Thinking Pink and Meanness

After reading Pink Think and “From Badness to Meanness: Popular Constructions of Contemporary Girlhood” I had differing thoughts.  Pink Think brought to mind consumerism, the mystique associated with femininity, and the ways in which popular culture icons and representations feed discourses that construct the ways both male and female enact their gender.  The ways in which children perceive and are exposed to marketing was foremost in my recollections/reflections on childhood and young adulthood.  However, as an adult female I am aware that I am bombarded by marketing practices which are intent on coaxing or enhancing adult female “pinkness.”  

  After completing the essay, “From Badness to Meanness: Popular Constructions of Contemporary Girlhood” I reflected on the intersectionalities that come in to play, such as class, race, ethnicity, and the various “isms,” that construct identities.  I considered the matrix of oppressions, when considering the difference between the ways white youth and youth of color suffered punishment and enacted bullying.  My reflections weren’t as simple as white female youth versus black female youth in binary, but complicated by the intersectionalities that would cause difference, such as being a poor, overweight, Afro-Venezuelan female raised by a grandparent, rather than just the label of black female.    

With that, based on these readings, I suppose I would define girlhood much like gender.  I would define it as a socially constructed time in a female’s life in which prescribed behaviors are imposed upon the young female, oftentimes beginning prior to birth, or from the time the parent(s) are made aware that they await a female child.  During this period of girlhood, the varying intersectionalities of their identities come in to play, complicating the behavioral expectations imposed upon them.  

Yes, I do believe that the academy should care about this as a field.  It is during the time of girlhood that socialization and expectations greatly inform the foundations by which the young female begin to build their adult selves.  Without study, reflection, creation of theory, and research in these areas there will be little to less opportunity to make sense of the ways in which girlhood is thrust upon young females.  The data and knowledge created through mindfulness and experience will provide the opportunities necessary to deconstruct the dominant discourses, which are strengthening ideas such as “pink think,” upon females and placing labeled expectations on females such the needs to be maternal, sensitive, nurturing, etc.  In tandem, these character traits will not be robbed on young males in boyhood, because they are prescribed to female alone.  – But that’s a whole other ball of wax, right?  Or is it?  If we don’t unpack girlhood, we will not be effective in the activism and discussion necessary to break apart some of discourses that have survived over decades.