Growing up girls : popular culture and the construction of identity

New York, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt/M., Oxford, Wien, 1999, 2001, 2002. Adolescent Cultures, School and Society. Vol. 9 General Editors: Joseph L. DeVitis and Linda Irwin-DeVitis In today's society, more and more mass media and popular culture is being produced for, about, and by pre-adolescent and adolescent girls than ever before. The intent of this book is to help us better understand the complex relationship between girls and their culture. Informed by a broad range of theoretical perspectives and employing a variety of methodologies, the essays in this collection address the ways that mainstream culture « instructs girls on how to become a woman - the ways in which the culture approves of « growing up girls. Specifically, these essays examine the messages mainstream culture gives girls about romance, sexuality, life experiences, body image, gender and culture identity, and the way girls themselves negotiate these messages. Contents: Norma Pecora/Sharon R. Mazzarella: Introduction - Lana F. Rakow/Caitlin S. Rakow: Educating Barbie - Amy Bowles-Reyer: Becoming a Woman in the 1970s: Female Adolescent Sexual Identity and Popular Literature - Norma Pecora: Identity by Design: The Corporate Construction of Teen Romance Novels - Sarah Eisenstein Stumbar/Zillah Eisenstein: Girlhood Pastimes: « American Girls and The Rest of Us - Sharon R. Mazzarella: The « Superbowl of All Dates: Teenage Girl Magazines and the Commodification of the Perfect Prom - Debra L. Merskin: What Every Girl Should Know: An Analysis of Feminine Hygiene Advertising - Amy Aidman: Disney's Pocahontas: Conversations with Native American and Euro-American Girls - Angharad N.Valdivia/Rhiannon S. Bettivia: A Guided Tour through One Adolescent Girl's Culture - Carol Jennings: Girls Make Music: Polyphony and Identity in Teenage Rock Bands - Meenakshi Gigi Durham: Out of the Indian Diaspora: Mass Media, Myths of Femininity, and the Negotiation of Adolescence between Two Cultures - Mary K. Bentley: The Body of Evidence: Dangerous Intersections between Development and Culture in the Lives of Adolescent Girls.