Employing Creativity in the Rewriting of Popular Culture Girlhood Narratives

At the Girlhood Remixed Camp, I helped out in various capacities: setting up food and snacks, assisting girls with their sound files using garage band, and even dancing along to Michael Jackson in the Learning Games Lab. I was impressed with many things during my outreach: 1) How tech savvy the girls were with applications like garage band, weebly, iMovie, and Wii video games. I found myself learning more from them than they learned from me in this area. 2) How intelligent the girls were and how well they were able to critique and rewrite narratives of girlhood using technology. I especially loved one of the group’s projects with the story of “Little Red Riding Hood”. The girls in this group found creative ways to rewrite the narrative of “Little Red Riding Hood” that deconstructed the heteronormative gender roles of girlhood in the story. Thus, the girls used a video camera to rewirte the story of "Little Red Riding Hood", where little red riding hood and her grandmother chased away the big bad wolf, instead of the lumberjack rescuing little red riding hood and her grandmother at the end of the story. I was excited to see how the activities at the camp connected to my research with media literacy, social critique and pleasure in the rewriting of popular culture texts. Thus, many of the activities at the camp  encouraged the girls to find creative and fun ways in which to rewrite popular culture texts in counter-hegemonic ways.

It was such a great experience working with the girls and other graduate students at the camp. I really wish there had been a camp like this for me when I was their age!