Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses Graduate School 1994 "A Proper Little Lady" and Other Twisted Tales of Adolescent Femininity. Natalie Guice Adams Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses Recommended Citation Adams, Natalie Guice, ""A Proper Little Lady" and Other Twisted Tales of Adolescent Femininity." (1994). LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses. 5771. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses/5771 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. 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Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. "A PROPER LITTLE LADY" AND OTHER TWISTED TALES OF ADOLESCENT FEMININITY A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of Curriculum and Instruction by Natalie G. Adams B.S., Louisiana Scate University, 1384 M.Ed., University of Southwestern Louisiana, 1988 August 1994 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. DEDICATION To my grandmother, Georgia Mott Guice, and my great-aunt, Rebecca Moore Guice, who helped me to see beyond stereotypical Southern womanhood. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Although this dissertation bears my name as the sole author, in reality, this work has been a collaborative effort among many people. To these people I wish to express my sincere gratitude. I am eternally grateful for my mother and father, John and Bonnie Guice, and their unconditional love, support, and guidance. They remain the constant in my all too often chaotic life. To my children, Hunter, Rebecca, and Chris, I thank them for their patience in having an absent and often crazy mother. They are the true joys of my life. To my husband, Jim, words fall short in expressing how thankful I am for his encouragement and constant love. He is truly the music of my life. I also want to sincerely express my gratitude to the members of my doctoral committee - Dr. Petra Munro, Dr. Mary-Ellen Jacobs, Dr. David England, Dr. Gary Rice, Dr. Miles Richardson, and Dr. Gregory Stone - for their academic and professional guidance. To Dr. Munro, my friend, mentor, and major advisor, I want to express a special thanks for the many, many hours she spent reading and critiquing the numerous drafts of this paper and, more importantly, providing the emotional support that got me through this process. To Dr. Jacobs, I also want to express my sincere gratitude for not only her academic support but also for her humor and friendship. iii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. To the rest of my friends and family, I wish simply to say "thanks" for doing the million small things that made this dissertation a reality. iv Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements ........................................ iii A b s t r a c t ................................................. viii Chapter One - Learning the "Truth" ...................... 1 Recreating Tales of Adolescent Femininity ......... 4 Tale O n e ......................................... 4 Tale T w o ......................................... 7 Tale T h r e e ....................................... 8 Tale F o u r ........................................ 10 Tale F i v e ........................................ 13 Chapter Two - Tales of a Feminist Ethnographer1 .... 17 Truth and Representation in Ethnographic Research 22 Realist Ethnography .......................... 22 Interpretative Ethnography .................. 23 Experimental Ethnography .................... 25 Feminist Ethnography ........................ 26 Tales of the Field ....................................28 Story One: Conducting Ethnographic Research 29 Story Two: Revisiting Ethnographic Research 37 Chapter Three - Finding a Place in Theory ............. 56 Cautionary Tales from a Feminist Perspective . 57 Critical Pedagogy .......................... 58 Feminist Theory and Southern Womanhood . 66 Feminist Poststructuralism ................. 72 Chapter Four - A Tale Twice Told: Multiple Discourses of Adolescence ana Femininity 7 9 Tale One: Adolescence as a Masculine Story . 80 Schooling and Adolescents .................... 81 Tale Two: Gender and the Construction of Adolescence 8 6 Theories of Gender Identity ...................... 92 Biological Essentialism ...................... 94 Psychoanalytic Theories of Gender Identity . 97 Social Construction of Gender ............... 101 Gender Identity and the Regulation of the B o d y ......................................... 103 Black Women and the Construction of Identity 107 Gender as Everyday Performance .................... 113 Chapter Five - Becoming No/Body: School Culture and Gender Identity ................................ 116 "Everyone's Equal Here" .......................... 120 "You Can't Mix Away from School with School" 121 "Adolescence is a D i s e a s e " ................... 129 "Everyone, Even Girls, Can Try Out for the Football Team" ............................... 135 v Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Gender Makes All the Difference ................. 139 The Control of Bodies in School ............. 13 9 "A Proper Little Lady" ...................... 14 6 "Never Getting It Right" .......................... 153 Being Nobody ......................................... 157 Chapter Six - Gangsters, Cowboys, Goddesses, Good Women: Exploring/Exploding the Myths of Femininity ....................................... 159 Metaphors of Femininity .......................... 162 Rapunzel and Scarlett: The Myths of Southern W o m a n h o o d ....................................152 The Rough and Tough C o w b o y ................... 164 The Gangster ........................'..... 170 The Good W o m a n ............................... 181 The Natural Goddess .......................... 190 Exploding the Myths of Femininity ............... 197 Chapter Seven - Fighting to Be Somebody: Resisting Erasure and the Discursive Practices of Female Adolescent "Fighting" ............................. 201 Reading Fighting as a Masculine Metaphor ......... 204 "Fighting to be Some/Body" ................... 204 "Fighting Like a M a n " ..........................209 Fighting to Be One of the B o y s ? ......................................... 213 The Feminization of F i g h t i n g ........................220 Fighting for Connection ...................... 220 Fighting to Be a Lady 224 Fighting as a T e x t ................................. 229 Chapter Eight - Unlearning the "Truth" ............... 231 Unlearning the Truth about Gender................... 233 The Interplay Between the Dominant Discourse of Femininity and Lived Experience ............