makes me feel special.” Using Jane’s knowledge of the course content, they take the final exam early, to free up their afternoons for other pursuits. When they are called onstage at school assembly to be honoured for graduating from the self-esteem course in record time, Jane fakes a breakdown onstage in order to discourage the teachers from making an example of her again. Impressed by Jane’s performance, Daria uses this potential public humiliation to her own advantage, publicly thanking Quinn for her sisterly support. This outs Quinn as the sibling of a “brain,” which Quinn had hoped to conceal from her classmates. From this point on, Daria and Jane are inseparable. They cloister themselves in Jane’s bedroom, hang out at a local pizza parlour and walk home from school together each day. They encourage each other’s artistic pursuits and collaborate on a number of school projects, with Daria handling the writing and Jane the graphic design. They are not carbon copies of one another: with her multiple earrings, sleek bob and dark lipstick, Jane is more interested in

132 cultivating her appearance than Daria is. Whereas Daria is the elder of two daughters in a nuclear family, Jane is the youngest in a sprawling clan of self-involved, artistic free spirits. Jane is more open to participating than Daria is. She dates several boys, attends parties, dances and rock shows, and briefly joins the school track team in the episode “See Jane Run” (Romberg 1998), in order to prove that she is not a “deadbeat” like her older sister Penny. The girls’ bond is fired by “a sameness that enables mutual understanding, and differences that challenge and surprise” (Cote 2015). Although neither Daria nor Jane is given to outpourings of emotion, in the episode “Dye! Dye! My Darling!” (Eichler 2000b), Daria’s guilt at her growing romantic feelings for Jane’s boyfriend Tom spurs her to define how important Jane is to her: “[I]n the one moment of good luck I’ve had in my entire life, I met another outcast who I could really be friends with and not have to feel completely alone.” Later, in the episode “Is It Fall Yet?” (Eichler 2000c), after the girls reconcile their falling-out over Tom, Daria states what she admires most about Jane: “You know exactly who you are, and nobody’s ever going to con you into thinking you don’t.” In the series’ penultimate episode, “Boxing Daria” (Eichler 2001), Daria tells Jane outright that she is “the person I trust most.” In the series finale, “Is It College Yet?” (Eichler 2002), Daria and Jane are both anticipating attending college in Boston, implying that their friendship will endure into adulthood. None of the other characters are inclined to speak about their platonic friendships in terms of mutual admiration or trust. The social demands of popularity force Jodie and Mack to spend time with the endlessly exasperating Brittany and Kevin. Quinn’s interactions with the other members of the Fashion Club are often characterised by disingenuousness, backstabbing and scheming as the girls vie for power among themselves. In this sense, Daria and Jane’s relationship stands out as unusual. Daria’s friendship with Jane is the primary way in which the character embodies the romance of the outsider. She would not have this unique perspective, this wonderful and affirming friendship, if she were not an outsider in her community. Daria does not appear or behave the way that adults imagine girls wish to look and behave. She is not considered beautiful, approachable or cool in her school environment, and is regarded with confusion and suspicion by adults and peers alike. However, as an outcast, Daria is not beholden to patriarchal beauty standards. She can air her disdain without being considered representative of anyone but herself, and without being labelled “bitchy” or “stuck-up.” She has the power to disrupt her surroundings, and can rely on Jane’s supportive

133 friendship through the difficult times and into the future. Daria offers a fantasy of both distinction and connection similar to that found in postwar explorations of outsider manhood. It is crucial to note that, in order to fulfil the romance of the outsider as White males like Jim Stark or Holden Caulfield did, Daria’s identity is never too marginal. Even as Daria stands out and disrupts her surroundings, she also fits in. Daria is the child of middle-class parents who are, for the most part, happily married and deeply interested in their two teenage daughters’ development and welfare. Recalling their experiences of raising Daria in the episode “Boxing Daria,” her parents assure her, “Daria, you can’t have a child with your kind of intelligence and expect her to fit in easily with other kids. … But we were never unhappy with you.” While she is represented as physically plain, Daria’s body is normative; “while she doesn’t diet, rarely puts on makeup, and never lets fashion dictate her wardrobe, she also never gets fat,” despite frequently eating pizza and burgers (Slutzker 2015). Finally, while not prone to actively chasing boys, Daria is heterosexual. After moving to Lawndale with her family, she develops a powerful crush on Jane’s older brother Trent. This persists until the episode “Jane’s Addition” (Eichler 1999a), which brings the crush storyline to a close and introduces the character of Tom, who dates first Jane and later Daria. However, the fact that both of Daria’s male love interests are connected to Jane, as well as the girls’ closeness and camaraderie, facilitates readings of her relationship with Jane as romantic. The series’ producers often used strategies of disavowal to distance Daria and Jane from queer readings. Discussing lesbian subtext in film, Straayer provides a framework for understanding why Daria is often interpreted as a queer teenage girl: “If women are situated only in relationship to men or in antagonistic relationship to one another, the ... [possibility] of lesbianism is precluded” (1996, 17). This was the original rationale behind the famous . Coined by lesbian cartoonist Alison Bechdel in a 1985 strip titled “The Rules,” wherein the character of a young woman explains that she only watches films which have two or more named female characters who converse about something other than a man (Martindale 1997, 69). While in post-millennial popular culture, the Bechdel Test is popularly used as a comically simple litmus test for measuring the feminist credentials of books, television series and films, it originally spoke to the challenges faced by queer women in finding media that reflected their lives. If female characters are not allowed to so much as speak to each other about anything other than men, are positioned as enemies or remain unnamed, this limits the potential to tell queer women’s stories in media. An effect of this is that any media in which girls or women prioritise one another other allows for queer interpretation.

134 Furthermore, there exists a cultural expectation that people will expend more emotional energy on a “prospective or actual mate” than they would on a platonic friend (Lees 1993, 102). Hence, when fictional characters are emotionally invested in another character, audiences are positioned to assume that their relationship is non-platonic. Finally, according to San Filippo, “gender nonconformity and same-sex desire” are often conflated, meaning that adolescent girls who pursue intellectual, artistic or sporting interests are typically read as more likely to be queer than normatively feminine women whose interests appear to be focussed on fashion and external appearance (2013, 139). Girls such as Daria and Jane, who unabashedly enjoy literature and art without seeming to worry that these interests will impede their attractiveness to boys, are thus ripe for queer readings. The idea that Daria and Jane’s closeness could indicate a developing romantic relationship between them was referenced jokingly by the series’ producers. One example is the animated interstitials for MTV’s Daria Day marathon on February 16 1998, in which Daria and Jane answer questions from fans of the series:

Daria: Okay, we’re back with an online question from Brian H. Jane: ‘Dear Daria, are you a lesbian? If so, would you be interested in acting in a film?’ Wow. Daria: Brian, I’m not a lesbian. But if you think you have to be a lesbian to play a lesbian, then you must think Tom Cruise drinks the blood of virgins. Jane: Um, bad example. Daria: Huh? Oh yeah, but you know what I mean. Jane: I’m a lesbian! Daria: You are not. Jane: I know, but I want to be in a movie.

Similarly, during the Sarcastathon 3000 marathon of Daria episodes on 17 February 2001, an interstitial presents Jane and Daria as an artist and nude model (standing behind a screen). The characters have the following exchange:

Jane: Come on out, Daria. The cartoon body is nothing to be ashamed of. Daria: If I come out, it’s just gonna feed those rumours about us. Jane: Hmm, wouldn’t want to do that. Okay, then. I’ll just do this nude painting of you from memory.

135

Figure 15 Screen capture of Jane and Daria as an artist and nude model (MTV)

These comic exchanges exemplify the tendency of media producers to “acknowledge[…] the pleasures that lesbian fans take in the friendship between ... women, but refuse[…] to actually represent lesbians” (Hilton-Morrow 2015, 159). The possibility of female queerness is further refuted in-text. In “Is It Fall Yet?” a bisexual woman at an art retreat accuses Jane of “giving off gay vibes” in order to try and manipulate Jane into having sex with her. By relegating the idea of the girls being queer to the realm of salacious rumour-mongering, male fantasy or the desires of predatory queer females, Daria’s producers ensure that the outcast girl character’s identity remains appealing to a mainstream audience. The outcast girl in North American television animation aimed at a youth audience has more in common with the everygirl, girly-girl and popular girl types than is immediately apparent. Like these girl types, the outcast is necessarily possessed of a normative class, body and sexuality. Similarly to the tomboy, the cultural links of female outsiderhood with female queerness are repudiated in order to legitimize the character’s perspective. Finally, like the everygirl and tomboy, the principled, intellectual outsider girl has no means to challenge sexism outside of her individual choices to disengage from social life and the pursuit of popularity. Examining Daria’s positioning at the intersection of feminist discourses, Ivins- Hulley argues that Daria is “alone in her cynicism” because “no subversive community is shown to exist in Lawndale” (2014, 1208). Daria is, of course, not literally alone. She has Jane as a best friend, and while Jane is slightly more socially apt than Daria, they are united in their disdain for conformity. Rather, both girls are alone in the sense that they are politically isolated and individualised, as almost everyone else in Lawndale is content with the status quo. Ivins-Hulley argues that: the persistent individualism of pop culture’s distillation of feminism … deprives women of the tools to launch an effective protest and removes frameworks for understanding the systemic reasons for when one finds she cannot, in actuality,

136 exercise the power she’s been promised. What do we do when our individual power is not enough to change social injustice? After all, “speaking up” is only one step in enacting social change, and yet so often mass media present it as the only option (2014, 1208). The romance of the outsider is both freeing and restrictive for girl characters, arguably to the same degree as discourses of middle-class White niceness and androcentric girlhood. However, this version of the girl typing discourse, with its intervention into what it takes to stand out and to fit in in contemporary North American youth culture, has the potential for a more nuanced examination of girlhood, as becomes apparent in the Daria episode “Monster” (Beber 1998).

Episode Analysis: “Monster” In this section, I analyse textually, discursively and narratively the representation of the outcast and popular girl types in the Daria episode “Monster.” I also examine how this episode shapes representations of girlhood in later seasons of Daria, moving beyond the parameters of the ideology of the romance of the outsider. My incorporation of later seasons into my analysis deviates from the established format in the episode analysis sections in Chapters Four and Five, which analysed the Ginger episode “Deja Who?” and Recess episode “First Name Ashley.” I move away from the established format in order to deepen my analysis by taking into account the impact of “Monster” on the series as a whole. The Daria episode “Monster” has a similar overall structure to “Deja Who?” and “First Name Ashley,” including a subverted transformation and sameness panic (in the context of a dream sequence). It also shares themes with these episodes, particularly the theme of comparison and gender performativity. However, unlike the episodes from other series, “Monster” gives new insight into popular girl Quinn’s inner life, not just the outcast protagonist Daria’s. By exploring not only how the resolution of the episode “Monster” establishes a precedent that expands possibilities for girl characters, but also how these possibilities work in practice, I show that the girl typing discourse can counterpose dominant notions of girlhood identity even as it works to construct them. I begin by naming my concept of “sameness panic,” a phrase I use to describe the discomfort girl characters show when they behave in ways considered inconsistent with their girl type. I move into analysis of the episode “Monster.” In order to show how this episode deconstructs the outcast girl/popular girl formation, I define and explore binary oppositions and deconstruction. Finally, I analyse how the precedent set in “Monster” for positioning all

137 girl characters operates in later episodes of Daria, indicating that the girl typing discourse has the potential to expand narrative possibilities for girl characters. Many of the transformation-themed episodes discussed in this thesis hinge upon moments of what I name “sameness panic.” This is a moment in which the female protagonist realises that she is behaving in a stereotypically feminine fashion and resolves to change her behaviour. In the Ginger episode “Deja Who?” (Anthony 2001), Ginger realises that being like Courtney means she will lose Macie and Dodie’s friendship. In the Hey Arnold! episode “Helga’s Makeover” (Lipman 1996), Helga’s quest for acceptance ends as she draws the line at putting on a guacamole face mask at a sleepover. In the Recess episode “The Beauty Contest” (Bideau 1999), Spinelli decides that she is being inauthentic by using the Ashleys’ tactics to win a pageant. In each of these examples, the beginning of the redemptive phase of the storyline hinges on a realisation that the girl protagonist is enacting a form of femininity considered taboo within the field she occupies. Moments of sameness panic can also be spurred by , dreams or nightmares. In the Daria episode “Through a Lens Darkly” (Eichler 1999b), Daria’s brief foray into wearing contact lenses rather than glasses gives her a nightmare in which she sees funhouse mirror reflections of her face, horribly disfigured, showing her concern that wearing contacts is inexcusably vain. In “The F Word” (Romberg 2000), Daria’s Language Arts class is set an assignment where they must fail at something. Jane decides that she will fail at conforming, but finds that she is frighteningly good at it and experiences an identity crisis. However, Jane is snapped out of conformity by a brief daydream in which she is the perky, oblivious cheerleader Brittany, cheering at the sidelines and kissing the oafish football player Kevin. Figure 16 shows Jane’s troubled facial expression as she is roused from this daydream, perturbed at the thought of living Brittany’s life. She promptly sabotages her cheerleading audition by scowling and chanting, “Cheer, cheer, cheer. Yell, yell, yell. Who cares who wins? We’re all going to Hell.”

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Figure 16 Screen capture showing Jane’s sameness panic in “The F Word” (MTV)

For an outcast to show an interest in fashion or conformity carries the risk of straying into a liminal space, “stranded between categories, functions, and meanings” (Driscoll 2011, 112). The same applies to the girl typing formations in Ginger and Recess – what does it mean for an everygirl to aspire to power, or a tomboy to wear a ballgown? In its own way, each of these series asks over and over: what does it mean to be multiple things at once? As a concept drawn from anthropological studies of rites of passage in “primitive” cultures, liminality describes a state of having outgrown one subjectivity and being yet to attain another (Driscoll 2011; see Turner 1967). Liminal spaces between two subjectivities are by definition “nebulous social places whose rules were unclear and status uncertain” (Bettis 2005, 6). For this very reason, liminality is often antithetical to the girl typing discourse, which hinges on being able to label girls at a glance. That liminality threatens the girl typing discourse can arguably be traced to the proliferation of the discourse in promoting fantasies of power and individuality to girls. Discussing the pressure on girls in the early to mid-2000s to self-categorise as a way of asserting individuality, Brown and Lamb observe:

There is never a tuba- and soccer-playing girl who doesn’t care that much about clothes but who works at the grocery store, babysits, and does well in school. It is hard to visualize that kind of girl. Marketers don’t want her for the same reason that parents do: She is complex and not an easy sell (2006, 7).

That it is difficult to “sell” nuanced characterisations – whether in the sense of good sister/bad sister narratives in age-old folklore and fairy tales, or representations of powerful girlhoods in television animation of the 1990s and 2000s – means that any suggestion of liminality, of transitioning out of a particular subjectivity, is taken with horror. Moments of sameness panic usually spur the climax of the episode, the moment at which the girl character publicly proclaims that this is not who she is, and that she will be

139 returning to her previous subjectivity. In this tradition of storytelling, the revelation that the girl protagonist has anything in common with her more popular or normatively feminine opposite number signals a serious misstep in need of correction. Within this formation, popular or normatively feminine girls are used as an example for the girl protagonist to measure herself by. While she is not ostentatiously wealthy, Quinn Morgendorffer fits most other criteria for classification as a popular girl, being physically attractive, charismatic and adept in the use of clothing and cosmetics. Quinn underperforms academically, gets swept up in fads, has little sense of responsibility and is ignorant of the feelings and needs of others. In the episode “Monster,” Daria and Jane decide to make their Language Arts filmmaking project an exposé of Quinn’s “superficial, narcissistic, self-absorbed” nature. Daria promises her mother Helen that she will depict Quinn fairly, but has no intention of fulfilling this promise. Daria and Jane follow the Fashion Club from power yoga to the pizza parlour to the mall, increasingly exasperated with both Quinn’s inane outlook on life and her refusal to show anything but her “best side” while she is on camera. After a long day of filming, they finally hit pay dirt when Quinn and her friend Tiffany are standing at a makeup counter.

Quinn: Oh, look, pore refiner! I’m glad I don’t need that. Have you ever noticed how popular people always have the tiniest pores? I wonder why that is. Tiffany: Your pores are really cute, Quinn. Quinn: But you can’t see them, can you? Quinn: becomes agitated as she notices Daria focusing the camera on her face. Quinn: Oh my God, they’ve been … they’ve been zooming! You better not zoom that thing. Stop zooming, I mean it. If you can see any of my pores on camera, I swear, I’ll kill you. Stop the tape! I do not have pores! My pores are cute! My pores are tiny! You’re fired! Quinn: blocks the camera lens with her hand and flounces away. Daria: Anything you say can and will be used against you. We’ve got our Quinn. Jane: That’s a wrap. Daria: But a wrap skirt is a definite don’t. Oh, my God. Did I really just say that?

140 This final quip is the episode’s first instance of sameness panic. Within this articulation of the girl typing discourse, knowledge of current fashion (even knowledge gleaned from taping the conversations of four couture-obsessed teenage girls for the better part of a day), is a worrying and embarrassing slip-up on the part of an intelligent person.

Figure 17 Daria’s dream sequence in the episode “Monster” (MTV)

This sameness panic is elaborated upon in Daria’s dream sequence that follows. In it, the Fashion Club walk down a hallway at Lawndale. The image is distorted, Quinn is replaced by Daria in Quinn’s body, and the others, while they speak in their normal voices, all have Jane’s head. Jane/The Fashion Club heap Daria/Quinn’s pores with praise, which she graciously deflects by musing that “Pores Like Yours” would make an excellent name for a pore conditioner. Sandi/Jane fawns, “God, Daria, how do you do it? Here we are, complimenting you on your perfect pores, and here you are, unselfishly thinking of how you can improve the pores of others.” Daria/Quinn makes a terrible pun about pores, Jane/The Fashion Club laughs heartily, and Daria wakes from her dream in shock. While comedic, the dream articulates Daria’s deep-seated horror of anything she considers shallow. The next day, Daria makes Jane promise to “do the right thing” if she begins “acting, talking or thinking like Quinn.” They begin editing their film project. Walking past, Helen sees a part where Quinn asking, “Which is my best side? I know they’re both good” is immediately followed by footage of her pore meltdown. Disappointed in Daria, Helen urges her daughter to do the right thing by her sister, and leaves the room. Daria asserts that her mother has “clearly overestimated my conscience … by assuming I have one at all.” It is at this moment that Quinn enters.

Quinn: Is that my movie? Can I see? Daria: Sorry, but that would interfere with the creative process.

141 Jane: See, we’re like artists, and this is how we express ourselves. You understand. Quinn: I can’t wait to see it. I just hope I don’t sound stupid or anything. Quinn: laughs nervously. Quinn: Not that I would. Daria: Perish the thought. Quinn: I just, I know that sometimes certain types of people, jealous people, might think, who does she think she is? Because I sometimes think that. But I can’t let myself go on too long thinking that. Daria: Or anything else. Quinn: I mean, sometimes I’m walking down the hall with Sandi, Stacy, and Tiffany, and suddenly I’m outside of myself, watching, and it’s like, ‘Who are these girls? Can’t they talk about anything besides guys, and clothes, and cars?’ But then, what would we talk about? You have to be good at something. Quinn: indicates Daria, then Jane. Quinn: You’re good at your reading and writing and stuff, and you’re good at your little paintings. Jane: They are miniscule, aren’t they? Quinn: I figure, being attractive and popular, that’s what I’m good at. Maybe it’s not that important, but, you know, it’s what I can do.

With this indication that Quinn can also feel uncomfortable being pigeonholed into a particular girl type, Daria’s cuts the pore meltdown scene from the final edit of The Depths of Shallowness: A True Story. The student body responds with overwhelming positivity to the film, showering Quinn with praise. Daria observes, “She’s more popular than ever. We set out to make an exposé, it ends up a love letter.” Jane quips, “See, we’re like artists, and this is how we screw ourselves.” The episode closes with Quinn addressing a clamour of students: “And you, too, can have bouncy hair if you just take the time to bounce from the inside out. Come on, everyone! Bounce with me!” While the episode defaults to moments of sameness panic, “Monster” stands out from multiple episodes in both Daria and other television animation series where a protagonist is wracked with fear upon identifying with another girl. The events of “Monster” provide Daria with a more nuanced understanding of her sister, rather than a terrifying glimpse of what

142 Daria herself could be if she does not police herself better. Rather than realising that she should change her behaviour so as not to emulate Quinn, Daria instead comes to understand that while Quinn is different to herself and Jane, she has human emotions and doubts, and ultimately deserves to be treated with dignity. In order to examine the significance of this narrative turn, not only for girlhood representation in Daria but for the girl typing discourse as a whole, I will define the concepts of binary oppositions and deconstruction. The North American animated series examined in this thesis each premise girlhood identity around binary oppositions. Binary oppositions are pairs of concepts commonly thought of as completely and innately different to one another, but also as inextricably linked. Within Western thought, meaning has conventionally been derived from binary oppositions such as white/black, mind/body, masculinity/femininity and rationality/emotionality, among many others. The terms on either side of a binary opposition give meaning to each other. For example, without the existence of feminine modes of expression, masculinity as we understand it could not exist. The same cannot be said for femininity and other states of being which are not linked to femininity in a binary opposition, such as femininity and greed, or femininity and . A crucial aspect of binary oppositions is that one half of the binary is privileged over the other because of its association with related binary oppositions. The mind, for instance, is often associated with masculinity and rationality, whereas the body is often linked to femininity and emotionality. Concepts on the latter side of each binary opposition are linked more because they are commonly disregarded or denigrated than because of any indisputable similarity or incontrovertible fact. For example, while mind is generally linked with rationality, and body with emotionality, this ignores that emotions are processed intellectually within the mind. Thus, it becomes plain that concepts on the former side of a binary are prized both because they are linked to other culturally favoured concepts (mind with masculinity and rationality) and positioned as the unquestioned opposite to other denigrated concepts (mind vs. body), rather than because of an intrinsic superiority. To elucidate further, this is why white and black are considered a binary opposition as both colours and concepts, due to their cultural associations with each other and with other related binaries (such as good/evil). This cannot be said of the colours orange and purple; while these colours are just as different to one another as white and black, they are not associated with other binaries and assigned value based on these relations. When it comes to girl typing in television animation for children and teenagers, the same logic applies: while outcast girls and tomboys have many differences, the association of these subject positions

143 with concepts such as masculinity, rationality, the mind and so on means that there is no recognised outcast/tomboy binary opposition. With this in mind, it is more easily understood that not all differences between people or concepts constitute binary oppositions. Daria and Jane, for instance, are a writer and an artist respectively. That these are different talents does not place Daria and Jane on opposing sides of a binary. Both writing and art are associated with the mind, whereas Quinn’s preoccupation with appearance is commonly associated with the body. The existence of similarities between art and fashion (such as the creativity required to excel in either one) are ignored or denied to preserve the sanctity of the boundary between these binaries. This ensures the continued supremacy of dominant beliefs and values, which call for women to be decorative while also castigating them for any signs of preoccupation with appearance. What turns a pair of identifying labels into a binary opposition is the notion that these things are defined by their differences from one another. For example, referring to gender, Judith Butler claims “that signification exists only in relation to another, opposing signification” (1990, 9). The possibility of possessing traits from both significations is denied. In the context of the girl typing discourse, the rejection of the mere thought of girls inhabiting multiple states – which could render the girl type labels meaningless and undermine the entire discourse – manifests itself in sameness panic. When characters experience sameness panic, they react with disgust to any notion that they might have more than the barest minimum in common with a girl whose gendered subjectivity is the perceived opposite of their own. Within binary oppositions, each category is implicitly associated with particular qualities. For example, the pairing of femininity with body and masculinity with mind comes about as “competing areas of culture come into conflict” (Kern 2008, 173). Similarly, the cultural turn to irony which produced Daria positioned conspicuous intelligence and sarcasm as the expression for both the cultural elite and romantic outsiders, meaning that these two groups were conflated. Thus, earnestness and the expression of “shallow” ideals (such as any professed interest in fashion) were positioned as necessarily the opposite of the favoured qualities of intelligence and sarcasm. These binary oppositions constitute a “violent hierarchy” where “one of the two terms governs the other … or has the upper hand” (Derrida 1981, 41). Derrida argues that within binary oppositions, one term is ideologically positioned as primary, while the other (usually the second) is implied to be “occasional … accessory … auxiliary … [or] parasitic” to the first (1997, 54). These can create boundaries between

144 groups of people, leading to prejudice and . A prime example is the girl typing discourse’s privileging of particular girl types over others. Binary oppositions cannot be overturned by simply declaring them obsolete, or by reversing the terms so that emotion is valued over rationality, nature over culture or matriarchy over patriarchy. This does nothing to challenge the systems of thought that privilege one component of binaries over the other (Clair 1998). Derrida warns that, “[t]o overlook this phase of overturning is to forget the conflictual and subordinating structure of opposition” (1981, 41). Deconstruction should be understood not as a theory of replacement, but as a theory of disruption, which calls into question the centrality of dominant belief systems. In deconstructing a binary opposition, we must ask why one component of a binary is considered superior to another, and how we can disrupt these associations. What must be undone or problematized is the notion of hierarchy as informing common sense understandings of the world. This is how the episode “Monster” challenges the dominant binary of the popular girl and outcast girl. Deconstruction of media discourses involves taking apart a representation or the structures which underpin it, so as to gain a greater understanding of the cultural meanings attached to it, in order to see what sway it holds over people. Deconstruction often involves examining a work’s inherent contradictions by questioning what could cause this representation to occur in reality. “Monster” calls into question the idea that Quinn must behave in a shallow fashion because she does not know that to do so is inferior, or that she is content to be inferior. It does this by questioning why Quinn, a freshman in high school, might ally herself with powerful people at the seeming expense of her intellectual freedom. Furthermore, Quinn is allowed to explain her situation in her own words, challenging the idea that Daria is the only person with insight. The episode argues that insight on the part of teenage girls is not always welcomed by the world at large, so it is logical that many would choose to conceal their concerns and doubts. These conclusions come to inform the character development and narrative arcs in future episodes of Daria. This is aided by a change in the series’ approach to the passage of time. The prepubescent characters of Recess inhabit a floating timeline where the onset of puberty is permanently delayed, meaning that Spinelli will never have to contend with the difficulties that can come with continuing tomboy behaviours into adolescence. In Ginger’s linear timeline, the question of niceness versus popularity is gradually deemphasised, in order to both signal character growth on the part of the protagonist and arguably, to avoid engaging with the fundamental, irreconcilable bind these competing demands place on the girl

145 characters. By contrast, Daria begins with a floating timeline wherein Daria’s views of popular girls are fixed. In the fourth season, Daria transitions to a linear timeline, where both the outcast main character and the audience come to a greater understanding of the incongruities of girlhood identity. This is evocative of the increasing awareness Daria gains that transitioning to a new or redefined subjectivity presents new possibilities for not only herself, but her sister Quinn. Within the girl typing discourse, girls who are both ostentatiously feminine and aspire to power tend to be characterised broadly. Their motivations for acting in particular ways are often limited to desiring greater popularity or a high-status boyfriend. While this can be said of Quinn, she is also allowed an increasing degree of character development and interiority as the series progresses. Throughout the first few years of the series, Quinn balks at any opportunity to use her mind, not wanting to be a “brain” like Daria. However, in the Daria television film “Is It Fall Yet?” (Eichler 2000c), Quinn develops a crush on her summer tutor David. He is not conventionally attractive by normatively masculine standards, but Quinn finds that he challenges her intellectually. When Quinn asks him out, David declines, giving the reason that he “prefers girls with depth” (with the implication that Quinn being underage is also part of the reason). Quinn is moved to tears by the rejection, but begins to assert her intelligence. In her first day back in class after summer vacation, Quinn offers the following definition of Manifest Destiny: “a phrase politicians used to say that God wanted the U.S. to keep expanding west all the way to the Pacific Ocean. Because why bother owning the country if Hollywood wasn’t included?” Here, Quinn tempers her first attempt at showing her brains, self-deprecating with the implication that she believes Hollywood existed in the 1840s, or else that pioneers were somehow aware of Hollywood’s future importance. This is a call-back to the series premiere “Esteemsters” (Eichler 1997), in which Daria defines Manifest Destiny in her Social Studies class: “Manifest Destiny was a slogan popular in the 1840s. It was used by people who claimed it was God’s will for the U.S. to expand all the way to the Pacific Ocean. These people did not include many Mexicans.” Here, Daria defines the same concept but also includes a politically astute remark about the disenfranchisement of indigenous populations. Even as both sisters demonstrate their knowledge, they are differentiated by the extent to which they want to create controversy and buck against the expectations for adolescent girls. Yet, crucially, Quinn’s hesitation to show her brains does not mean she is necessarily uninformed. Rather, she is the product of a culture which

146 discourages girls from engaging in behaviours which might intimidate men and thus destabilise patriarchy. While the sisters bicker almost constantly, the second season finale “Write Where It Hurts” (Eichler 1998b) implies that Daria has hope for Quinn to mature. Tasked to write a story in which she is truthful about what she wants, Daria writes about coming together with her family in the future. In this vision of a possible future for the Morgendorffers, their father Jake compliments Quinn on having “taken all that energy and enthusiasm you used to direct toward being, um, a teensy bit self-absorbed” and put it into bringing up children.18 Daria’s future version of Quinn is wry and self-aware, but still recognisably Quinn, suggesting that Quinn’s personality is not irredeemably selfish, but that she is simply reacting to her environment. This interpretation is borne out in the series finale, “Boxing Daria” (Eichler 2001), which shows Quinn as a pre-schooler, witnessing six-year-old Daria being isolated due to her intelligence. This causes Quinn to consciously downplay her intellect and seek out the company of popular people, as in the flashbacks in the episode “Camp Fear” (Greenberg 2001), where ten-year-old Quinn learns to deny her relationship to Daria and flatter more powerful girls in order to be included. Ultimately, Quinn directs her considerable determination and attention to detail towards superficial pursuits because the isolation her sister is subjected to causes Quinn to fear that people would not accept her if she was more complex. This is a far cry from the simplistic sour-grapes framing of popular girls in series such as Ginger, Recess, Kim Possible and Totally Spies. Lyn Mikel Brown’s assessment of the place of covert aggressions in girlhood applies here; Quinn’s superficiality and anti-intellectualism is “a protective strategy and an avenue to power learned and nurtured in early childhood and perfected over time” (2003, 6). In Quinn’s monologue, she speaks to the double bind this places her in: she wants to stand out and be exceptional, but she also wants to have connection and companionship. In this way, Quinn is marginalised by the same cultural desires that, in another formation, gave rise to the romance of the outsider itself. In most of the North American television animation analysed in this thesis, any suggestion that a girl is interested in becoming something else, being more than one thing at

18 The representation of Quinn as a harried but ultimately patient and well-organised mother may give some pause, as the representation of an egotistical woman as “tamed” by motherhood is hardly original. The closing credits of the series finale “Is It College Yet?” (Eichler 2002) also depict adult Quinn as a hard-nosed businesswoman. While both of these possible futures are non-canonical and exist primarily to show how Daria imagines her sister’s future, they do imply that Quinn’s talents may be broadly applicable, and that her chances for redemption (for treating Daria poorly in their shared youth) do not lie only in parenthood.

147 once, or even exploring new interests is taken as a threat to her identity, as proof that she is content to be inferior and should be treated as such. This is especially true if the new territory being explored relates to normatively feminine experiences or pastimes. “Monster” is the episode that begins the series-long process of deconstructing the aspects of the girl typing discourse which keep all the girl characters discussed in this thesis firmly in their place. It shows how the girl typing discourse could be used to address the limitations imposed on girls by discourses of gender, race, age, sexuality and class, rather than reinscribing these limitations. The representation of both Daria and Quinn in “Monster” highlights the potential of the girl typing discourse to uncover how gendering of girls can disenfranchise them, without judging girls who choose to perform normative femininity. Rather than explaining girls’ behaviour through sour-grapes framing or assumptions regarding class and culture, “Monster” suggests that people of varying gendered subjectivities can have compelling motives for behaving in ways others may find incomprehensible or laughable.

Conclusion This chapter has examined the representation of outcast girl type by analysing the animated series Daria, an MTV cartoon geared toward adolescent audiences. In Daria, popularity is the social currency of the adolescent characters, but quietly opposing this system is where Daria’s cultural cachet originates from. Outcast girl characters such as Daria offer a fantasy of both connection and distinction which dates back to postwar North American imaginings of outsider manhood. This chapter’s episode both recalls and refutes the episodes in the previous chapters through deconstruction. In “Monster,” Daria denigrates her sister’s identity as a popular girl and fears the encroachment of shallowness into her own subjectivity. Daria cannot easily incorporate moments of incongruity into her understanding of her gender identity; rather, she can only be satisfied with a continual, unproblematic performance of outcast girlhood. This series draws upon the classic good sister/bad sister, popular sister/unpopular sister formation which has been entrenched in stories about girls and women for hundreds of years. However, the strained relationship between the sisters is attributed to factors outside of their direct control, rather than explained using sour-grapes framing or gender entitlement. The deconstruction of girlhood identity in the episode “Monster” indicates that girl typing can be used to tell diverse stories and explore girls’ perspectives in a nonjudgmental manner. The next chapter discusses and concludes my overall findings regarding the girl typing discourse in North American children’s television animation, considering the

148 intersections of programme context and ideology, dominant cultural ideas regarding race, class, gender, sexuality and age; and the idea of girls’ identities as mutable, performative and interdependent.

149 Discussion and Conclusion Introduction This chapter’s purpose is to discuss the importance and implications of my findings, and to demonstrate that my aims have been achieved and my research questions answered. I detail and analyse my findings, demonstrating how the girl typing discourse in North American children’s television animation emerges out of a complex array of discourses, ideologies, socio-historical conditions and animation conventions. The applicability and importance of my research derives from its findings on the differing identities that mainstream popular culture offers girls, by demonstrating that these emerge from an expansive girl typing discourse. I acknowledge the limitations of my research, and explain how the boundaries I placed on my research framework proved advantageous. I explore the questions that my findings raise, both in terms of the kinds of girls who are absent from the girl typing discourse, and the ways that animation post-2010 has reinterpreted or rejected the girl typing discourse, which future research can address. I conclude with suggestions for how my research offers the foundations to take researchers in new directions. To summarise my research project and its temporal parameters, North American commercial television since 1990 has been subject to a boom in the number and narrative complexity of animated programmes. This is primarily due to the passing of the 1990 Children’s Television Act and the rise of cable children’s channels. Between 1990 and 2010, North American popular culture has also seen a boom in media about girls, due to increased awareness of girls as a marketing demographic and social hopes and anxieties fixated on the figure of the girl. My research study investigated the intersection of these two spheres, by examining the representation of girlhood in North American children’s television animation. The girl characters in series such as Rugrats (1991-2004), Hey Arnold! (1996-2004), Arthur (1996-present), Daria (1997-2002), Recess (1997-2003), The Powerpuff Girls (1998-2004), Mike, Lu & Og (1999-2001), Angela Anaconda (1999-2002), X-Men: Evolution (2000-2003), As Told By Ginger (2000-2004), Jackie Chan Adventures (2000-2005), Braceface (2001- 2005), The Proud Family (2001-2005), Totally Spies (2001-2014), Fillmore! (2002-2004), Kim Possible (2002-2007), Teen Titans (2003-2006), All Grown Up (2003-2008), Dave the Barbarian (2004), Bratz (2005-2007) and Avatar: The Last Airbender (2005-2008) are undoubtedly more varied and have greater agency than girls and women in previous decades of animation. However, their narratives and overall characterisations are largely written as

150 concordant with binary notions of girlhood, femininity and gender.19 Furthermore, their identities are positioned as mutable, performative and interdependent within discourses of gender, race, class, life stage and sexuality. Girl characters draw agency from their positioning within particular types, but the ways that they use their agency are structured by the context and ideology that the series in question was positioned within. The gap in knowledge that I discovered and which provoked my initial curiosity was that previous studies of girl representation in children’s television animation mostly delimit a focus on either prepubescent or adolescent girls, who are either normative or transgressive in terms of their gender expression. I considered whether there was an overarching theory of representation which could account for and encompass diverse representations of girls. This endeavour constituted the focus of my research project, prompting me to ask the following research questions:

1. How does the girl typing discourse construct girlhood identity? 2. How do context, ideology and the television animation medium influence the representation of gendered subjectivity?

Research Process To answer my research questions, I put a number of methodological strategies in place. The research involved a purposeful selection of a number of North American children’s television animation series and using textual, discourse and narrative analysis to deconstruct the representation of girls in them. My inquiry focused on the girl typing discourse in North American children’s television animation. To recapitulate briefly, by ‘girl typing discourse’ I mean ways of representing and discussing girls which conceive their subjectivities around their differences from one another. Based on my review of existing scholarly research and literature in this research field, especially that of Lyn Mikel Brown, Rebecca Hains and Katia Perea, whose invaluable research provided the foundations for me to consolidate their ideas, I concentrated on animated programmes featuring the young adolescent everygirl character, the adolescent popular girl, the prepubescent tomboy, the prepubescent girly-girl and the adolescent outcast.

I began with the everygirl character because she embodies the societal expectations for prepubescent, early adolescent and mid-to-late adolescent girls in Western nations. Appearing in series such as As Told By Ginger, Kim Possible and The Proud Family, the

19 Bibliographic details for these series are provided in the Filmography section of this thesis.

151 modest, compassionate everygirl achieves academically and socially, but never to a degree which intimidates others. She is concerned with fashion and appearance, to an extent considered indicative of a ‘proper’ femininity, rather than precocious sexuality. She defines herself by how she measures up to the popular girl. The popular girl, the next girl type I analyse, is the polar opposite of the everygirl: immodest, self-centred, anti-intellectual and focused on status and appearance. She fulfils none of the dictates for girls, yet is held in awe by the everygirl and her friends. However, the popular girl lacks genuine friendship, support and connection, due to power being ultimately incompatible with the kind of self-abnegation properly feminine girls are expected to perform. These two girl types are linked narratively, as each wants what the other possesses. Having established which girl type could be seen as the baseline representation of North American girlhood, I then considered the prepubescent tomboy character. Physically aggressive and expressive, the tomboy is gregarious, plain-speaking and unconcerned with appearances. She differs considerably from the everygirl, but occupies an equally privileged position within narratives. In series with tomboy girl characters, such as Hey Arnold! and Recess, boys are usually the protagonists or group leaders. Thus, the tomboy gains social esteem by doing what boys do. In this formation, the prepubescent girly-girl, the next girl type I explore, behaves almost exactly as the adolescent popular girl type does, but is despised for it. These two girl types are linked because of the ever-present danger of the tomboy being contaminated by the homosocial girly-girl’s love of fashion and beautification, which are necessarily indicative of an odious personality. Having considered the place of both prepubescent and early adolescent girls in the girl typing discourse, I asked what the place of mid- to late-adolescent girls could be, apart from devoting themselves to the pursuit of beauty and popularity, and outside the everygirl subjectivity. Societal expectations discourage adolescent girls from tomboyism; they are viewed as deviant if they express aggression openly or dress in ways considered masculine. With these factors in mind, I looked to the adolescent outcast girl type, which experienced a vogue in children’s television animation of the late 1990s and early to mid-2000s, appearing in series such as Daria, X-Men: Evolution and Avatar: The Last Airbender. The outcast girl can say whatever she wants, provided she says it in a sarcastic deadpan. She disrupts her environment by refusing to engage with it and/or questioning the logics which underpin it. She is able to decline participation and express disdain because as a White, middle-class person, she is considered without race or class affiliation, and thus as representing only herself. The outcast girl’s power comes from this ability to disrupt her surroundings, and

152 from her unique perspective, which gives her genuine connection with select others. While this formation is arguably as restrictive as any other, it also offers the potential for a series to deconstruct the role played by the popular girl, rather than positioning her through sour- grapes framing. Finding a girl typing formation which was open to considering the pursuit of popularity not as a moral weakness, but as a coping strategy, brought my research full circle.

Research Outcomes My research found that girls’ identities in children’s television animation are constructed and interpreted through a range of interconnected discourses, ideologies, socio-historical conditions and conventions of animation. My findings encompassed more than originally anticipated, so I have chosen to detail and analyse them as a list of outcomes.

Girls’ Identities in the Animation Medium During the 1990s and 2000s, the United States experienced a commercial animation boom (Wright 2013, 18-19). By the year 2000, there were fifteen cable channels and television networks which had “entire schedules dedicated to children’s and/or youth programming (Hall 2000, 36). In comparison to the highly gendered children’s programming of the 1980s, children’s television animation from the 1990s onward was far more likely to be pitched to a gender-neutral audience. The girl typing discourse thus became more prevalent in animation simply because there were more girl characters to interact with each other. The animation medium impacts on the articulation of girl typing discourses by allowing characters’ bodies to transform in order to reflect changes in their identities. Animation styles and character design are also used to position the audience in relation to the lead character’s girl typed worldview. In Daria, limited animation is used to render the girl protagonist preternaturally composed and expressionless, thus legitimating her reluctance to engage with the world. As Told By Ginger has a separate wardrobe of clothing for each character, in order to ground the series in a perceived reality of girlhood; that fashion is the principal means of self-expression for young girls. In Recess, the constant threat of Spinelli being forced to be a girly-girl is emphasised by her unwitting physical resemblance to the hated Ashleys. The very world each of these characters move through reflects their fears, concerns and priorities.

Girls’ Identities as Binary Opposites Within children’s television animation, there is no singular form of girlhood consistently represented as the one to which all girls should aspire. However, throughout the girl typing

153 discourse, girls’ identities are positioned as inextricably linked with the identities of the girls around them. For example, in Ginger, the title character’s transition from obscurity to popularity causes her awkward best friends, Dodie and Macie, to doubt their own subjectivities, with Macie asking, “If Ginger is Courtney, then who am I?” While this is admittedly played for comedy, it does speak to the degree to which girls are encouraged to see their identities as dependent on other girls’ continued performance of gender. If a girl engages in behaviours which do not align with the gender expectations of the particular branch of the girl typing discourse that her series is part of, she is often the object of pity, disdain, suspicion or contempt. In Recess, while Spinelli and the Ashleys are all girls, they play out a gender-normative rivalry in which the Ashleys’ behaviours are viewed as necessarily being the “opposite” of Spinelli’s. While there is nothing inherently opposite or even linked about children playing sports and children playing quietly with dolls, these behaviours are taken as not only linked, but are given relative values. For tomboyism and sports to be valuable, it must be situated in opposition to girly-girlness and playing with dolls. While Daria provides a framework for beginning to position differing identities, interests and behaviours as simply different, rather than as binaries, the status quo of the series places the girl characters into two rough groups: those girl characters with interiority, who are worthy of respect (Daria, Jane, Jodie) and those who are lesser (Quinn, the Fashion Club, Brittany). It is only through character growth that a character like Quinn begins to question the usefulness of distinctions such as “popular” and “brain.” Such character growth is not present in series such as Recess, which have floating timelines, or series such as Ginger, where the popular girl in a girl typing binary is phased out of the spotlight in order to draw attention away from the impossible quandary that middle-class White niceness places girls in. The problem with binaries is that they become hierarchical, essentialising particular qualities as arbitrarily linked, with one necessarily subordinate to the other. They provide shortcuts in thinking which allow people to make sense of a situation quickly, but only in particular ways. In this way, they limit the possibilities for particular characters – everygirl Ginger cannot fantasise about becoming a tattooed rebel, the girly-girl Ashleys cannot display emotions or motivations other than cattiness and tomboy Spinelli must necessarily struggle with any normatively feminine impulse. In this way, there is little acknowledgement that a person can hold multiple identities simultaneously. There are some exceptions; one example is the popular girl Quinn in Daria, who gradually becomes more comfortable

154 asserting her intelligence as she matures. However, within the overall binarised thinking of the girl typing discourse, these exceptions are few.

Race, Ethnicity, Class, Gender, Age and Sexuality North American children’s television animation positions Anglo-Celtic Whiteness and middle-classness as the default ethnic, racial and class identities for characters. The personalities of girls of colour and/or of diverse ethnic backgrounds are often filtered through simplified understandings of what “people like them” are like. Class status factors into this further: in order to be an everygirl (the girl type positioned as the exemplar of properly feminine girlhood), a girl may be White and/or middle-class, like White, working-class Ginger in As Told By Ginger and Black, middle-class Penny in The Proud Family. However, most everygirls are both White and middle-class. Where middle-classness is positioned as the default, wealthy girls are held in a kind of sneering fascination. Working-class status is largely relegated to the realm of the unmentionable, unless it is invoked to inspire pity for a formerly despised popular girl (such as Courtney, who loses her wealth at the conclusion of Ginger) or girly-girl (such as Lila in Hey Arnold!, who is revealed to be impoverished in order to cause the girls who bullied her to feel ashamed of themselves). More commonly, working-classness is used to account for a tomboy’s toughness and resourcefulness – qualities are considered uncommon in girls, and thus requiring explanation. In terms of gender expression, the animated girls who are simultaneously normatively feminine, power-hungry and have robust self-esteem are often positioned as functionally interchangeable. Girly-girls or popular girls may be strikingly similar – even identical – in terms of names, appearances and/or personalities. In the case of sizeable groups of popular or girly girls, their names and races may be their only identifying characteristics. Colouring of clothing or hair is used to figure gendered difference between pairs of White girl characters, with darker colours indicating female masculinity or gender transgression, as in the examples of Spinelli, Daria and Kim Possible’s Shego. That outcasts, everygirls and tomboys, are individuals, whereas popular or girly-girls are often part of a group of superficially similar girls, places value judgments on different performances of girlhood. While class, ethnicity and race are rarely discussed openly by characters within the series that I researched, the characters’ race, class and ethnicity impacts whether they occupy leading or supporting roles, as well as the storylines they are involved in.20 The interaction of

20 In “Grey Matters” (Fried 2002), an episode of the Canadian animated series Braceface (Clark 2001-2005) which aired on North American television, everygirl character Sharon worries that her Chinese-Canadian best

155 a girl’s class, ethnicity, race and gender dictates whether she is considered powerful or likable by other characters in her series, whether she is placed into the role of supportive friend, whether she advocates for her own interests or subjugates her own desires. Their personalities and gender expressions are also implicitly attributed to their class, ethnicity and/or race. This can be seen in the case of Spinelli in Recess whose working-class Italian- American background is positioned as the cause of her tomboyism, Jodie in Daria whose “” status as a middle-class African-American bars her from openly displaying negative emotion for fear of confirming racist assumptions about Black people and Courtney in Ginger, whose remote, upper-class parents are implied to be responsible for her materialism and insensitivity. Within these various meanings, the behaviours open to girls are dependent on their age – or, more accurately, their life stage. The three life stages I have examined in this thesis are prepubescent, early adolescent and mid-to-late adolescent. The behaviours which make the adolescent popular girls in Ginger and Daria so powerful in their school environments cause the prepubescent girly-girls in Recess to be held in contempt and suspicion. Similarly, the forms of physical expression common to prepubescent tomboy Spinelli in Recess are not as available to older girls in Daria, who are liable to be suspected of gender/sexual deviance if they fight physically or dress in ways considered traditionally masculine. Within the children’s television animation series studied, all girls are presumed heterosexual. Everygirls such as the main characters in Ginger and Kim Possible are appropriately heterosexual according to their age, expressing attraction to boys and dating in a chaste, serially monogamous fashion. Prepubescent tomboys in series such as Recess and Hey Arnold! are precociously heterosexual, seemingly in order to assuage concerns that they may grow up to be queer, while the possibility of adolescent outcast girls in Daria being queer is dismissed as male fantasy. While heterosexuality is constructed as the default, there are inappropriate ways to express heterosexuality. Prepubescent girly-girls’ precocious shows of heterosexuality through, for example, professing attraction to male idols or anticipating their future dating lives are attributed to their shallow personalities. Antagonistic popular girls (such as Miranda in Ginger) compete with everygirls or outcasts for the attention of

friend Maria is being abused by her Arab-Canadian boyfriend, and frets that perhaps these concerns reflect her own unconscious racism. This episode’s frank discussion of racism stands out from the vast majority of children’s television animation, which does not acknowledge character’s racial backgrounds openly, much less the existence of institutional racism.

156 particular boys, whereas benevolent popular girls (such as Courtney in Ginger) assist them or, at least, do not impede more deserving girls’ access to eligible boys.

Context and Ideology The representation of girl characters in children’s television animation is influenced by the series’ context and the brand identity of the network producing it. Billed as a network which placed children’s tastes at the forefront of its decisions, Nickelodeon’s As Told By Ginger structured the world the characters occupied using an awareness of current fashion and the adolescent heterosexual female gaze. Disney’s Recess takes both acting and producing talent as well as themes, character types and storylines from the earlier Nickelodeon series Hey Arnold! This demonstrates the extent to which Disney sought to maintain its position as the world’s most prolific producer of children’s entertainment. Finally, MTV’s cultural cachet in the 1990s and early 2000s derived from its positioning as the arbiter of cool – though its decision to produce Daria, a series about an intelligent, suburban teenage girl, arguably responded to both lagging ratings and criticism of its previous animated series. Within various programmes, girls’ identities are interpreted through larger cultural ideologies. In Ginger, the postfeminist imperative for girls to seek power clashes with the requirement for the characters to perform middle-class White niceness. The characters in Recess are constituted through androcentric and gender-entitled understandings of childhood, in which girls’ bullying behaviour is attributed to their femininity, and systems of control by boys are considered common sense. In Daria, the title character draws on an American cultural mythology which valorises the experiences of outsiders, rejecting the urge to fit in. That representations of girls in animation were simultaneously filtered through such seemingly disparate cultural ideologies is noteworthy. I note, however, that none of these cultural ideologies advocate for organised political action on the part of girls, and that all of them are contingent in some way on the presence of girls who do not perform gender to the specifications of that particular ideology, so that frustration about gender can be displaced onto other girls, and not onto patriarchy.

Girls’ Identities as Mutable, Performative and Interdependent In the children’s television animation series that I researched, girls’ narratives often involve experimentation with new identities. Girl characters can consciously change their identities through a sustained effort or unconsciously lose their identities through insufficient vigilance regarding their speech and behaviour. As a result of this, the animated girls must be on their

157 guard for any sign at all that they have lost their way, from abandoning their friends to indicating knowledge of fashion or beautification practices. Girl characters’ appearances dictate their moral standing and social capital. The presence of glasses, developed breasts, eyelashes, hips, hirsute legs, hair length or makeup bestowed by the animation artist or creative director on a character makes a statement about how seriously their aspirations – whether for genuine friendship, romance, academic achievement or popularity – should be taken within the narrative. Regardless of the types involves, other characters’ reactions to a girl’s appearance confirm the girl character’s identity and legitimate her membership in particular social groups. Girl characters transition to a different subjectivity by changing their appearance, and signal their desire to return to their original identity by donning their original clothing, hairstyle, makeup and/or speech patterns again. I found that girl characters’ movement between identities is usually motivated by some element of competition or comparison with other girls. This corroborates Brown’s argument that the girl typing discourse itself is premised around differences between girls (2003, 2006). My own analyses found that within the girl typing discourse, if one girl begins dressing and/or behaving differently, other girls are disturbed and threatened by this change, since it necessarily impacts on their own self-conception and performance of gender. This occurs in episodes such as “Deja Who?” and “First Name Ashley.” They may question their own identities or effect identity changes of their own in order to maintain balance and order. Otherwise, they may attempt to liberate their friend or persuade her to revert back to her previous identity. In series such as Ginger, Recess, Daria, Hey Arnold!, Angela Anaconda, Bratz, Kim Possible and Totally Spies, girls’ identities hinge on asserting their difference from a particular other girl or girls, and the differences in identities are distilled down to a single characteristic: niceness in relation to meanness, gender transgression in relation to gender conformity, outsider status in relation to social acceptance, and so on. The girl typing discourse constitutes girls’ social capital and agency as reliant on their performance of gender. Each girl character’s gender performativity allows the girls around her to define their own identities in terms of what they do that she does not, and vice versa. This is periodically destabilised through subverted transformation narratives, in which girls move from their original identity to a more normatively feminine and/or socially powerful one, before being presented with a warning to return to the previous subjectivity. The warning – a moment of what I have described as ‘sameness panic’ – may include threat of the loss of friends, of self, or of moral superiority. Within North American children’s television

158 animation, which girls have interiority, which girls are allowed to change, and what kind of girl they can change into, are each delimited by the boundaries outlined above: binary oppositions, race, ethnicity, class, gender, age, sexuality, context, ideology and the animation medium. In the next section on the significance of my findings, I explain further how the results of my analyses have created an original contribution to knowledge.

Significance of Findings Prior research on the representation of girl characters in children’s television animation has typically focussed on a particular girl type, such as the tomboy, or a single dichotomously opposed pair, such as the tomboy and girl-girl together (Hains 2007b, 2007a, 2012, Perea 2011, 2013, 2015). My research has addressed gaps in the literature by providing a way to discuss representations of girlhood in media without implying that there is a particular girl type which is hegemonic over all others. I have also provided a framework which can be applied to the girl types which were not able to be included in the thesis. My findings support Lyn Mikel Brown’s argument that mass media positions girlhood identity as premised around appearance and as inextricably bound up in the approval of boys. I have developed Brown’s concept of girl typing further by proposing a framework for considering girl typing in animation. My research has also identified the phenomenon of the subverted transformation, in which girls briefly experience life as a more powerful and/or maligned girl type in order to confirm that their own gendered identity is morally superior. My research on the series Recess and Daria corroborates Katia Perea’s arguments that many animated series are characterised by the use of feminine and anti-feminine foil characters. These characters’ roles in the narrative, respectively, are to provide a negative example of what normatively feminine girlhood is in comparison to the liberated protagonist, or to react negatively to displays of femininity. Since Perea’s argument is somewhat limited for the purposes of studying series which unabashedly celebrate emphasised or normative femininity, I have extended this by identifying a narrative device which I have named “sameness panic,” in which a character reacts with alarm or embarrassment when they unwittingly emulate a more exaggeratedly feminine girl’s behaviour. Within this formation, the standards of the feminine/anti-feminine foil character are contained within the protagonist alone. Rebecca Hains argues that girl characters in children’s television animation are obliged to only display their intelligence and competence in socially acceptable ways. My research backs up this claim. My critique of Hains’ conclusions is that what constitutes

159 “socially acceptable” changes according to the girl type of the characters involved, the ideology structuring the field they occupy and the production context of the series. For example, while Kim Possible tempers the impact of her competence with excessive niceness, Spinelli tempers the impact of her own competence by giving her allegiance to boys and masculinity, meaning that she does not constitute a threat. In this way, I show that normative femininity is not the only standard by which girls are measured in children’s television animation. My findings support Marnina Gonick’s argument that social anxiety about girlhood “does not … get conferred equally or in the same way on all girls” (2003, 4). While wealthy, normatively feminine girls with high self-esteem are most likely to be represented as villains or anti-heroes, they are not uniformly positioned as such. In As Told By Ginger, for example, popular girls are viewed with mixed awe and pity, whereas in Recess and Daria, they are disparaged. Whichever form of girlhood is positioned as correct in a particular programme, wealthy and normatively feminine girls with high self-esteem are likely to be represented as intellectually inferior and morally dubious. However, it is not normative femininity in and of itself which is denigrated, but rather, normative femininity which is untempered by White, middle-class constructs of niceness and self-effacement. This becomes plain when one notes that sympathetic girl characters in other series I viewed during my research, such as Ginger, The Proud Family, Totally Spies and Kim Possible, are kind, humble, caring, fashionable and appearance-conscious to a degree. Neither normative girlhood nor transgressive girlhood is uniformly positioned as aspirational or correct. Compliance or rebelliousness are both lauded insofar as they do not challenge patriarchal authority. For example, in Recess, the numerous characters all called Ashley who appear normatively feminine, are positioned as antagonists in the episode “The Ratings Game” (Wernick 2000) for trying to take over rulership of the playground. My research supports my argument that it is normative femininity paired with self-interest which is represented negatively. Characters such as Miranda and Courtney of Ginger, the Ashleys in Recess and Quinn in Daria are each physically attractive and fashionable, but are situated in roles ranging from foil to anti-hero to outright villain. These characters all appear normatively feminine and physically attractive, but do not bother to downplay their privilege or their desire to dominate others. By calling attention to systems of inequality, they contradict neoliberal thinking which holds that all success or failure is the result of individual effort and merit. The girl typing discourse does not call for all girls to be any one thing all the time. Rather, it calls for them to position themselves in opposition to other girls. It sanctions a

160 variety of gendered behaviours, as long as they are consistent with dominant cultural ideas about race, ethnicity, age, class, gender, age and sexuality – in short, as long as they do not constitute a direct threat to patriarchy. My conclusions demonstrate a way to link the divergent perspectives on representation of girls in animation: if the girl typing discourse is less about what the girl characters are being called to be, and more that they are being called to be it, then it can be equally true that normative femininity is potentially indicative of both a character’s empowerment and her villainy, or that a character’s gender transgression signals both her exalted position and her outsider status. By addressing the gap in literature around the selection of either pre-pubescent or adolescent characters as objects of study, I have shown that virtually every form of girlhood identity represented in animation can be incorporated into the girl typing discourse. Both a girl’s particular “type” (tomboy, everygirl, and so on) and her wider identity markers (race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, age) are subsumed into the girl typing discourse and taken as evidence of the kind of person she is. As a result of this formation, disabled, queer, fat and/or transgender girls (as well as girls of colour in leading roles) are rendered unimaginable, since their very existence challenges the ideologies that inform girl typing. For example, if middle-class White niceness ought to be the most important thing to girls in a particular time and place, there cannot be girls present who are full people despite not being middle-class, White or “nice” in the sense of being self-abnegating and unintimidating. This might show that girls do not have to be “nice,” middle-class and White – or else hint at the damage these expectations can wreak on girls who cannot live up to them. Similarly, if systems of prioritising masculinity and viewing gender performance as a measure of a person’s relative value are what structure a particular field, then the presence of transgender people could call into question the place of androcentrism and the usefulness of gender entitlement. Thus, in the children’s television animation of my research project, the overarching discourses of girlhood subsume all possible girlhoods while edging out girlhoods which refute them.

Implications of Study The major practical contribution of my research is that I have provided a way of understanding the representation of girls in media which does not presuppose an investment in either normative or transgressive modes of girlhood. The prior literature on particular girl types in isolation or as parts of a typed pair has been, and will continue to be, invaluable (Perea 2011, 2013, 2015, Hatch 2011, Hains 2004, 2007b, 2007a, 2008a, 2009, 2012, Abate

161 2008, Brown 2003, 2006). However, I offer a critique of the use of binary oppositions in the prior work of Hains and Perea by showing that girl typing does not operate like a stencil, producing something identical each time. The way girl typing works is more comparable to building several different houses around identical timber frames; while the different structures can vary, it will only be to a certain extent, as all have the same basic structure in common. My findings demonstrate that media constitutes gendered subjects within a range of interlinked discourses and principles. My account of girl typing does not imagine girlhood as subject to contamination by puberty, heterosexuality or beauty culture, but it does not define girlhood exclusively by these factors either. That girls in media can be reflected through as many as ten discursive frames simultaneously has implications for academic and professional fields which focus on the avenues girls are offered for self-expression, insofar as girls’ self- expression impacts on their agency. These fields include psychology, teaching, women’s health, girlhood studies, women’s and gender studies and policy-making, and I offer more detailed suggestions for how further research could build upon mine later in this chapter.

Limitations of Study The limitations of my research design relate primarily to sampling and selection procedures; namely, the variety of girl types and number of animated series I analysed in detail, as well as the time span of the selected series. I initially planned to analyse a greater number of animated series. However, due to the time and space constraints of a doctoral thesis, I delimited the scale of the project to focus on three series while referring more briefly to others. This decision was ultimately advantageous; analysing three series and five girl types gave me the opportunity to go into greater detail, rather than superficially describing dozens of different series and girl types. By concentrating on a smaller sample, I was able to devote my attentions to constructing a theory which could be applied widely, rather than aiming to cover every possible series or representation. My original research design involved analysing series spanning the entire time period of interest, 1990 to 2010. However, the series that represented the chosen girl types best all dated between 1997 and 2003. Each of these spanned between three and six seasons, offering a rich source of data. While contemporary North American animated series such as (Ward 2010-present), Gravity Falls (Hirsch 2012-2016) and (Sugar 2013-present) have compelling female characters who expand the parameters of what it means to be a girl, my concern was that my conclusions about ongoing programmes would be invalidated by episodes aired after my thesis submission. In the interests of balancing my

162 desire to be relevant with my concern about making my thesis quickly redundant, I limited my sample to series which had finished production. In this thesis, I concentrated primarily on five particular girl types, again due to the time and length limitations of a doctoral thesis. This focus meant that I was unable to consider types such as the geek (typified by a rigorous intellect, social ineptitude and esoteric interests, e.g. Gretchen Grundler in Recess) or the alpha girl (characterised by her leadership potential and well-rounded interests, e.g. Jean Grey in X-Men: Evolution). However, since the girl typing structures I have outlined in the outcomes section of this chapter (binary oppositions, race, ethnicity, class, gender, age, sexuality, context, ideology, mutability, performativity and interdependence) do not presuppose a girl character’s investment in either normative or transgressive forms of girlhood, I argue that as organising principles for theorising girl representation in media, they are generalisable to series which may or may not include the everygirl, popular girl, tomboy, girly-girl or outcast girl types.

Recommendations for Future Research My research has established a rationale for examining the girl typing discourse. My own and others’ future research can use this as a foundation upon which to base future inquiries. Future research can widen the sample to cover a greater number of series, girl types that I did not have the space to discuss in this thesis and series dating from the beginning and end of the time period 1990-2010. My research demonstrates that the girl typing discourse encompasses a wide range of representations of girlhood. My analysis has found that within a range of representations of girlhood, girls’ identities are structured around interlinked key logics – that girl characters are positioned in comparison or opposition to one another, their identities mutable, performative and interdependent within discourses of race, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, age and class. Having established a theory of girlhood representation in media using completed animated series, my own and others’ future research can work to explore how media treatments of girlhood since 2010 have reiterated, rejected or expanded the girl typing discourse. There is evidence that this is occurring in several series that have recently ended, are still in production and/or are still in syndication at the time of writing. I shall take the opportunity to write about two relevant examples: Nickelodeon’s (DiMartino 2012- 2014) and Fox’s Bob’s Burgers (Bouchard 2011-present). While vastly different in genre, tone and narrative, these series both subvert the girl typing discourse in ways which offer compelling opportunities for further study.

163 The Legend of Korra is a children’s action fantasy series based in Eastern spirituality and mythology, set in a world where people have the power to bend the elements to their will. It was produced by Nickelodeon, which produced numerous series cited in my thesis, such as Hey Arnold!, Rugrats, As Told By Ginger and All Grown Up. In the first season of this programme, the tough female lead character Korra competes with the rich and glamorous girl character Asami for the affections of a boy, Mako. Over fifty-two episodes, these characters develop to the point where the series concludes with Korra and Asami as a queer couple, having both outgrown Mako. While Asami and Korra do not kiss onscreen or openly declare their romantic feelings, the series finale “ends with the two women looking into each other’s eyes, and the show’s creators have publicly explained that this is a subtle nod to Korra and Asami’s romantic relationship” (Aranjuez 2015, 27; see Konietzko 2014). That two girl characters could choose one another over a boy, not only as friends but as romantic partners, was an unprecedented development in the representation of both girls and queer people in animation. It represents a new realm of possibility in the girl typing discourse, which in the 1990s and 2000s hinged upon not only the opposition and/or comparison of superficially different girl characters, but upon the canonical heterosexuality of all girl protagonists. North American prime-time, family or “adult” animation since 2010 has also offered avenues for moving outside the established structures of the girl typing discourse. Bob’s Burgers is an animated family/workplace sitcom about a married couple, Bob and Linda Belcher, and their three school-aged children, who run a burger restaurant in a beachside town. In Bob’s Burgers, the Belcher family’s two daughters, thirteen-year-old Tina and nine- year-old Louise, have different interests and priorities, but are not preoccupied with proving their own way of being a girl ultimately superior. While Louise and Tina experiment with different identities over the course of the series, neither sister feels the need to alter her presentation or behaviour in order to maintain a balance between her own “good” girlhood and her sister’s “bad” girlhood. This rejection of girlhood identity as performative, mutable or interdependent provides a framework for how girls could be represented outside of the girl typing discourse. While not part of my doctoral research, I have taken the opportunity to include details of these two animated series because they demonstrate both that the girl typing discourse is subject to further growth as societal attitudes to gender, class, race, ethnicity, age and sexuality change, and that girl characters can be positioned outside of or apart from it. Crucially, both of these series appear to indicate that post-2010, representation of girls in North American animation is moving outside of comparing or opposing girl characters, to

164 portraying girlhood as neither normative or transgressive, but as self-evident. Such shifts in the girl typing discourse offer rich material for research to be undertaken at another time or by another scholar.

Concluding Remarks The girl typing discourse in North American children’s television animation arises firstly from conceptualisations of gender and girlhood premised around opposites. These binary opposites depend on one another for their existence, and one is generally positioned as superior to the other. Secondly, girl typing further positions girls through the notion that a girl’s race, ethnicity, class, gender, age and sexuality should be interpreted as influencing her personality, insofar as these qualities conform to or deviate from the standard White, middle- class, demurely feminine and heterosexual (to an appropriate degree for their age) subjectivity. Girl typing also interprets girlhood identity within a socio-historical context and through particular ideologies. The conventions of the animation medium are used to position a particular view of girlhood as common sense. Finally, girls’ identities are depicted as constantly subject to, capable of or vulnerable to change. The type of changes they go through are imbued with moral significance, and are principally constituted through physical appearance and altered behaviour. Whether changing or static, girls’ identities are shown to hinge on the continued gender performance of a particular other girl or girls, who may be friends, rivals, enemies and/or sisters to the protagonist. In the coming years, I look forward to an increase in academic and non-academic discussions of the girl typing discourse which can continue to inform the depiction of girls in popular media and culture. My intent is not to recommend that children’s television animation should not draw on pre-existing archetypes such as the everygirl or tomboy in its characterisation of girl characters. Nor do I argue that binaries are necessarily negative. At their core, all binaries do is show that two people or things are different in some arbitrary, socially constructed way. The restrictive aspects of the girl typing discourse arise from the idea that girls must always measure their own gender identity against other girls’ in order to feel justified in being themselves. It is necessary for media producers, academics, fans, women and girl audiences to know the rules of girlhood in order to break, revise or expand them. Through greater understanding of past and current depictions of girls in North American children’s television animation, it will be possible to represent girls in all their diversity and agency.

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201 Davis, John A. 2002-2006. The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius. USA: Nickelodeon Denham, Linda, and Elena Kucharik. 1985-1988. The Care Bears. USA: LBS Communications/SFM Entertainment/Christian Broadcasting Network DiMartino, Michael Dante, and . 2005-2008. Avatar: The Last Airbender. USA: Nickelodeon DiMartino, Michael Dante, and Bryan Konietzko. 2008. "Avatar Aang." Joaquim Dos Santos (Director). Avatar: The Last Airbender. USA: Nickelodeon DiMartino, Michael Dante, and Bryan Konietzko. 2012-2014. The Legend of Korra. USA: Nickelodeon Drop, Mark. 1998. "Mama's Girl." Chuck Sheetz (Director). Recess. USA: ABC-TV Eichler, Glenn. 1997. "Esteemsters." Ken Kimmelman and Paul Sparagano (Directors). Daria. USA: MTV Eichler, Glenn. 1998a. "Arts 'N' Crass." Karen Disher (Director). Daria. USA: MTV Eichler, Glenn. 1998b. "Write Where It Hurts." Karen Disher (Director). Daria. USA: MTV Eichler, Glenn. 1999a. "Jane's Addition." Karen Disher (Director). Daria. USA: MTV Eichler, Glenn. 1999b. "Through a Lens Darkly." Guy Moore and Karen Disher (Directors). Daria. USA: MTV Eichler, Glenn. 2000a. "Partner's Complaint." Karen Disher (Director). Daria. USA: MTV Eichler, Glenn. 2000b. "Dye! Dye! My Darling." Ted Stearn and Karen Disher (Directors) Pat Smith. Daria. USA: MTV Eichler, Glenn. 2001. "Boxing Daria." Anthony Davis (Director). Daria. USA: MTV Eichler, Glenn, and Peggy Nicoll. 1997-2002. Daria. USA: MTV Eichler, Glenn, and Peggy Nicoll. 2000c. "Is It Fall Yet?" Karen Disher and Guy Moore (Directors). Daria. USA: MTV Eichler, Glenn, and Peggy Nicoll. 2002. "Is It College Yet?" Karen Disher (Director). Daria. USA: MTV Einbinder, Chad. 1999. "That Stinking Feeling." Howy Parkins (Director). Recess. USA: ABC-TV Faust, Lauren. 2010-present. My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. USA: Hub Network Felton, David. 1993. "Scientific Stuff." (Director). Beavis and Butt-Head. USA: MTV Forte, Deborah. 2004-2007. Maya and Miguel. USA: PBS Frankel, David. 2006. The Devil Wears Prada. USA: 20th Century Fox

202 Fried, Myra. 2002. "Grey Matters." Charles E. Bastien (Director). Braceface. Canada: Teletoon Friedman, Ron. 1985-1986. G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero. USA: Claster Television Gaffney, Peter. 1997. "King Gus." Chuck Sheetz (Director). Recess. USA: ABC-TV Germain, Paul, and Joe Ansolabehere. 1997-2003. Recess. USA: Disney-ABC Domestic Television Germain, Paul, Gabor Csupo and Arlene Klasky. 1991-2004. Rugrats. USA: Nickelodeon Gifford, Chris, Valerie Walsh Valdes, and Eric Weiner. 2000-present. Dora the Explorer. USA: Nickelodeon Gimple, Scott M. 2002-2004. Fillmore! USA: Buena Vista Television Glissmeyer, Garry, and Lanny Julian. 1984-1986. Rainbow Brite. USA: DIC Entertainment Greenberg, Jonathan. 2001. "Camp Fear." Pat Smith (Director). Daria. USA: MTV Greenberg, Paul, and Sheila M. Anthony. 2002. "Family Therapy." Joseph Scott and Mark Risley (Directors). As Told By Ginger. USA: Nickelodeon Groening, Matt, James L. Brooks, and Sam Simon. 1989-present. The Simpsons. USA: Fox Hali, Dana. 2003. "Adventures in Bebe-Sitting." Mucci Fassett (Director). The Proud Family. USA: Disney Channel Hamill, Brian, and Ford Riley. 2000. "Spinelli's Masterpiece." Brenda Piluso (Director). Recess. USA: ABC-TV Hanna, William, and . 1968-1970. Wacky Races. USA: Hartman, Butch. 2001-present. The Fairly OddParents. USA: Nickelodeon Heckerling, Amy. 1995. Clueless. USA: Hinson, Libby, Ben Joseph and Laura Shepherd. 1993-1999. Tales from the Cryptkeeper. USA: Warner Bros. Television Animation Hirsch, Alex. 2012-2016. Gravity Falls. USA: Disney Channel Holzman, Winnie. 1994-1995. My So-Called Life. USA: ABC Hopps, Kevin. 2004. "Civilization." Howy Parkins (Director). Dave the Barbarian. USA: Disney Channel Huckins, Holly. 1997a. "First Name Ashley." Chuck Sheetz (Director). Recess. USA: ABC- TV Huckins, Holly. 1997b. "Parents' Night." Chuck Sheetz (Director). Recess. USA: ABC-TV Humphrey, Rob, and Jim Peterson. 1996-1997. Quack Pack. USA: Buena Vista Television Illes, Bob, and Phil Walsh. 2001. "Prince Randall." Howy Parkins (Director). Recess. USA: ABC-TV

203 Iscove, Robert. 1999. She's All That. USA: Miramax Films Isenberg, Marty, Robert N. Skir and David Wise. 1996. Mighty Ducks: The Animated Series. USA: Buena Vista Television Jacobson, Melvyn, John Walker and Neil Innes. 1986-1994. The Raggy Dolls. UK: ITV Jennett, Bart. 2000. "More Like Gretchen." Howy Parkins (Director). Recess. USA: ABC-TV Jinkins, Jim. 1991-1994. Doug. USA: Nickelodeon Johnson, Greg, and Boyd Kirkland. 2000-2003. X-Men: Evolution. USA: Kids' WB Johnson, Greg, Cydne Clark and Steve Granat. 2002. "Walk on the Wild Side." Frank Paur (Director). X-Men: Evolution. USA: Kids' WB Johnson, Sam, and Chris Marcil. 1998. "The New Kid." Daria. New York: MTV Judge, Mike. 1993-1997, 2011. Beavis and Butt-Head. USA: MTV Kaplan, Deborah, and Harry Elfont. 1998. Can't Hardly Wait. USA: Columbia Pictures Kapnek, Emily. 2000-2004. As Told By Ginger. USA: Nickelodeon Kapnek, Emily. 2002a. "Never Can Say Goodbye." Mark Risley (Director). As Told By Ginger. USA: Nickelodeon Kapnek, Emily. 2002b. "And She Was Gone." Mark Risley (Director). As Told By Ginger. USA: Nickelodeon Kapnek, Emily. 2004a. "About Face." Anthony Bell (Director). As Told By Ginger. USA: Nickelodeon Kapnek, Emily. 2004b. "The Wedding Frame." Ron Noble and Mark Risley (Directors). As Told By Ginger. USA: Nickelodeon Katz, Evan M., Emily Kapnek, and Kate Boutilier. 2000. "Sleep On It." Frank Marino (Director). As Told By Ginger. USA: Nickelodeon Kernochan, Sarah. 1998. The Hairy Bird. USA: Miramax Kite, Lesa. 1997. "The Experiment." Chuck Sheetz (Director). Recess. USA: ABC-TV Klein, Jen, and Heather Mitchell. 2005-2007. Bratz. USA: 20th Century Fox Television Kleiser, Randal. 1978. Grease. USA: Paramount Pictures Kramer, Michael. 1998. "Operation: Field Trip." Chuck Sheetz (Director). Recess. USA: ABC-TV Kramer, Michael. 1999. "Model Behaviour." Madeleine Levesque (Director). Angela Anaconda. Canada: Teletoon Kricfalusi, John. 1991-1996. The Ren and Stimpy Show. USA: Nickelodeon Langdale, Doug. 2004. Dave the Barbarian. USA: Disney Channel Lau, William. 2004. Barbie as the Princess and the Pauper. USA: Artisan Entertainment

204 Lewald, Eric, Sidney Iwanter and Mark Edens. 1992-1997. X-Men: The Animated Series. USA: Disney-ABC Domestic Television Lipman, Rachel. 1996. "Helga's Makeover." Juli Murphy (Director). Hey Arnold! USA: Nickelodeon Lipman, Rachel. 1998. "Quinn the Brain." Sue Perrotto (Director). Daria. USA: MTV Lipman, Rachel. 1999. "It Happened One Nut." Joey Ahlbum (Director). Daria. USA: MTV Malkasian, Cathy, and Jeff McGrath. 2002. The Wild Thornberrys Movie. USA: Paramount Pictures Marks, Dennis. 1972. The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan. USA: Warner Bros. Television Distribution Marshall, Garry. 1990. Pretty Woman. USA: Buena Vista Pictures Marshall, Garry. 2001. The Princess Diaries. USA: Buena Vista Pictures Marx, Christy. 1985-1988. Jem and the Holograms. USA: Claster Television McCorkle, Mark, and . 2002-2007. Kim Possible. USA: Disney Channel McCracken, Craig. 1998-2004. The Powerpuff Girls. USA: McCreary, Laura. 1998. "The Sisterhood." Brad Goodchild (Director). Pepper Ann. USA: Buena Vista Television McCreary, Laura, Emily Kapnek and Sheila M. Anthony. 2002. "No Hope For Courtney." Dean Criswell and Mark Risley (Directors). As Told By Ginger. USA: Nickelodeon Miller, Alice, and Emily Kapnek. 2001. "Cry Wolf." Carol Millican and Mark Risley (Directors). As Told By Ginger. USA: Nickelodeon Miller, Christopher, Phil Lord, and Bill Lawrence. 2002-2003. Clone High. USA: MTV Mittenthal, Robert, Will McRobb and Chris Viscardi. 1996-2000. KaBlam! USA: Muller, Romeo, and Charles Swenson. 1980. Strawberry Shortcake. USA: Muller/Rosen Murakami, Glen. 2003-2006. Teen Titans. USA: Warner Bros. Television Animtion Nicoll, Peggy. 1998. "Gifted." Karen Disher (Director). Daria. USA: MTV Nielsen, Susin, and Cathy Moss. 2004-2010. Franny's Feet. USA: WNET New York Paur, Frank, and . 1994-1997. Gargoyles. USA: Buena Vista Television Peyo, Yvan Delporte, Patsy Cameron and Glenn Leopold. 1981-1990. The Smurfs. USA: Ray, Nicholas. 1955. Rebel Without a Cause. USA: Warner Bros. Reed, Peyton. 2000. Bring It On. USA: Renzetti, Rob. 2003-2009. My Life as a Teenage Robot. USA: Paramount Television

205 Rogers, Amy Keating. 2012. "The Last Roundup." James Wootton and Jayson Thiessen (Directors). My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. USA: Hub Network Rogers, Amy Keating, Lynne Naylor and . 2001. "Equal Fights." Craig McCracken and Randy Myers (Directors). The Powerpuff Girls. USA: Cartoon Network Rogers, John. 2000-2005. Jackie Chan Adventures. USA: The WB Romberg, Rachelle. 1998. "See Jane Run." Karen Disher (Director). Daria. USA: MTV Romberg, Rachelle. 1999. "The Old and the Beautiful." Gloria De Pointe (Director). Daria. USA: MTV Romberg, Rachelle. 2000. "The F Word." Tony Kluck (Director). Daria. USA: MTV Rose, Sue, and Joanna Ferrone. 1999-2002. Angela Anaconda. Canada: Teletoon Sanders, Chris, and Dean DeBlois. 2002. Lilo and Stitch. USA: Disney Sanders, Chris, and Dean DeBlois. 2003-2006. Lilo and Stitch: The Series. USA: Buena Vista Television Sato, Junichi. 1992-1997. Sailor Moon. Japan: Toei Animation Schwartz, Josh. 2003-2007. The O.C. USA: Shindel, Mikhail, Mikhail Aldashin and Charles Swenson. 1999-2001. Mike, Lu & Og. USA: Cartoon Network Smith, Bruce W., and Doreen Spicer. 2001-2005. The Proud Family. USA: Disney Channel Stein, Darren. 1999. Jawbreaker. USA: TriStar Pictures Sugar, Rebecca. 2013-present. Steven Universe. USA: Cartoon Network Timm, Bruce, and . 2001-2004. Justice League. USA: Warner Bros. Television Distribution Vasquez, Jhonen. 2001-2002. Invader Zim. USA: Nickelodeon Vebber, Dan. 2000. "I Loathe a Parade." Guy Moore (Director). Daria. New York: MTV Viksten, Steve. 1997. "Ms. Perfect." Steve Socki (Director). Hey Arnold! USA: Nickelodeon Walsh, Phil. 1999. "Dance Lessons." Chuck Sheetz (Director). Recess. USA: ABC-TV Ward, Pendleton. 2010-present. Adventure Time. USA: Cartoon Network Waters, Mark. 2004. Mean Girls. USA: Paramount Pictures Watson, Mitch, Spike Brandt and Tony Cervone. 2010-2013. Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated. USA: Warner Bros. Television Distribution Weldon, Kurt. 2007. "Stop Team Go." Steve Loter (Director). Kim Possible. USA: Disney Channel Wendkos, Paul. 1959. Gidget. USA: Columbia Pictures

206 Wernick, Ilana, and Holly Huckins. 2000. "The Ratings Game." Howy Parkins (Director). Recess. USA: ABC-TV Whedon, Joss. 1997-2003. Buffy the Vampire Slayer. USA: 20th Television Wise, David, and Donald F. Glut. 1984-1987. Transformers. USA: Claster Television Zwick, Joel. 2002. My Big Fat Greek Wedding. USA: IFC Films

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