Elite Girls' Schooling, Social Class and Sexualised Popular Culture

Claire Charles

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415636568
• eBook ISBN: 9781136195877
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Young women's identities are an issue of public and academic interest across a number of western nations at the present time. This book explores how young women attending an elite school for girls understand and construct 'empowerment'. It investigates the extent to which, and the ways in which, their constructions of empowerment and identity work to overturn, or resist, key regulations and normative expectations for girls in post-feminist, hyper-sexualised cultural contexts.

The book provides a succinct overview of feminist theorisations of normative femininities in young women's lives in western cultural contexts. It includes familiar sexist discourses such as sexual double standards, as well as more recent commentary about the regulation of young women's subjectivities in neoliberal, post-feminist, hyper-sexualised cultures. Drawing on ethnographic research in the context of an elite girls' secondary school, the author explores how empowerment for young women is constructed and understood across a range of textual practices. From visual representations of young women in school promotional material, to students' constructions of popular celebrities, the question of how girls' resistance to normative femininities begins to develop is examined.

This rich empirical work makes a unique contribution to the study of elite schooling within the sociology of education, drawing on important insights from the field of critical girlhood studies, and posing a challenge to popular feminist notions about media literacy, young women and empowerment. It will be of interest to scholars and postgraduates in the areas of gender studies, sociology, education, youth studies and cultural studies.

1 Beholden to no one

Elite schoolgirls in the 21st century

‘I don't know why, but I'm just really good at a lot of things.’

‘I didn't ask to be born hot.’

Ja'mie King

This book is about how young women attending an elite private girls' school in Australia construct empowerment, and how their constructions might work to reproduce or resist particular normative configurations of femininity and sexuality. Media culture in western contexts is now replete with images of girls' power and empowerment in a post-feminist, neoliberal political landscape, in which it is often imagined that young women are unambiguous success stories. Representations of high-achieving, privileged young women are generating the interest of feminist academics internationally. The growing cultural presence of privileged girls and girls' power requires scholarly attention, in terms of how dominant configurations of sexuality, class, and race are reproduced through the depictions of such girls in media culture, and in terms of how ‘real’ privileged girls navigate cultural messages about empowerment, as well as how constructions of identity may work to (re)produce and/or resist dominant configurations of femininity.

When I was an adolescent in the early 1990s, certain ideas about young women and sexuality first came to my attention. At that time, the various images of ‘empowered’ girls that now dominate media culture were yet to become such a ubiquitous feature of the cultural landscape of young femininity. My experience as a young woman in a school context was that girls were frequently labelled ‘tart’ or ‘slut’ for reasons ranging from fashion choice to seeking attention from boys. Such labels were rarely used in relation to any concrete evidence about a girl's actual sexual or romantic activity, yet they served as a powerful reminder about the need to manage the self in order to be seen as appropriately attractive and desirable without being constituted as ‘too sexy’. Sexual harassment was a common occurrence at school, directed at girls mostly by young men. At the same time, there were some examples of women in media culture – such as the American pop star Madonna – who seemed to proudly display their sexuality as a source of empowerment. I would watch these pop stars on television music programmes on Saturday mornings, and their shiny, confident ‘in control’ personas seemed very far removed from my own daily experiences.

As the 1990s progressed, sexually confident, savvy young female pop stars steadily grew in number. As British girl band the Spice Girls hit the music charts toward the end of the decade, ‘girl power’ became a popular slogan internationally. I felt perplexed by these burgeoning representations of young women in media culture that seemed to equate being a sexy siren with confidence and empowerment. It was this curiosity, and even discomfort, that first motivated me to undertake research into young women and established notions of gender, sexuality and power. I wanted to know whether teenagers growing up in a ‘girl-powered’ cultural context were able to transcend some of the oppressive, constructions of gender and femininity that were a feature of my early youth. I wanted to know how they would construct identity in the context of post-feminist media culture's sexually ‘empowered’ girl icons.

In many ways pop stars such as Madonna, and the many musical icons who followed her, seemed to overturn ‘older’ sexist ideas that can work to maintain a sexual double standard whereby it is acceptable and permissible for men to be sexually desiring, but not for women. If feminine sexual desire was once culturally silenced by such a double standard, it seems that in the present cultural context, it has become clearly present and visible, often in the form of sexually confident young singers (see Gill, 2003; Harris, 2005). This image of youthful femininity fits into a broader western cultural context that is arguably becoming increasingly sexualised (Attwood, 2009), and one in which young female celebrities often present a confident, hyper-sexualised image that is associated with empowerment. This media culture (see Chapters 2 and 3) has generated significant public, academic and popular feminist concern about the possible implications for young women, and a strong interest in promoting media literacy for girls. Against this cultural backdrop, this book explores how teenagers construct empowerment, and includes an exploration of how they make sense of ‘sexualised’ girl icons representing empowerment. It examines how normative configurations of femininity are (re)produced and/or resisted in these girls' constructions of empowerment.

As noted above, the growth of ‘empowered'’images of young women in western media culture has generated a significant amount of feminist commentary in recent years. This commentary is international in scope, and it has positioned popular representations of girls' power squarely within a post-feminist and neoliberal¹ political landscape. Scholars such as Angela McRobbie have presented powerful critiques of prevalent notions of girls' power, showing how discourses of freedom and choice within that landscape actually generate highly regulatory frameworks for girls' identities. Normative girlhood in this culture gathers around the individualised, self-inventing, choosing, consuming, ‘empowered’ girl. Rosalind Gill writes that ‘emerging from much contemporary writing is the figure of the post-feminist consumer citizen: active, empowered, above influence and beholden to no one, able to choose to “use beauty” to make herself feel good, feel confident’ (2007b: 74). This figure is closely related to the one Anita Harris wrote about in her book Futuregirl, where she suggested that young women are imagined as ‘a vanguard of new subjectivity’ (2004: 1). Harris argued that ‘power, opportunities and success are all modelled by the “future girl” – a kind of young woman celebrated for her desire, determination and confidence to take charge of her life, seize chances, and achieve her goals’ (2004: 1). This construction of young femininity is set against a cultural context characterised by individualisation, one in which the future girl is responsible for making the right choices in life, and is no longer imagined to be held back by oppressive gendered power relations (i.e. sexism) that may have once restricted girls' and women's choices and shaped their experiences. This is a cultural context where the ‘cute but powerful girl-woman is now a dominant theme in mainstream popular culture’ (Hopkins, 2002: 1), and where newspapers frequently report on girls being the new ‘success stories’ in education (Ringrose, 2007). As Susan Hopkins puts it, ‘our culture has embraced virtually superheroic ideals of young femininity’ (2002: 3). Many writers, along with Hopkins, have pointed out that this is a cultural context in which young women appear to be everywhere.

As Harris is at pains to show throughout her book, this future girl subject, also described as a ‘can-do girl’ (2004: 13), is one that is inextricably related to class privilege and whiteness, despite the fact that class and race are rarely acknowledged in cultural representations of the future girl, and her ‘failed’ other, who occupies an equally significant presence in many cultural representations of contemporary femininity. Harris argues that ‘the material resources and cultural capital of the already privileged are required to set a young woman on the can-do trajectory’ (2004: 35). Thus it is the elite private (white) schoolgirl – the subject of inquiry in this book – that can be imagined as most likely to be living up to this future girl image.

Some of the most influential and well-known feminist scholarship about young women, neoliberalism and post-feminism is located in the United Kingdom, and focuses on the British and European context in its exploration of how this context is generating particular regulations for young women's identities (Gill, 2007c; McRobbie, 2009; Walkerdine et al., 2001). But is neoliberal, post-feminist girlhood a universal phenomenon? In what ways do these discourses frame the production of young female subjects in contemporary Australia? Furthermore, much existing empirical exploration of young femininity in this context has been conducted with young women who are understood to be marginalised in relation to class and race. In what ways are neoliberal and post-feminist discourses configured within the identity work of elite girls? Much of the early work on elite girls' schooling pre-dates the current feminist interest in this culture and its implications for young women's sexualities and subjectivities (Delamont 1989; Kenway, 1990; Proweller, 1998; Spencer, 2000; Walford, 1983, 1993). Of the more recent studies on elite schoolgirls (Allan, 2009; Cooper-Benjamin, 2010; Walkerdine et al. 2001), none has focused on sexualised celebrities, and how they might feature in elite girls' constructions of empowerment in a ‘hyper-sexualised’ landscape. Recent studies that have specifically explored sexuality in the context of elite girls' schooling have not considered the significance of post-feminism and neoliberalism in young women's identities, and in understanding their agency in relation to sexuality (Maxwell and Aggleton, 2010a, 2010b). In what ways might we understand resistance and agency around normative configurations of femininity when it comes to elite girls?

In order to begin reflecting on young elite femininity in contemporary Australia, I draw attention to a highly popular character on Australian television. Private schoolgirl Ja'mie King is a character created and performed by a male actor and comedian, Chris Lilley. This is an exaggerated, satirical portrayal of young femininity by a man in drag, and it is useful for analysis here because of the ways it exaggerates, and thereby brings clearly into view, some of the ways in which young femininity is imagined and presented, with respect to empowerment, across western media culture more broadly.

King appears in two of Lilley's popular ‘mockumentary’ series that satirise life and people in contemporary Australia.² King is 16 years old, white and attends ‘Hillford Girls' Grammar’, a fictional school in a highly affluent area of Sydney. She has two ambitions in life. One is to be an international supermodel, the other to work as an ambassador for the UN. This immensely popular character mocks and makes fun of the image of a rich private schoolgirl who has the world at her feet. King's character is, in many ways, a response to the post-feminist success story that Rosalind Gill writes about in an article that inspired the heading of this introductory chapter.

King has been nominated for ‘Australian of the Year’ by the school principal in recognition of her dedicated sponsorship of 85 young Sudanese people through the community aid organisation Global Vision.³ In undertaking social service of this kind, she is considered an ambassador for her school, and indeed her country. When King is invited to speak at her school assembly about her sponsorship, she is held up as the ideal young citizen, upon which the other students might model themselves.

Her social service, however, is inextricably bound up with self-creation and the attainment of individualist goals. King is presented as a subject of self-determination and economically savvy, as she confidently attempts to negotiate a hefty payment from a Global Vision representative when he asks her to be involved in an advertising campaign. For King, social service is part of an individualistic quest for fame, money and recognition. This quest is all part of the girl-power package, as Susan Hopkins notes. ‘The new hero,’ she writes, ‘is a girl in pursuit of media visibility, public recognition and notoriety. She wants to be somebody and “live large” … fame is the ultimate girl fantasy. Girl power is inextricably linked to celebrity power’ (2002: 4) (italics in original).

King completes the 40-hour famine⁴ every week to raise money for her Sudanese sponsored children, which, as she remarks whilst admiring herself in front of her full-length bedroom mirror, ‘keeps me looking really hot’ (Lilley, 2005). Prior to approaching the lectern at the school assembly, she performs a dance routine reminiscent of a Britney Spears music video clip.⁵ Complete with pink fluffy accessories attached to her school uniform and the top buttons of her dress undone, she pouts and prances about the stage in front of the student body and the representative from Global Vision. Thus King is heavily invested in performances of sexual desire and ‘agency’ as she dances provocatively about the stage, and talks about ‘hot guys’ in many other scenes in the series.

King's character playfully dramatises the ways in which normative femininity/sexuality for girls is complex and contradictory in a culture now characterised by increased visibility of young women. Older hetero-normative discourses – whereby girls must carefully negotiate and manage sexual reputation – are reconfigured alongside newer regulations for girls' identities in neoliberal, post-feminist societies. This cultural context works to position and require girls in particular (Harris, 2004) to be individuals who are entrepreneurial, successful and self-determined, as well as (hetero)sexually confident and desiring. As Pomerantz and Raby note, ‘the successful girls' narrative has become a central tenet of post-feminist discourse’ (2011: 550), and excellence in education and work are part of this narrative. Many of these normative dimensions of contemporary femininity are seen in the character of Ja'mie King, as she exercises entrepreneurial self-determination at the same time as emulating a confident, hyper-sexualised performance of youthful femininity that has become a ubiquitous feature of media culture in countries such as Australia.

How do ‘real’ privileged girls construct empowerment in the Australian context? ‘Lyla Girls' Grammar School’ (LGGS) is an elite independent secondary school for young women located in Melbourne. During my time researching with some young women at this school, I showed them an image of Madonna in which she was pictured pulling open a black suit jacket to reveal a lacy black bra. After viewing this image, 16-year-old Elizabeth wrote:

Madonna is wearing a suit in this picture. This could be representing a lot of things; I mean why is she not wearing a tight leather dress like Britney? The suit itself is commonly recognised as a sign of power, or perhaps, a sign of masculinity. In society, feminine things are often treated as trivial and masculine things treated as real.

Sexuality is what this picture is all about. But then … how come it doesn't seem like she is throwing herself at a guy? Madonna is showing that she possesses power, success. Not that she is there for a man to take, but that she is working, and winning, alongside men. And doing it well. She is expressing that she too can wear a suit, but ultimately reminding us that underneath – she is a woman.

Elizabeth's response demonstrates a measured, thoughtful engagement with the possible meanings of this image with respect to sexuality, femininity and power. This is very much in line with what I once imagined girls' ‘resistance’ to normative femininity to look like. Elizabeth demonstrates a rational, distanced, considered engagement with an image from popular culture and a capacity to deconstruct the discourses underpinning particular ideas about men, women and sexuality that disadvantage women. For example, she grapples with whether it is possible to be ‘sexy’ at the same time as being legitimately ‘successful’ and empowered, questioning the binary logic of this construction. She also grapples with the idea that feminine things may be treated as trivial.

Over time, however, I have significantly developed my thinking about girls, media literacy and ‘resistance’. The problem with celebrating girls' critical deconstruction of media, as Gill puts it, is that it ‘misunderstands the complexity of young people's (indeed all people's) relations to media, with its implication that being critical will automatically displace other kinds of affective responses including shame, hatred or desire’ (2012: 737). I would add to this the assumption that critical deconstruction can be automatically equated with resistance, when there are in fact classed and raced dimensions of normative femininity that may in fact be constituted in and through girls' responses to popular media.

Many studies indicate that young people are indeed critical, resourceful consumers of popular media, and do not necessarily require adults to help them achieve analytical distance (Buckingham and Bragg, 2004). What they have also shown is that young people's consumption of popular culture is a key site through which they negotiate their gendered, classed and raced identities (Ali, 2003a, 2003b; Nayak and Kehily, 2008). Within this broader literature there is a discernible body of ethnographic research on girls' everyday cultural production, which challenges the idea that girls passively reproduce and internalise dominant cultural norms about gender and sexuality (Bae, 2009; Cahill et al., 2004; Currie et al., 2009; Duits and van Zoonen, 2011; Ivashkevich, 2011; Leblanc, 1999; Raby, 2006; Rand, 1995; Reid-Walsh and Mitchell, 2000). This literature indicates that rather than passively internalising cultural norms, girls' everyday cultural production is a site in which they often subvert or resist gender norms, and one in which some oppressive constructions of gender may be combated at the same time as others are re-inscribed (Renold and Ringrose, 2008, 2011). This is an important existing body of work, and is a key set of literature to which this book contributes...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Beholden to no one: elite schoolgirls in the 21st century
• 2 ‘Normative’ femininities: from romance and domesticity to raunch and visibility?
• 3 (Re)searching for girls' resistance
• 4 Becoming ‘lady bountiful’ elite schooling, social class and girl citizenship
• 5 ‘Hey skank face, you can't dress properly!’ revisiting sexuality and social class
• 6 ‘She's doing it for herself’ negotiating sexualised popular culture
• 7 Conclusions: ‘elite’ schoolgirls, normative femininities/sexualities and resistance
• References
• Index