Table of Contents

Acknowledgments List of Illustrations Introduction: Towards a Genealogy of Girlhood Part I. Becoming a Girl 1. The Girl of the Period 2. Feminine Adolescence 3. Puberty Part II. Becoming a Woman 4. Daughters: Theories of Girlhood 5. Sex and the Single Girl: Studies in Girlhood 6. Becoming Bride: Girls and Cultural Studies Part III. Girls and Cultural Production 7. Distraction: Girls and Mass Culture 8. In Visible Bodies 9. The Girl Market and Girl Culture Conclusion: The Girl of the Century Notes Bibliography Index

Promotional Information

The Spice Girls, Tank Girl comic books, Sailor Moon, Courtney Love, Grrl Power: is there really such a thing as "girl culture"? Catherine Driscoll argues that both "girls" and "culture" as ideas are too problematic to fulfill any useful role in theorizing about the emergence of feminine adolescence in popular culture. She relates the increasing public visibility of girls in Western and Westernized cultures to the evolution and expansion of theories about feminine adolescence, in fields such as psychoanalysis, sociology, anthropology, history, and politics. Presenting her argument as a Foucauldian genealogy, with chapters arranged chronologically to follow a girl's development, Driscoll discusses the ways in which young women have been involved in the production and consumption of theories about representations of girls, feminine adolescence, and the "girl market."

About the Author

Catherine Driscoll is lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Adelaide, Australia. She has published essays in various scholarly journals and books, most recently Deleuze and Feminism and Deleuzian Becomings.

Reviews

"[There is a] special urgency to identify the way girl culture is produced and consumed. Catherine Driscoll promises to take on this task in Girls." -- Terri Apter, Times Literary Supplement (London) "Driscoll discusses the ways in which young women have been involved in the production and consumption of theories and representations of girls, feminine adolescence, and the 'girl market.'" -- Family Therapy "The result is an erudite and crisp exegesis of many contemporary theorists, interspersed with readings of popular culture itself... it is a smart and suggestive intellectual montage." -- Jane H. Hunter, American Studies "A lucid and original study of girl culture... both challenging and rewarding." -- Emma Liggins, Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory