Girls: Feminine Adolescence in Popular Culture and Cultural Theory

by Catherine Driscoll

The Spice Girls, Tank Girl comicbooks, Sailor Moon, Courtney Love, Grrl do such things really constitute a unique "girl culture?" Catherine Driscoll begins by identifying a genealogy of "girlhood" or "feminine adolescence," and then argues that both "girls" and "culture" as ideas are too problematic to fulfill any useful role in theorizing about the emergence of feminine adolescence in popular culture. She relates the increasing public visibility of girls in western and westernized cultures to the evolution and expansion of theories about feminine adolescence in fields such as psychoanalysis, sociology, anthropology, history, and politics. Presenting her argument as a Foucauldian genealogy, Driscoll discusses the ways in which young women have been involved in the production and consumption of theories and representations of girls, feminine adolescence, and the "girl market."

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, Research, Gender

272 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 28, 2002

Reviews

[Thea · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amazing for my extended research project but god I am too stupid for some of the wording she used

[Lo Celeste Riddell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really well done!! Very comprehensive (from a western/anglocentric perspective, that is) & seminal text covering different constructions & analytical ways of thinking about girlhood. What is girlhood? What is culture? How do semantics and semiotics come together to construct our understandings of these words? What does it mean to study ‘girl culture’ in a non-essentialist context?

Will definitely be referring back to this for future research. Published in 2002 so I would be interested to see an expansion, especially regarding the Internet & online subcultures/identities/etc. but the core ideas throughout hold up for sure.

[ellie · Rating 4 out of 5]

das zweite buch das ich mir erlaube für die ba arbeit zu loggen leute keine zwei wochen mehr und ich bin FREI mein gehirn explodiert bald (nach 7 stunden bib session guckte ich soeben fünf folgen nana auf 1.5 speed)

[Mel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Using a Foucaultian genealogical model, Driscoll traces the progression of discourses on feminine adolescence through emergence into womanhood in terms of historical and cultural analysis. By situation working definitions of girlhood and womanhood (and retroactively defined feminine adolescence) in socio-historical context, Driscoll shows the evolution of ideas that have laid the groundwork for the definitions with which girls are working in contemporary late modernity.

Driscoll presents her argument in three sections:

1. A discussion of what is meant by “girlhood” and “feminine adolescence” within a historical and culturally specific framework.

2. A discussion along Marxist, psychoanalytic, and feminist axes of “the power of theoretical discourses to constitute meanings of and for girls” (Driscoll 2002:107).

3. A discussion of girls and cultural production through popular media and films, the ways images of girls’ bodies are used and created, and the commodification of “girl culture.”

[Jocelyn]

I passed my eyes over all of this in succession, but it would have taken a lot more effort to truly read it.

[Allegra · Rating 3 out of 5]

super fascinating. super dense. ouch. brain hurts.