Girl power

Abstract: As young people today grow up in a world saturated with digital media, how does it affect their sense of self and others? As they define and redefine their identities through engagements with technology, what are the implications for their experiences as learners, citizens, consumers, and family and community members? This addresses the consequences of digital media use for young people's individual and social identities. The contributors explore how young people use digital media to share ideas and creativity and to participate in networks that are small and large, local and global, intimate and anonymous. They look at the emergence of new genres and forms, from SMS and instant messaging to home pages, blogs, and social networking sites. They discuss such topics as "girl power" online, the generational digital divide, young people and mobile communication, and the appeal of the "digital publics" of MySpace, considering whether these media offer young people genuinely new forms of engagement, interaction, and communication.ContributorsAngela Booker, danah boyd, Kirsten Drotner, Shelley Goldman, Susan C. Herring, Meghan McDermott, Claudia Mitchell, Gitte Stald, Susannah Stern, Sandra Weber, Rebekah Willett David Buckingham is Professor of Education at the Institute of Education, London University, and Founder and Director of the Centre for the Study of Children, Youth and Media.

Abstract: Set against a backdrop of deindustrialisation, rising male unemployment and the feminisation and casualisation of the labour market, Growing Up Girl graphically explores the complexities of gender and class during a period of massive social change. It tells the story of today's 'I can have everything' girls who face unprecedented shifts in the organisation of family, education and work, and yet who continue to struggle with the not always visible but always palpable pressures of wealth, poverty, class and ethnicity. Drawing on data spanning nearly twenty years, the authors of this ground-breaking study provide a sobering antidote to commonplace platitudes about 'girl power' and a feminine future. They reveal the hidden price of middle class girls' apparently effortless achievements - obsessive hard work, guilt and devastating feelings of inadequacy - and they trace how the labour market cruelly sets material limits on the disappointed hopes and ambitions of working class girls. Vividly illustrating their arguments with quotations from the research participants, they show how young women's practices of self-invention are regulated both by unconscious processes and real social and economic constraints. Their insistent conclusion is that class is far from dead. Indeed, it is centrally important to our understanding of what it is to be a young woman in today's complex and challenging world, This important and grippingly written book is essential reading for students and scholars alike in sociology, cultural studies, women's studies, education and psychology. It will also be of interest to anyone else struggling to make sense of the position of women in society today.

Abstract: Anita Harris creates a realistic portrait of the "new girl" that has appeared in the twenty-first century--she may still play with Barbie, but she is also likely to play soccer or basketball, be assertive and may even be sexually aware, if not active. Building on this new definition, Harris explores the many key areas central to the lives of girls from a global perspective, such as girlspace, schools, work, aggression, sexuality and power.

Abstract: Acknowledgements Foreword Michelle Fine Introduction Anita Harris Part 1: Constructing Girlhoods in the Twenty-First Century 1. Notes on Post Feminism and Popular Culture: Bridget Jones and the new gender regime Angela McRobbie 2. Women, Girls, and the Unfinished Work of Connection: A critical review of American girls' studies Janie Victoria Ward and Beth Cooper Benjamin 3. Good Girls, Bad girls: Anglo-centrism and diversity in the constitution of contemporary girlhood Christine Griffin 4. From Badness to Meanness: Popular constructions of contemporary girlhood Meda Chesney-Lind and Katherine Irwin Part 2: Feminism for Girls 5. Feminism and Femininity: Or how we learned to stop worrying and love the thong Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards 6. Girl Power Politics: Pop-culture barriers and organizational resistance Jessica Taft 7. Mythic Figures and Lived Identities: Locating the 'girl' in feminist discourse Jennifer Eisenhauer 8. 'I Don't See Feminists as You See Feminists': Young women negotiating feminism in contemporary Britain Madeleine Jowett Part 3: Sexualities 9. Pretty in Pink: Young women presenting mature sexual identities Kate Gleeson and Hannah Frith 10. Talking Sexuality Through an Insider's Lens: The Samoan experience Anne Marie Tupuola 11. Shifting Desires: Discourses of accountability in abstinence-only education in the US April Burns and Maria Elena Torre Part 4: Popular and Virtual Cultures 12. Where My Girls At? Black girls and the construction of the sexual Debbie Weekes 13. Spicy Strategies: Pop feminist and other empowerments in girl culture Bettina Fritzsche 14. Jamming Girl Culture: Young women and consumer citizenship Anita Harris 15. Girls' Web Sites: A virtual 'room of one's own?' Jacqueline Reid-Walsh and Claudia Mitchell Part 5: Schooling 16. Pleasures Within Reason: Teaching feminism and education Nancy Lesko and Antoinette Quarshie 17. Girls, Schooling and the Discourse of Self-Change: Negotiating meanings of the high school prom Amy L. Best 18. Gender and Sexuality: Continuities and change for girls in school Mary Jane Kehily Part 6: Research With and By Young Women 19. Colluding in 'Compulsory Heterosexuality?' Doing research with young women at school Kathryn Morris-Roberts 20. Speaking Back: Voices of young urban women of color using participatory action research to challenge and complicate representations of young women Caitlin Cahill and the 'Fed Up Honeys': Erica Arenas, Jennifer Contreras, Jiang Na, Indra Rios-Moore, and Tiffany Threatts 21. Beneath the Surface of Voice and Silence: Researching the home front Adreanne Ormond 22. Possible Selves and Pasteles: How a group of mothers and daughters took a London conference by storm Lori Lobenstine, Yasmin Pereira, Jenny Whitley, Jessica