Technology Woes

Response to Looking into the Digital Mirror: Reflections on a computer camp for girls, by girls (Blair, McLaughlin, and Hurley)…

In reading the journal article, I recognized the parallels between the Digital Mirror and the Girlhood Remix. Both camps centered on identity discovery, preteen female participants, and technology based objectives.

Regarding technology, it makes sense that the camps want to empower the girls through access and knowledge of technological skills. However, technology can also be a slippery slope in terms of pedagogy. I see it as a distraction at times. I understand that technology has emerged as a more engaging teaching tool rather than traditional methods of learning. Yet, arguably, society’s attention span has shortened; we want more eye and ear candy to keep us involved. When was the last time any of us watched a YouTube video or program on television all the way through before clicking the mouse or pressing the remote? As a teacher, I constantly contend with students who text in class during highly complex instructions in operating a camera or navigating editing software. Students check emails, Facebook, and store ads during class time. In a recent (non-scientific) survey, workers admit spending half their shift doing activities unrelated to work; mostly on the Internet.

Of course it is important to teach young people about technology, but also to be adept and productive in other areas too. In the very least, we must find a balance.

Kegelling? (gurl.com)

Response to gurl.com (Shade, 2004)…

The website gurl.com is a commonplace for many relevant girlhood topics. Sort of a judgment free zone that lets its young (female) viewers ask, discuss, and learn about issues that might be awkwardly broached when done face to face. I recognize the site’s value in terms of being a resource for (mostly) young girls needing guidance and support while maintaining some level of anonymity. I bet a significant number of boys have also learned a thing or two from scanning the articles on gurl.com.

When examined through a business lens, the website is a clever way to offer products that appeal to a captive (female) audience; it is populated with banner ads mostly related to fashion, relationships, and of course sex. Regarding sex, clicking on the Health, Sex, and Relationships tab will offer advice to questions such as “Should Guys Also Shave Their Pubic Hair?” and other articles that umm…never mind. Glad I learned about the benefits of doing kegel exercises.

The Future

After reading Mary Jane Kehily’s article, “Taking centre stage? Girlhood and the contradictions of femininity across three generations,” I paused at McRobbie and Garber’s starting point with speculation that

the relative absence of girls in subcultures may hinge around issues of gender and space, with girls being more centrally involved in the ‘private’ domestic sphere of home and family life rather than the ‘public’ world of the street where most subcultural activities seem to occur.” (53)

Assuming this is so, the future of girlhood and identities will be less of a “topic” for discussion and research in terms of seeking audience for girlhood studies.  Because females are no longer predominantly placed in the “domestic sphere” and are heard more frequently in the “public” world, I believe that the conversations on girlhood and female identity will change over time. 

This is not to say, however, that I believe the research and focus no longer need to exist because females are out of the private sphere.  This is not so, and of course; I am only speaking from a Western experience.  Globally, female and girl positionalities vary, thus necessitating varying discussions via varying forms of media. 

I believe that we will begin to hear more voices, candid responses, covert and overt voices of resistance, as women find and realize the necessity of creating space for sharing.   

Creating a Space to Speak Out

I think that the video, “A Girl Like Me,” could be positioned as resistance.  Reason being, is that by acknowledging that there is a difficulty with the way in which African American females are perceived and held to “white” standards is a form of resistance.  By opening up a space in which the African-American females could share their stories about the color of their skin and wearing their hair natural, in addition to their family’s responses, the discourse is challenged.  Although this is neither secret nor overt resistance, as discussed by Kristen Schilt, it is resistance just the same.  The female who created the video with her own “do-it-yourself empowerment” (Schilt, 238) and those participating resisted and spoke out against being measured against white standards, as African-American females.

Because this video is made by a girl, it is a female social and cultural artifact.  It seeks to make a statement and to solve a problem.  The problem of black females ironing their hair, or lightening their skin in attempt to look white, is part of the problem.  The other part of the problem is parents encouraging the behavior.  The statement is made through this artifact, similar to the zines, as it creates a space for other females to speak out. 

Examining Complexity and Contradiction in Studies of Girlhood

In this class we have spent a fair share of time analyzing postfeminism, “Girl Power”, and resistance. These themes are important to girlhood studies as they help us to better understand contemporary influences of girlhood culture in Western, neoliberal societies. Part of our answer to the question “where are girlhood studies/identities going in the future” lies with the complexity and contradictory ways in which girlhood culture is produced in Western societies. Here we see that girlhood takes on what McRobbie calls a kind of “‘post-feminist masquerade’” where girls perform and “balance masculine qualities of phallic power with renewed pressures around hypersexualized visual display and performances of normative femininity” (Gonik, Renold, Ringrose and Weems 2). Further, there is complexity in the globalization of girlhood discourse, where women and girls in third world countries are increasingly feeling the pressures of the “Western way”, a way that privileges a model of “West vs. the Rest”. Moreover, “otherness” and diversity seem to be becoming more and more of a “marketable commodity” in globalized cultural economies and we see a “‘simultaneous displacement and refixing’ of binary oppositions” with femininity and masculinity (Gonik, Renold, Ringrose and Weems 3). This simultaneous displacement and refixing of gender binaries saturates much of Western popular culture. For example, Rhianna’s song “So Hard” presents a dominant, confident, and tough sexual performance with a heternormative script of sexually commodified girlhood “hottest bitch in heels right here”, “I need it all the money, the fame, the car, the clothes”. This popular culture text provides an example of the complex and contradictory nature with which masculinity and femininity are simultaneously displaced and refixed. Gonick, Renold, Ringrose and Weems (2009) therefore, posit that girlhood studies needs to develop new approaches to the ways we look at “relations between girlhood, power, agency and resistance” (1). They argue that girlhood studies should pay more attention to the “contradictory (schizoid) spaces of family, the media, school and popular culture” and how dynamic and open to adaptation and change femininities are as they are reproduced, performed, and resisted. Thus, by illuminating the contradictory (schizoid) spaces of institutions and cultural texts we open ourselves up to examining the “contingent and ambiguous practices of identity” with which girls perform, reproduce, and resist normative femininity (6).



Supplemental Reference 


Gonick, Marnina, Emma Renold, Jessica Ringrose, and Lisa Weems. "Rethinking Agency 
             and Resistance: What Comes After Girl Power?" Girhood Studies 2.2 (2009): 1-9.

resistance

I think the most elemental components of enacting resistance is calling out the offending source and then creating a reactionary force, which is how this video positions itself. I really admired the ways the girls were able to articulate the influences and messages around them concerning their hair and the lightness of their skin. These girls are able to come together in a way that acknowledges the disparages voices and messages they hear and react in a way that is positive and attempts to take back the control of how they should look. I thought it was really interesting when one girl pointed out that being from a people who were displaced against their will, it seems as if she doesn’t have a heritage or a background. We have seen examples of girls trying to create their own reality and in that, their own culture and understanding of their history and how it affects them. I think this video acts a means to regain power over how these girls view themselves and their peers, instead of letting it be dictated by an outside (internalized) group.

The future of Girlhood

I found Mary Jane Kehily's observation to have the greatest relevance in looking towards the future of girlhood. She writes, "viewed in intergenerational terms, young women may be exploring points of continuity with previous generations in ways that creatively rework feminism rather than reject it" (58). This statement, for me, highlights perspective in looking at girlhood from the lens of feminist or post-feminist studies and work. I believe there is a need to explore the ways that something might work, rather than picking apart what definitely doesn't. Also, Kehily brings up a valid point in researching "lived lives." These women, girls, are experiencing life, not necessarily in a vaccuum of gender, but are living in a bubble of social, economic, and cultural prescripts that work in conjunction with the individualized "I". The challenge is to find ways to explore social interactions that are or are becoming less gendered, and to also allow the possibility that there are sites in which being a woman or a girl becomes irrelevant. Since gender is constantly reinscribed by social behavior more research and insight needs to found in how gender is performed in non-normative households, vs the larger scale communites. Francine M. Deutsch posits that what is often ignored is "the interactional level" that "illuminates the possibility of change" (114). Exploration needs to go deeper into the possibilit. As evidence, Deutsch references a study that shows over time men that earned less than their wives came to view and perform gender in a more "egalitarian" way. Also, Deutsch begs a question: "Does difference always mean inequality?"This question resonates because its from this standpoint that girls/women disconnected from "publicly available versions of feminist politics...the language of oppression and feelings of anger" (Kehily58). Far removed from their grandmother's suffrage plight, girls are products of Grrl power and consumer fetishism. The goal of the future should be to break the chain of marketing and objectifying that currently passes for liberation, and to reconnect girls with the very aspects of themselves that fall under feminist derision or PinkThink shame.

references
Deutsch, Francine M. "Undoing Gender." Gender and Society, Vol. 21, No. 1 (Feb. 2007) pp. 106-127.