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Constructions of education and resistance within popular feminist commentary on girls and sexualisation

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posted on 2012-08-01, 00:00 authored by Claire CharlesClaire Charles
We are currently witnessing a renewed vigour to ongoing concerns about the sexualisation of young women and girls in western popular culture. This paper takes up Angela McRobbie’s concerns that the commercial sphere has become a primary site for talking about, and educating, girls and young women (McRobbie, 2008). I first explore the growth in ‘expert’ commentary, on girls and sexualisation, drawing on the work of a number of commentators and authors from the USA, the UK and Australia, who have become ubiquitous media commentators on issues facing girls, including sexualisation. I then draw on feminist and education theory to explore the possible limitations of how education is conceived within this cultural site, particularly with respect to constructions of girls’ resistance. In the final part of the paper I show how girls’ resistance is complicated in postfeminist, neoliberal societies and I propose that education scholarship and practice must confront the ways in which girls’ resistance is bound up in their developing classed and raced identities.

History

Issue

no. 35

Series

Alfred Deakin Research Institute working paper series two

Pagination

15 - ?

Publisher

Deakin University : Alfred Deakin Research Institute

Place of publication

Geelong, Vic

ISSN

1837-7440

eISSN

1837-7432

ISBN-13

9781921745348

Language

eng

Publication classification

A6 Research report/technical paper

Copyright notice

2012, Deakin University, Alfred Deakin Research Institute

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