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Raunch culture goes to school? : young women, normative femininities and elite education
Public concern about popular culture’s sexualisation of women and girls is regularly voiced in the Australian media. Young women grow up against a backdrop of ‘raunch culture’ (Levy, 2005), which for some scholars represents a ‘new’ femininity (Gill, 2007), in which ‘hyper-sexual’ forms of (hetero)sexual expression are now expected of young women and girls, despite ostensibly being about choice and personal empowerment. In this article, I explore the constructions of girlhood and femininity amongst young women attending an elite, single-sex, private school in Melbourne, Australia. Elite schooling for girls is often associated with highly classed notions of (hetero)sexual modesty and propriety, epitomised in the reality television program Ladette to Lady. Here I consider how hyper-sexualities are configured within students’ constructions of themselves and others, and I explore their relationship to classed expectations of identity for privileged girls. I examine the role that classed norms of identity play in mediating these girls’ negotiations of hyper-sexualities.
History
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Media international AustraliaIssue
135Pagination
61 - 70Publisher
University of QueenslandLocation
St Lucia, Qld.ISSN
1329-878XeISSN
2200-467XLanguage
engPublication classification
C1.1 Refereed article in a scholarly journalCopyright notice
2010, University of QueenslandUsage metrics
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