Girls’ Media: What are your essential texts?
At the school where I teach, the students don’t have finals. Instead, at the end of each semester, they embark upon two massive, two-week projects of their own devising. For example, I’m sponsoring individual project weeks on Cult Film and classic feminist texts. But students can also pick to participate in a “group” project, which means that a teacher comes up with a very specific idea (kind of like a mini-seminar) and they investigate said idea in detail.
There are about 12 group projects this semester, ranging from The Study of Happiness to The Cultural and Musical Roots of ’60s Rock. As for geeky me, I’m doing Girls’ Media Studies.
I took a grad seminar in Girls’ Media Studies during my first year in my Ph.D. program at UT, but the idea of girls, media, and the relationship between the two has long been a pet project of mine — in part because I was strongly influenced by several media texts as a “girl,” but also just because I find girlhood — as a discursive construction, as a societal point of anxiety, as a generally sucky time — really fascinating, and I love thinking about my own girlhood and where it fits within the historical continuums of girlhoods, including girlhood’s current iteration, marked, as it is, by constant mediation, ubiquitous screens, and contradictory messages about what it measn to be “good,” “pretty,” “smart,” “sexual,” etc. (Of course, all of our girlhoods were filled with contradictory messages on these topics).
So long story short: I’m looking for texts. The class is only two weeks, and I’m going to be doing some background on how “girls” have been conceived over time and in media, some Patty Duke, some Nancy Drew, some old school Seventeen, and, of course, some seminal texts from my own girlhood. The students will also select some texts on which they’d like to focus, and they’ll do final projects on a text of their choice.
If you were teaching a class of 14-17 year old girls, what would you show them? What sort of questions would you consider? What television shows, magazines, books, movies, albums, songs, etc. would you want to discuss? What would you want to say about it? Stuff from now, stuff from then, stuff from whenever. Help me make this class as awesome as possible.
47 Responses to “Girls’ Media: What are your essential texts?”
I can’t even begin to get into all the reasons why, but Buffy (the TV show, not the movie) would be treasure trove to explore. The ideals she upholds, the ones she challenges, and the way the other female characters in the show are, at once, a support system and a foil for Buffy as a hero/deserter/daughter/savior.
oooo! interesting! I’d put “Sex, Power and Pre-Code Hollywood” on the reading list, as well as “Female Chauvinist Pigs.”
And Twilight. As a native woman AND a journalist I know that whole heaps can be discussed about Twilight’s construction of teenage girls. For a Native take see: Truth vs. Twilight http://www.burkemuseum.org/static/truth_vs_twilight/
it’s especially worth discussing how media shapes your girlhood when you’re invisible to the media- growing up there were NO accurate portrayals of what it was like to be a MODERN Native American girl. I literally thought that I was a fraud because I didn’t wear feathers or hear buffalo coming from 100 miles away. (now i laugh at that!) If you’re Native American it’s almost impossible to find yourself represented modernly in modern media- for a whole host of reasons that I can discuss further if your interested. (I just earned my MA in intercultural communication from the Communication and Journalism Dept at the U of NM).
good luck!
So amazing! First, my friend works for the Burke and helped put that Twilight piece together; second, I grew up just miles from the Nez Perce reservation in Idaho, and when I first read the books, I wanted to know why everyone wasn’t just talking about how blatantly offensive (and really flat out ignorant) the books are concerning Native Americans. We are definitely going to be having some Twilight time, and also definitely going to think about “symbolic annihilation” — if you’re not represented in popular media, do you exist? Thanks so much for your suggestions!
yay!! i took a class called “representation of girlhood” a year ago when i was doing my MFA and it was AWESOME. we read the house on mango street, some annie dillard, and a whole MESS of other stuff.
have you seen the five awesome girls youtube series?
tv: punky brewster! teen mom, FULL HOUSE!!!
you could do an excerpt from little women, are you there god it’s me margaret, caddie woodlawn, the little house books, etc. have you read babysitting: a history? i’m reading it right now and it has tons of stuff related to prescribed female behavior in the 50s 60s, etc.
movies: now and then, my girl, ghost world, sisterhood of the traveling pants,
this piece from VICE is pretty funny, but probably inappropriate for high school: http://lesleyarfin.com/article/the-vice-guide-to-girls?height=600&width=940&p=Vice
i ended up doing a series of poems about a fictional 1960s girl group for my final project, and also wrote a paper. this book was pretty important in my project: http://www.amazon.com/Girl-Groups-Culture-Popular-Identity/dp/0415971136/ref=wl_it_dp_o_npd?ie=UTF8&coliid=I1B1LO7I70OXQI&colid=Y2DU216U9AKG
might be a bit above the heads of 14-17 year olds, but FASCINATING nonetheless.
i’m still thinking. i might come back to comment more later. but this sounds so awesome and i hope you’ll post about it once it’s over.
YAY! Isn’t an entire course of thinking about girlhood pretty much the best? I seriously think that seminar was the best I over the course of my Ph.D.
Also: those links in the syllabus to the tampon commercials are so, so good.
here’s the course site for the course i was in at new mexico state. hi to my fellow NM friend above me!
http://web.nmsu.edu/~jalmjeld/girlhood/schedule.html
hope my professors don’t mind me sharing it with you. i think you’ll find a lot here.
Well, I certainly second the Judy Blume suggestions, of course. Such great advances to girlhood.
You might also consider the American Girl series (and eventually dolls-no dolls when I was reading about Molly, though!)-whose stories get told? First? Eventually? I was reading a blog post today from a woman who said her (white) daughter asked for the African American doll for Xmas because it had brown eyes and curly black hair like she did. Interesting stuff to consider.
When I was in college, I did a class project on representations of girls on the Disney Channel in the late 1990s-early 2000s. It was an era when all the boys were really dumb and/or dorky, but the girls were smart and competent. Shows like Even Stevens and its contemporaries were pretty cool in that way.
Will keep thinking-I’m sure I’ll come up with other suggestions, too!
Erin, those shows are just slllllighty after my time — what else is there besides Even Stevens? Clarissa Explains It All was Nick, but sh was certainly the smart one. And evne iCarly is all about smart, media-savvy girls.
Dammit. I was hoping YOU’D remember! It was after my time, too, although I watched a lot of Disney Channel in college (don’t judge). I’m trying to remember what the other shows were…
OK. I opened up the paper. (What? You don’t keep all your digital files from college on your current laptop?) I looked at Even Stevens, Lizzie McGuire, The Proud Family, Kim Possible, and That’s So Raven (it had just come out).
Should note: all female protagonists, all totally smart and capable, all with totally dopey little brothers.
Strong girl messages-Sabriel, Lireal,and Abhorsen, all by Garth Nix. The whole LM Montgomery library for nostalgia, though the Emily series is the most pro woman of the lot. Current stuff … Condie’s Matched and Crossed, and of course Collins’s Katniss in The Hunger Games.
These girls will all read The Hunger Games if it’s the last thing I do.
I so want to take/teach this course!
Ok, quickly off the top of my head - i’ll be back tho I bet!
Girl-blogs/mags - Tavi, Rookie, younger parts of Hello giggles etc
As Tavi is obsessed with them that would take you to Virgin Suicides and Twin Peaks - you could also do Freaks & Geeks in relation to VS and/or MSCL
Alyx will recommend loads of great Riot Grrrl stuff and All Over Me is a good pairing with that.
On the independent side of things, this book is good, but snooty about Hollywood stuff:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sugar-Spice-Everything-Nice-Contemporary/dp/0814329187/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1322781094&sr=1-1
This is an ok book, good on Nancy Drew, bad on contemporary stuff:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/American-Sweethearts-Teenage-Twentieth-Century-Popular/dp/0253218020/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1322780709&sr=1-1
Ooh, and Mary Celeste Kearney’s great article on transmedia in 30s/40s girl texts.
Tho all of these books may be to university in tone - but I bet your ladies are supersmart.
From a British front - Misfits would make a good pairing with something like Fish Tank. I can recommend some sociology-focused stuff on British girlhood, and you can have my Misfits paper. Sight & Sound probably have an article on Fish Tank and I have a good piece on its cinematography somewhere.
Defo do girl groups - Susan Douglas’s Where the girls are has an aces chapter Why The Shirelles Mattered and I second the book that Carrie mentions above.
- You could also connect America Dreams (the NBC show set at American Bandstand) with this, and Dirty Dancing
Am hoping you do a class blog as would love to read your ladies responses to all your selections.
I think it’d be interesting to contrast Buffy with Brenda Walsh from the original 90210. Both were 16-year-old California girls in the same time period, but could not have been more different. Then again, who knows how Brenda and Kelly would have reacted had they lived on the Hellmouth-Cordelia certainly toughened up when she had to. And Buffy herself started out as a shallow cheerleader . . . so in the course of thinking through this comment I’ve turned 180 and decided the girls are far more similar than I first noticed. See? You’ve already taught me a lesson!
Law school would have been way more fun if it offered classes like the ones other commenters have mentioned!
My all-time favorite movie girlhood is that of the sisters in My Neighbor Totoro. It’s a very innocent, yet strong, imaginative, and brave kind of girlhood. An added bonus: the sisters in the English version of the movie are voiced by Elle and Dakota Fanning, who I think were 6 and 10 at the time, and hey, it’s the Fanning sisters, who are probably a girls’ media topic unto themselves.
Sweet Valley High. Punky Brewster. And, of course, Baby-Sitters Club.
I wanted to be a doctor in the early 1960′s but what I read about women in health care was Cherry Ames, Student Nurse.
The bodies, uniforms, and the roles of women in the future in the original Star Trek.
The heroine of one of my favorite childhood books (which I re-read again), Nobody’s Girl.
Laura in the Little House book who was spunky and smart and adored her daddy but the goal in the end was to get married and quit teaching school.
I realize as I thought about this that I put myself in the place of BOYS in books because I wanted to be like them.
Oh man-I love Cherry Ames. I read my grandmother’s set when I was a kid/tween/teen (lots of re-reads), and my husband’s first big gift to me was my OWN set of Cherry Ames books.
Babysitters’ Club - OF COURSE.
Sweet Valley Twins.
And okay, here goes…all the VC Andrews books released until 1997. Judge away *shameface*
Sassy, Daria, Francesca Lia Block, Lynda Barry’s Cruddy, Bjork’s music videos. Will brainstorm more on this short flight to Dallas!
Sassy was my #1 repsonse, also!! Glad to see it here already. I got to read it at the home of my daughter’s godfather. He had a subscription!
Many times when I read Bust, I feel like there is similar vibe. Not a very academic analysis, but that may be a project for another year…
No one has mentioned “My So-Called Life”? That was so pivotal to me. “Veronica Mars” rocked my slightly younger friend’s world.
I am drawing a bit of blank on book titles, I could recount plots. “Witch of Blackberry Pond”? (Salem witch trial stuff)
“little Princess” “To Kill a Mockingbird”
I loved reading Tamora Pierce’s books especially Alanna: The First Adventure and the Becca books “Terrier, Bloodhound.
As far as films went, I always tried to model myself after grown up women roles and wasn’t really inspired by characters my age.
Loved “Bend it Like Beckham”
This class/ school sounds amazing- I need a time machine, just to take this class.
We are watching ALL of My So-Called Life. Actually, we’ll probably watch 4 episodes and then it’ll do its magic and the kids will go home and watch it non-stop.
The Abhorsen trilogy is fantastic! Garth Nix writes wonderful female characters. I actually got into fantasy heroines, though, after discovering Robin McKinley’s The Hero and the Crown in my elementary school library in 5th grade. It changed my life. I was a total rule-following goody two shoes kid, but I stole the book from the library. (Not sure why it didn’t occur to me to just ask my parents to buy it for me. I thinkI just couldn’t bear to let it go, even for a little while.) I read a lot of Little House on the Prairie, Anne of Green Gables, and girl-focused survival porn type stuff prior to my book stealing experience (and still enjoy it), but The Hero and the Crown was the first awkward outsider girl turned DRAGON SLAYER who saves her country (even though the people don’t appreciate her!) I ever came across. Aerin wasn’t good at domestic things or anything that was expected of her and dealt with rumormongering about her background, but found her own path and discovered its value even though it didn’t earn her popular accolades. I can’t tell you how much that informed my preadolescent years and comforted me throughout them.
In addition to some old Seventeen, the difference between Seventeen and some SASSY when it was at its peak would be a facinating contrast. I would be specifically, for some reason, interested in the way the two magazines covered the death of Krissy Taylor, remember here the model who had the model sister and died at maybe 17 or 19 of an overdose on what, her inhaler? CLUELESS compared to, say, Reviving Ophelia. This is younger but the characters in The Babysitter’s Club books jump immediatly to mind. The whole Shirly Temple girl to woman of media experience vs how like a Fanning sister has evolved in an always MORE sexualized child star. Man….I want to do two weeks worth of Girls Media project! I miss school…
OMG! Patricia C. Wrede’s Enchanted Forest Chronicles. Its protagonist is a princess whose greatest weapon is her common sense. She controls her own destiny and the dragons tackle tough issues like gender identity and gender norms. It was like a breath of fresh air to my hungry little middle school brain. Also Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy is inspired by Paradise Lost and is told from a young girl’s perspective and deals with her sexuality as well has the whole Eve and the Fall phenomenon in and interesting way.
Oh God , so much yes to the Enchanted Forest Chronicles.
What aboutMeg in Wrinke in Time. Typical athletic brothers..she was the unusual one for liking/being a genius at math..strong smart mom…
YESSS!! How did I not think of this already? I read A Wrinkle in Time pretty young and disturbed my religious parents by solemnly declaring it to be “deeper than the Bible.” Tesseracts! Mrs. Who, Mrs. What, and Mrs. Which! Camazotz! The dark thing!
The His Dark Materials trilogy is good stuff, too.
Agreed - many good female characters here. The epigraph of my dissertation is from this book.
What a great question! I’m Chelsea’s friend and teach English to 9th graders in Texas. I love contemporary young adult novels- they are so edgy and always on the verge of being banned. Here are some goodies:
Marjane Satropi’s graphic novel ‘Persepolis’- it covers the treatment of women during and after the Iranian revolution. Her smaller GN ‘Embroderies’ is a conversation between several generations of Muslim women- they discuss women’s issues ranging from relationships to work to menstration. Also, the Persepolis series has been made into an award winning animated movie. GNs would be good for quick reads during such a short study.
On a much more superficial level, as far as graphic novels go, ‘Breaking Up’ is part of the ‘Fashion High’ series. It is about high school girls, clothes, and relationships- typical high school drama.
Contemporary young adult novels that are edgy and popular include: the ‘Crank’ series (the ‘Go Ask Alice’ drug story of today), ‘The Skin I’m in’ (a middle school girl learns to love herself in her own skin), ‘Define “Normal”‘ (two middle school girls from opposite ends of the clique spectrum are signed up for peer mentoring and learn to redefine normal), ‘Speak’ (a 9th grader refinds her voice after she is raped), ‘A Step from Heaven’ (A Korean-American immigrant must deal with an abusive father), “Make Lemonade” (a poetic tale of a girl who wants to help everyone in her poor neighborhood find happiness), ‘Cut’ (a novel about self-injury), ‘The Book Thief’ (an illiterate orphan girl saves books from Nazi censorship- narrated by the Grim Reaper!). Novels by David Leviathon like ‘Boy Meets Boy’ and ‘Realm of Possibility’ have LGBT teenage characters- in ‘BMB’ he redefines gender roles with characters like Infinite Darlene, a transgender football quarterback! Good stuff.
I love, still, the Betsy - Tacy Books by Maud Hart Lovelace. It’s so cool to see what high school kids in that era did. I re-read the four high school and the two post high school books every year at Christmas. I always think they’re important girl’s stories because all the girls really want to be something more than just a wife and a mother.
I was going to say this, too. I read those books so many times as a kid. I admit I got bored when they got to high school and never finished the series. But then I was also never able to get through Anne of Green Gables, Little Women, or A Little Princess.
I second A Wrinkle in Time and its sequels, and I might add the Earthsea Cycle by Ursula K. leGuin, with a focus on Tenar, who shows up in the 2nd and 4th books as the central character.
Also read LOTS of Beverly Cleary and Judy Blume. And a ton of Betty and Veronica comics.
I would play a few clips from Freaks and Geeks, the (cancelled) show that aired on Fox 1999-2000. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freaks_and_Geeks
The episode, “Kim Kelly is My Friend” came to mind immediately. This is a terrific show portraying Lindsay Weir (Linda Cardellini), a high school student who changes crowds after the death of a grandparent. She stops being in the Math Club and begins to follow the “freaks” at her school. I really appreciate that she is a smart, inquisitive, strong young lady that is discovering her identity and her values with an open mind.
It’s a radical show because they treat her with so much dignity and let her character develop over time. The other female character, Kim Kelly (Busy Phillips) is seen as a promiscuous woman, and their friendship together is really touching.
In addition to what’s been said: 90210, Saved by the Bell, Blossom, the Molly Ringwald movies, Marjorie Morningstar (book from my mom’s generation about a teenage girl), Dirty Dancing, National Velvet, Harriet the Spy, Matilda, Jane Eyre, Reviving Ophelia would be so great to see how it resonates with this generation…or Queen Bees and Wannabees? Pippi Longstocking, Go Ask Alice, Sloppy Firsts, etc., ok I’ll stop now. Oh wait, THE SADDLE CLUB!!!!!!!!
While this wasn’t part of my girlhood but more my early-twenties-hood, I wish it had been: Veronica Mars. Especially the first season. The fact that that show did so poorly in the ratings makes me think that a lot of people, young/teen girls included must not have been comfortable with the sight of a smart, sassy, kickass teenage girl who had a better moral fiber than pretty much anyone around her except maybe her father. Seriously. Great stuff.
Thought of another-I’d encourage you to check out both the work AND the blog of Meg Cabot (Princess Diaries, among about 2304982 other series). She is ALL about empowering girls/young women, both through her writing and her interactions with fans online and in person across the world. She’s truly great.
I totally forgot about a book I read at least monthly from Grade 6 until probably my sophomore year of HS: The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle. I really loved that book, and Charlotte was such an interesting character to me back then.
i JUSt started reading a GREAT noel: anthropology of an american girl by hilary thayer hamann. randomly picked it up at the bookstore yesterday and am TEARING through it it. it’s beautifully, beautifully written.
http://www.anthropologyofanamericangirl.com/
The big one for me was probably Buffy (sorry to be a cliche, that was my era!) and also Clueless was huge for me, in the way it showed a blonde very girly girl who was actually really smart, and the idea that femininity didn’t preclude intelligence and personal depth was pretty key for me.
Also, a bit after my time so I don’t know how popular it was, but I used to always find myself watching late night cable reruns of a show called Radio Free Roscoe (I think it aired on Nickolodeon in the US), which was a Canadian show about some kids who ran a pirate radio station in their high school, and one of the protagonists was this girl who wanted to be a musician and was always trying to stay true to her DIY ethics and which was pretty delightful.
I was an old-fashioned child, so I have to suggest the classics: Anne of Green Gables, Little Women, The Little House books, and the strongest girl-heroine of all, Jane Eyre. I also, as a budding theatre lover, adored the Shoe books by Noel Streatfeild, all about plucky British girls who overcome various obstacles to find success on stage and screen.
back in the early 2000′s there was this reality show on mtv called “rich girls” centered on two nyc teen rich girls that i dont think was every very popular but i remember watching it and secretly really wanting these girls’ lives. one is the daughter of tommy hilfiger, the other is just rich for i dont know what. its a VERY specific look at teenage girls that’s really indicative of not just there own class and environment but also i think of an era when it was totally ok for girls to be vapid and conspicuous consumers. not that it isnt now but i dont think a show like this would ever get made now. like very going shopping with your little dog and driver and drinking starbucks and carrying a louis vuitton bag. back when ppl like paris hilton and rachel zoe were trendsetters and definitely pre-recession. their style of dress is straight out of mean girls with new york money mixed in.
i looked it up on youtube recently and it made me a bit sick to watch and think there was a time i really wanted to have their lifestyle. it might be too niche for your class but in reading the comments about my so called life i realized that i didnt grow up with angela chase’s representing girls on tv, i grew up with these kind of rich girls.
First thing that popped into my mind was something I read when I was ten, maybe eleven, called ‘Maggie Adams, Dancer.’ There’s a couple other books in the series, if I’m remembering correctly. Young female ballet dancer (18ish) living in San Francisco in the late 80s. Rife with relationship/career conflict, anorexia, homosexuality, competition, female friendship, and ambivalent ambition. Well-written and pretty sophisticated in that it covers topics that are startlingly relevant to girls and women, then and now.
I remember reading an excellent book in undergrad called Teenage: The Prehistory of Youth Culture by Jon Savage. There is a particularly wonderful chapter on how Seventeen magazine and youth-oriented fan culture launched the popular concept of ‘teens.’
I think a section on girlhood dystopian fiction would be amazing-it’s always something I bring up in my graduate classes now because I find the cross-gender popularity and transmedia ‘pushing’ of these novels so interesting.
I’d recommend
The Hunger Games
Divergent-Veronica Roth
The Chaos Walking Trilogy-Patrick Ness
all of which either feature active female heroines OR deal explicitly with the place that gender roles could or would go in a dystopian ‘what-if’ scenario.
This is an old one, but a good one, Daddy Long Legs by Jean Webster. It predates the modern construct of adolescence and while progressive at the time, reads as incredibly retro now in many respects. Despite that, it’s one of my favorite books. Much like the Anne series, it stars a plucky young orphan, and is written as series of letters to the anonymous benefactor who is sending her to college. Perhaps you’ve already read it. I simply adore this book.
I’d also say, it’s not strictly “girls” or young adult, but if you have any Sci-Fi fans in the course? Encourage them to watch some Firefly. The female characters in the series are fantastic, especially Zoe and Inara.