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.
Gender being re-inscribed by societal behavior generation after generation...that is the crux of the issue - in my opinion! ;)
ReplyDeleteI wondered what you meant by non-normative households. I think the statistics show households like Gillian's and Kim's with divorce or single parenting make up half of the family units. Are these women able to think of feminist issues amidst the economic, social order they are living in?
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