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.