Girl Talk: Adolescent Magazines and Their Readers PDF
Preview Girl Talk: Adolescent Magazines and Their Readers
^ ^ i Adolescent f and Their Readers i\ i Dawn H i;JJ/ii^ Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2011 http://www.archive.org/details/girltalkadolesceOOcurr GIRL TALK: ADOLESCENT MAGAZINES AND THEIR READERS Currentfeministdebate finds itselfatan impasseconcerning the significance of magazines for adolescent girls - are they full of oppressive prescriptions of femininity,orcelebrations offemale-centredpleasureandresistanceagainstthe patriarchy?Thequestion has been examinedlargelybymiddle-aged academics, in somecases farremovedin ageandeducation from theintendedconsumersof these magazines, and the assumptions they have reached about the messages absorbedby young women may be completely wrong. Dawn Currie takes anew approach, by looking atthereadersthemselves and how they interpretthe messagesofthemagazines in theireveryday lives. Based on interviews with forty-eight girls aged thirteen to seventeen, this book chal- lengesmanyassumptionsthathave arisenthroughresearchersmaking theirown interpretations, such as that ofthe supposed appeal ofglossy photo spreads and advertisements. InCurrie's study, we findthatgirlspreferwritten texts,particu- larlyadvicecolumns,becausetheyviewthem asusefulforeverydayliving,par- ticularly within the schoolculture, which Curriefindsreinforces themessage of the 'teenzines' by encouraging girls to doubtthemselves ratherthan to question the cultural constructs that surround them. Using intertextuality as a reading strategy formaterialistfeminism, she distinguishes between the 'social' andthe 'cultural' and allows us to better understand how power as a quality of social relationshipsworksthroughtheculturalmediaoffashionandbeautymagazines. DAWN CURRIE is Chairofthe Women's Studies Programme and Associate Pro- fessorofSociology atthe University ofBritish Columbia. DAWN CURRIE H. Girl Talk: Adolescent Magazines and Their Readers UNIVERSITY OFTORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London University ofToronto Press Incorporated 1999 Toronto Buffalo London Printed inCanada ISBN 0-8020-4415-8 (cloth) ISBN 0-8020-8217-3 (paper) @ Printedon acid-free paper Canadian Cataloguingin Publication Data Currie, Dawn, 1948- Girl talk Includes bibliographicalreferencesandindex. ISBN 0-8020-4415-8 (bound) ISBN 0-8020-8217-3 (pbk.) I. Youth's periodicals-UnitedStates. 2.Teenagegirls-Books and reading. 3. Women's periodicals, American. 4. Sexroleinmassmedia. 5. Genderidentity. I. Title. PN4878.C87 1999 05i'.o835'2 C98-932362-5 University ofTorontoPress acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program ofthe CanadaCouncil forthe Arts andtheOntarioArts Council. Thisbook hasbeenpubishedwiththehelpofagrantfromthe HumanitiesandSocial Sciences FederationofCanada, usingfunds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities ResearchCouncil ofCanada. To Joan, Faye, Sara, and ourmother- the most important women in my life I » I 1 Contents ACKNOWLEDGMENTS IX INTRODUCTION 'GMs DoingGirl Things': A Study ofGirls Becoming Women 3 1 Just Looking: Exploring OurPointofEntry 22 2 MaterialistFeminism: The IdeologyofWomen's Magazines 55 3 Materialism Revisited: Doing Girl Talk 9 4 From Textas Specimen toTextas Process: Reading as Everyday Practice 116 5 Teenzine Reading: The Social Life ofTexts 146 6 From Pleasure to Knowledge: The Powerofthe Text 169 7 Doing and Undoing: The Everyday Experience ofSubject-ivity 208 8 Calling Cultural Constructions into Question 247 CONCLUSION Towards a MaterialistAnalysis ofTexts: Reading Sociologically 284 3 viii Contents APPENDIX a: Description ofParticipants 3 1 APPENDIX b: 'Counting' Meaning 317 APPENDIX c: Advertisements Used in Girl Talk 323 NOTES 325 REFERENCES 337 AUTHOR INDEX 355 SUBJECT INDEX 357
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