Girl studies, also known as girlhood studies, is an interdisciplinary academic field of study that is focused on girlhood and girls' culture that combines advocacy and the direct perspectives and thoughts of girls themselves. [1] The field emerged in the 1990s after decades of falling under the broader field of women's studies. [2] Scholars within girl studies examine social and cultural elements of girlhood and move away from an adult-centered focus. [3] [2] Those working in the field of girl studies have studied it primarily in relation to other fields that include sociology, psychology, education, history, literary studies, media studies, and communication studies. [2] Girl studies seeks to work directly with girls themselves in order to analyze their lives and understand the large societal forces at play within them. [3] Scholars in girl studies also explore the connection the field has to women's studies, boyhood studies, and masculinity studies. [1] There are many different definitions of what a girl is. Some may say that a girl is under the age of 18 (a minor). Catherine Driscoll discusses how in the nineteenth century, girls were traditionally defined as younger than the age of consent. [3] Claudia Mitchell and Jacqueline Reid-Walsh discuss girlhood beginning from birth to late twenties. Girlhood is often designated by age and consists of imitating observed and learned adult behavior.
Girl studies became a field in the 1990s, after the increase in conversation about getting more girls into science, math, and technology fields in the 1980s, [4] though scholars and researchers were studying girls prior to this decade. In the 1970s, some feminist scholars brought to attention the unbalanced focus of boyhood in comparison to girlhood in youth research. Angela McRobbie, Meda Chesney-Lind, and Christine Griffin were some of the few scholars studying and critiquing the lack of study on girlhood and girl culture in the 1970s and 1980s. [2] In the early 1990s, the Harvard Project on Women's Psychology and Girls' Development conducted a study on the social development of relationships of girls. [5] This study found that when they approach adolescence, girls begin to hide their honest feelings and desires from those they are in close relationships with, making it hard for them to express their feelings later in life. [5] In 1992, the American Association of University Women (AAUW) published How Schools Shortchange Girls, "the first national survey to assert a link between girls' psychosocial experience and schooling". [6] Girls often associate school with being unsafe due to sexual harassment and rape. Dress code is an example of the control of girls and the message of how what they wear is more valuable than their education. The term ‘daddy’s girl’ is used popularly as an example of how girls are subordinates. Gender roles are a social institution in attempt to control girls.
Girl studies emerged in the 1990s, a time when there was an increased interest from the media and fashion and beauty industries in young women. Advertisers and retailers marketed towards girls by "promising female youth agency and social value" from purchasing the products. [2] Jackie Kirk et al., discuss how terms that are meant for unity and empowerment such as ‘girl power’ are often used for marketing purposes rather than considered in policy making. [7] Consumerism defines who a girl is and companies market towards girls in efforts to spark their attention. Companies would target products towards young girls that would subliminally send them messages about society's expectations of girls which includes toys and dolls such as Bratz dolls, Barbie dolls, my scene dolls. [1] Companies target these types of girls when selling products such as dolls, music, hair, or clothes. This phenomenon is referred to as tween culture and usually correlates to girls who are between nine and thirteen years old. The term tween usually denotes a young girl rather than a boy. This age period is important because it is a time of fundamental development of an adolescent concerning their identity. [8] There are many studies that focus on how gender roles are imposed onto children and children are socialized to behave that way rather than gender roles having a biological element. [9] [10]
Within the academy, there was an increase in feminist and gender studies scholars focusing on intersectionality and subsequently on girls. [2] Discussing intersectionality within girls’ studies is difficult because each girl truly does have their own experience. It is important to recognize this and that each identity that makes up an individual contributes to their unique experience. All aspects of an individual's identity cause them to be at the intersection of multiple oppressions. There are a lot of factors that can go into being a girl such as economic status, race, age, class, gender, sexuality, religion, environment, and ethnicity. Girls are highly influenced from a young age and reprimanded when societal norms are not being followed. Some groups are overlooked, and it is imperative that we consider every single one in policy making and advocacy. Mary Pipher in Reviving Ophelia [11] acknowledges girls with various sexualities, family dynamics, health states, etc. Mary describes girls as trees who are frail in a huge storm. Their roots determine if they are strong enough to withstand the storm. If they are not, they will fall. Girls’ roots are their family and how they are raised, their foundation. Some survive the storm and stay true to themselves, while others let themselves be influenced. In 2008, scholars Claudia Mitchell, Jacqueline Reid-Walsh, and Jackie Kirk established and launched Girlhood Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal after recognizing the emerging interest in the field at the 2001 "A New Girl Order: Young Women and the Future of Feminist Inquiry" conference at King's College London. [1]
As girl studies develops, "there has been significant movement away from studying girls as future women and toward analyzing girls as members of a unique demographic group", especially in psychology, history, and sociology. [2] There is also a movement towards focusing more on intersectionality and the experiences of girls across the world. [2] In a 2016 article, Claudia Mitchell acknowledges the presence of girlhood studies in Africa, referencing a South African video project called Vikea Abantwana (Protect The Children: A Story about Incest). [12] The video chronicles the life of Philendelini, a young girl who was raped by her father. Mitchell mentions this film to highlight the necessity of girlhood studies; in the film, Philendelini confides in several adult women about her assault and is ignored or turned down in each instance.
On the topic of insuring an intersectional and transnational approach in girl studies, scholar Oneka LaBennett commented “Black schoolgirls and college students have engaged in protests across the globe. Girls themselves have drawn attention to the negative impact of things like white beauty standards, the intersections of racial and gender violence, the problems with police brutality and the school-to-prison pipeline." [13]
Previously a subject of adolescent psychology and feminist studies, girl studies have also grown through the adoption of 'Cool Japan,' a campaign by the Japanese foreign ministry to spread the appeal of Japanese popular culture and images. Due to its preoccupation with Japanese youth and schoolgirls, Cool Japan has become a topic of girl studies, branching out into many areas. Such movements reflect the interdisciplinary nature of girl studies. [14]
Barrie Thorne, Sociology and Gender and Women's studies professor at The University of California Berkeley, described the four interpretations of the term play. [15] The first meaning is some sort of movement or gesture. Boys and girls almost classify themselves and participate collectively in specific activities creating taxonomies. The second definition of play Thorne describes is some sort of production. This correlates to joking around in effort to downplay something that is stereotypical or offensive. The third definition of play translates to the capacity to accomplish something. This idea compares to the potential someone has by separating genders and highlighting inequality. The fourth and final definition of play according to Thorne corresponds to the belittlement of children. Furthermore, the term play suggests children being naïve and innocent. It also suggests them being less important or their lives to be considered simple, ultimately dismissing them. Thorne points out how it is common for men to invade verbal space when a woman is talking by interrupting, just like they dominated on the playground when they were younger.
It is common for girls to have eating disorders, emotional trauma, and fear of sexual harassment. Girls develop a negative perception of themselves which takes a toll on their confidence and capability. Peggy Orenstein concocted the term 'confidence gap' and noticed a trend that young girls experience. [16] Orenstein concluded that no matter economic status, geographic region, education, or race, girls still received the same messages and experienced the confidence gap. Orenstein notes that girls experience a decrease in confidence once they reach adolescence. Throughout the book, Peggy studies two girls in the eighth grade from two different backgrounds. Along her study, she noted that it was common for girls to experience eating disorders, sexual harassment, and therefore a decrease in academic performance, specifically in math and science. Orenstein discovers that the reasons girls undergo the confidence gap, is because of gender bias and sexism in school, family relations and friendship rooted in societal norms, and cultural standards. Sex abuse is often normalized in highly urban areas and girls do not have the access to sexual education to teach them about consent and protection. They then can become susceptible to teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.
There have been several other studies conducted that examine the relationship between the media and girls' relationships with their bodies. [17] [18] [19]
Popular culture oriented toward girls and young women often reifies very limited depictions of desirable girlhood. Films such as Mean Girls make fun of these norms and also maintain them. For example, the main characters are slim, white, and heterosexual while background characters are those of different sexualities, races, and body types. Girls desire to look and act like their idols they see in media, which supports Gerbner's cultivation theory in what is shown in the media gives the notion that it is normal in society. [20] It is vital that young girls have a diverse group of role models to idolize in the media. When girls have someone that looks like them in the media, it shows them that they are just as capable. For example, people often obsessed over Serena Williams' hair, clothing, and body because she was not white and skinny like most women role models in the media.
In Shakespeare's As You Like It, he references the seven stages of mankind. [21] This piece is male oriented and describes boys going from boyhood to manhood. The only mention of women is in the piece is sparking the attention of the male. This traditional description of women alludes to the fact that they are merely objects and placed on Earth for the benefit of men. More modern examples of literature depict women in a much more accurate and less male-centric way. In addition to better portrayals of women in media, there has also been more women creating media. There are many scholars that study how media affects young girls in regards to women representation and also women who make this media. [22] [23]
Black Girlhood Studies has developed in recent years to combat the white washed field of Girls' studies. Black girlhood studies is understood as a site of Black feminist inquiry with aims of centering the coming into knowing Black girls’ experience and representations of Black girlhood. In Black Girlhood Celebration: Toward a Hip-hop Feminist Ruth Nicole Brown states that Black girlhood are, “the representations, memories, and lived experiences of being and becoming in a body marked as youthful, Black, and female.” [24] For Brown, Black girlhood is a powerful concept that enables Black girls to create sacred spaces for themselves and each other even while structural forces work “to posit [Black girls] as the very “risky” problem, an aberration of normal.” [25] Brown’s sentiments were echoed again during the 2016 “Black Girl Movement: A National Conference”, a three-day conference at Columbia University in New York City that focused on Black girls, cis, queer, and trans girls, in the United States. The purpose of the conference was to recognize that while Black girls are “among the most significant cultural producers, community connectors, and trendsetters”, Black girls still remain highly invisible and “are in crisis.” [26] Scholars have used this moment to theorize liberating projects for Black girls and Black girlhood, a site of both theoretical and practical analysis. Founded by LaKisha Simmons, Renee Sentilles, and Corinne Field, History of Black Girlhood: An Academic Network (2015) provides a forum for scholars centering Black girlhood to share work and collaborate. While many of the work in Black Girlhood Studies is contemporary, there are Black feminist canonical texts that home in on the ways in which Black girlhood has always already been present in the work of Black women (Tomorrow's Tomorrow 1971 written by Joyce Ladner, The Bluest Eye 1970 and Beloved 1987 written by Toni Morrison, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow is Enuf 1976 by Ntozake Shange, and Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood 1996 by bell hooks, among many others). These materials span literature, film, poetry, policy, magazine articles, and so on.
Many of the texts foundational to the contemporary field of Black girlhood studies fall within an ethnographic tradition. These works include Elizabeth Chin's Purchasing Power: Black Kids and American Consumer Culture (2001), Kyra Gaunt's The Games Black Girls Play: Learning the Ropes from Double-Dutch to Hip-Hop (2006), Ruth Nicole Brown's Black Girlhood Celebration: Toward a Hip-hop Feminist Pedagogy (2009) Oneka LaBennett's She’s Mad Real: Popular Culture and West Indian Girls in Brooklyn (2011), Aimee Cox's Shapeshifters: Black Girls and the Choreography of Citizenship (2015), and Aria Halliday's Buy Black: How Black Women Transformed US Pop Culture (2022). These texts examine Black girls’ complex racialized, gendered, and age-based cultural realities as they navigate and resist multiple forms of violences. These ethnographies are rooted in a Black feminist epistemological emphasis on centering lived experiences.
Historians Abosede George's Making Modern Girls: A history of girlhood, labor, and social development in 20th century colonial Lagos (2015), Marcia Chatelain's South Side Girls: Growing Up in the Great Migration (2015), and LaKisha Simmons's Crescent City Girls: The Lives of Young Black Women in Segregated New Orleans (2015) extends beyond the ethnographic work of the field in which the three scholars mentioned focus on place and social history to tell the stories of Black girls. [27] This regional approach emphasizes the necessary local specifies of Black girlhood. Nazera Sadiq Wright's Black Girlhood in the Nineteenth Century (2016) traces a long literary tradition to discover the origins of Black girlhood as we have come to understand the category today.
As an emerging field, girl studies has faced some criticisms from other scholars. Janie Victoria Wald and Beth Cooper Benjamin have found that connections between "girls' psychosocial development and persistent issues in adult women's lives" are not as present in recent scholarship as they were during the advent of the field and believe they should be in order to explore intergenerational relationships. [6] These two scholars also criticize the increased specialization of focus in the field and subsequent disconnect between the subfields. [6] Mary Celeste Kearney, a scholar who does work in girl studies, notices that though there is a focus on intersectionality within the field, "non-white, non-Western girls remain vastly understudied as result of such research being conducted primarily in Canada, Australia, Great Britain, Northern Europe, and the United States." [2] Some critics identify problems that they see with the field as a whole, claiming that it is neither a new nor exciting field, as the Girlhood Studies journal states, but rather one that is established and in crisis. [28] Kirk, Jackie et al. discussed how they experienced dishonesty in studies and self-censoring from girls to adhere to societal norms. [7]
Girlhood and girl power work [29] [30] together to form a strong bond between young girls across the globe. When girls are growing up, they are learning from the women around them, what is right and what is wrong. Women of the older ages are set up as role models for those who are under the age of 18. The future of girlhood is in the hands of those who choose to set a good example forward for these young people to grasp onto. Marnina et al., explained in their book that we are past the after-girl power stage (2009) and that what comes next remains a mystery. Girls have seen violence in numerous stages thus making them fear the whole process of growing up. As mentioned in the text History and Popular Culture at Work in the Subjectivity of a Tween, the author's daughter was scared to become an adult because of the concerns of others. Other people in her class were bringing articles and other pieces of writing that scared Elisabeth into thinking that growing up was not something that she wanted to do. [30] With girls having these types of ideas rushing through their minds as they get older – we are not helping them grow in a safe space, instead, we are raising them to fear the outside world and not want to be a part of it. This can change if we focus on what comes next once we pass the after-girl power.
In addition to positive role models for young girls, the field itself can grow once girl studies is seen as an established discipline. The field lacks the type of attention that other feminist fields get. Kearney claims that some factors that contributes to the lack of scholarly attention that girl studies receives includes adult-centric feminism, male dominance in the public sphere, and the ambiguity that surrounds the field. [2] Once girl studies is acknowledged as a serious feminist discipline then more ideas and conversation can be generated for girl studies to grow.
Tomboy is a term used for girls or young women with masculine traits. It can include wearing androgynous or unfeminine clothing and engaging in physical sports or other activities and behaviors usually associated with boys or men.
Third-wave feminism is a feminist movement that began in the early 1990s, prominent in the decades prior to the fourth wave. Grounded in the civil-rights advances of the second wave, Gen X third-wave feminists born in the 1960s and 1970s embraced diversity and individualism in women, and sought to redefine what it meant to be a feminist. The third wave saw the emergence of new feminist currents and theories, such as intersectionality, sex positivity, vegetarian ecofeminism, transfeminism, and postmodern feminism. According to feminist scholar Elizabeth Evans, the "confusion surrounding what constitutes third-wave feminism is in some respects its defining feature."
Girl power is a slogan that encourages and celebrates women's empowerment, independence, confidence and strength. The slogan's invention is credited to the US punk band Bikini Kill, who published a zine called Bikini Kill #2: Girl Power in 1991. It was then popularized in the mainstream by the British girl group Spice Girls in the mid-1990s. According to Rolling Stone magazine, the Spice Girls' usage of "girl power" was one of the defining cultural touchstones that shaped the Millennial generation, particularly during their childhood in the 1990s. However, since the maturing of older Millennials in the late 2000s, it has increasingly been dropped in favor of challenging real-world sexism that has become mainstream as of Generation Z's maturing of the 2020s.
Bitch was an independent, quarterly alternative magazine published in Portland, Oregon. Its tagline described it as a "feminist response to pop culture", and it was described in 2008 by Columbia Journalism Review as "a respected journal of cultural discourse". As a feminist publication, it took an intersectional approach.
Postfeminism is a term popularized by the mass media to describe an alleged decrease in support for feminism from the 1990s onwards. It can be considered a critical way of understanding the changed relations between feminism, femininity and popular culture. The term is sometimes confused with subsequent feminisms such as fourth-wave feminism, postmodern feminism, and xenofeminism.
Patricia Hill Collins is an American academic specializing in race, class, and gender. She is a distinguished university professor of sociology emerita at the University of Maryland, College Park. She is also the former head of the Department of African-American Studies at the University of Cincinnati. Collins was elected president of the American Sociological Association (ASA), and served in 2009 as the 100th president of the association – the first African-American woman to hold this position.
Sexualization is the emphasis of the sexual nature of a behavior or person. Sexualization is linked to sexual objectification, treating a person solely as an object of sexual desire. According to the American Psychological Association, sexualization occurs when "individuals are regarded as sex objects and evaluated in terms of their physical characteristics and sexiness." "In study after study, findings have indicated that women more often than men are portrayed in a sexual manner and are objectified. In addition, a narrow standard of physical beauty is heavily emphasized. These are the models of femininity presented for young girls to study and emulate."
Angela McRobbie is a British cultural theorist, feminist, and commentator whose work combines the study of popular culture, contemporary media practices and feminism through conceptions of a third-person reflexive gaze. She is a professor of communications at Goldsmiths College, University of London.
In sociology, a superwoman is a woman who works hard to manage multiple roles of a worker, a homemaker, a volunteer, a student, or other such time-intensive occupations. The notion of "superwoman" differs from that of "career woman" in that the latter one commonly includes sacrifice of the family life in favor of career, while a superwoman strives to excel in both.
Girlhood Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal is a peer-reviewed academic journal established in 2008 by Jackie Kirk, Claudia Mitchell, and Jacqueline Reid-Walsh and published by Berghahn Journals. It became an official journal of the International Girls Studies Association (IGSA) in 2019. The journal discusses girlhood from the perspective of a broad range of fields including education, health, media studies, and literary studies. Of the three issues a year, two are themed issues on particular topics. The editor-in-chief is Claudia Mitchell. Girlhood Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal received the award of Best New Journal in the Social Sciences & Humanities from the Association of American Publishers in 2009. The journal led to the establishment of a complementary book series, Transnational Girlhoods, in 2019, also published by Berghahn.
Catherine Driscoll is an Australian professor of Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney. She grew up in Wauchope, New South Wales and was educated at Wauchope High School, the University of Newcastle (Australia), and the University of Melbourne. She has worked at the University of Melbourne, the University of Adelaide, and joined the School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry at the University of Sydney in 2003. She has held visiting fellow positions at Duke University, Columbia University, Cardiff University, and the Australian National University.
The exploitation of women in mass media is the use or portrayal of women in mass media such as television, film, music, and advertising as objects or sexual beings, in order to increase the appeal of media or a product to the detriment of the women being portrayed, and women in society. This process includes the presentation of women as sexual objects and the setting of feminine beauty ideals that women are expected to reflect. Sexual exploitation of women in the media dates back to 19th century Paris, in which ballerinas were exposed to harassment and objectification. The most often criticized aspect of the use of women in mass media is sexual objectification, but dismemberment can be a part of the objectification as well. The exploitation of women in mass media has been criticized by feminists and other advocates of women's rights, and is a topic of discussion in feminist studies and other fields of scholarship.
Hip hop feminism is a sub-set of black feminism that centers on intersectional subject positions involving race and gender in a way that acknowledges the contradictions in being a black feminist, such as black women's enjoyment in hip hop music and culture, rather than simply focusing on the victimization of black women in hip hop culture due to interlocking systems of oppressions involving race, class, and gender.
Sharon Lamb is an American professor in the Department of Counseling and School Psychology at the University of Massachusetts Boston's, College of Education and Human Development, and a fellow of the American Psychological Association (APA). She also sits on the editorial board of the academic journals Feminism & Psychology, and Sexualization, Media, and Society.
Carrie A. Rentschler is a scholar of feminist media studies and associate professor at McGill University located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Rentschler's work focuses on how media produces culture and its effects on women's lives and the reproduction of rape culture. She advocates anti-violence through the production of media to reduce violent crime.
Gloria Feman Orenstein is a feminist art critic, pioneer in the field of the women of Surrealism and scholar of ecofeminism in the arts. Orenstein's Reweaving the World is considered a seminal ecofeminist text which has had "a crucial role in the development of U.S. ecofeminism as a political position".
Kyra Danielle Gaunt is an African American ethnomusicologist, Black girlhood studies advocate, social media researcher, feminist performance artist, and professor at the University at Albany in New York State. Gaunt's research focuses on the hidden musicianship of black girls' musical play at the intersections of race, racism, gender, heterosexism, misogynoir, age, and the kinetic-orality of the female body in the age of hip-hop. Her current research focuses on "the unintended consequences of gender, race, and technology from YouTube to Wikipedia."
Rebecca Hains is an American communication and media studies scholar and author. She is a professor in the Media and Communication Department at Salem State University and focuses her work on the subject of children's media culture and marketing, which she studies from a feminist media studies and critical/cultural studies perspective. She is a 2023–2024 Fulbright Scholar.
Ratchet feminism emerged in the United States from hip hop culture in the early 2000s, largely as a critique of, and a response to, respectability politics. It is distinct from black feminism, womanism, and hip hop feminism. Ratchet feminism coopts the derogatory term (ratchet). Other terms used to describe this concept include ratchet womanism as used by Georgia Tech professor Joycelyn Wilson or ratchet radicalism used by Rutgers professor Brittney Cooper. Ratchet is an identity embraced by many millennials and Gen Z black women and girls. The idea of ratchetness as empowering, or of ratchet feminism, has been articulated by artists and celebrities like Nicki Minaj, City Girls, Amber Rose, and Junglepussy, scholars like Brittney Cooper and Mikki Kendall, and through events like Amber Rose's SlutWalk. Many view ratchet feminism as a form of female empowerment that doesn't adhere to respectability politics.
Ștefania Mihăilescu was a Romanian historian whose work was foundational for the development of women's studies in the country. Her anthologies were awarded the prize for research on the Romanian women's rights movement in 2006.