Childhood and Tween Girl Culture

Family, Media and Locality

Fiona MacDonald

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781137551290
• eBook ISBN:
  9781137551306
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Cultural & Social Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book explores the ways in which notions of childhood are being influenced by a rapidly expanding consumer-media culture in the 21^st Century. It has been argued that new stages of childhood are being created and defined by children's role as consumers. The concept of 'tween', girls aged between 9 and 14, has generated the greatest debate. While the fantasy world of 'tween' offers girls a space to fashion a young, feminine identity it has been widely argued that the consumer-media's messages pressure tween girls to consume and adopt highly sexualised appearances and behaviours.

The author considers how the art of consumption for 'tween' girls is intrinsically linked with their desire for independence and belonging, and how their consumption is interwoven with other important social and cultural influences. 

The book will be of interest to scholars and students in the fields of Childhood and Youth Studies, Cultural Studies, Feminist andWomen's Studies and Sociology.

 

© The Author(s) 2016

Fiona MacDonaldChildhood and Tween Girl CultureStudies in Childhood and Youth10.1057/978-1-137-55130-6_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Fiona MacDonald^{1, 2}

(1)

Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

(2)

Victoria University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

End Abstract

Why Tweens

In the twenty-first century we are bearing witness to changes in notions of childhood, parenting, and family life. ‘End of childhood’ discourses abound. At the centre of these concerns is the influence and impact of a rapidly expanding consumer-media culture. There are many arguments that suggest a consumer-media culture is intent on creating new stages of childhood. Stages that are defined not by children’s biological development but by their role as consumers. Of these new stages, it is the consumer-media tween culture, targeting girls aged between 9 and 14, which has caused the greatest public outcry. It is widely argued that tween-aged girls are being pressured to consume and adopt a highly sexualised appearance by a consumer-media tween culture which aims to create consumer personae of these girls. Yet the significance of consumption in the lives of young people is not a new phenomenon. Teenagers have long been recognised as a ‘specific group with a disposable income’ with a ‘distinct style expressed in the conspicuous consumption of records, clothes and leisure activities’ (Nayak and Kehily 2013, p. 134). Furthermore the ‘production of sexuality’ has long been offered to teenagers and young women through fashion items that confer ‘adult or teenage female beautification’ to underwear, clothing, and make-up (McRobbie 2008, p. 545).

The selective nature of the tween ‘stage’, targeting girls who no longer consider themselves children but are not yet teenagers, has raised particular concerns about the consumer media’s influence of this culturally ambiguous age. While ‘age and gender’ are the main determinants of membership, ‘in fact class and cultural privilege saturate tweeniness’ (Harris 2005, p. 211). The commercial personae of tween, the ‘girlness’ of her consumption choices, and the apparent sexualisation of girls by the potentially pernicious influence of the consumer-media tween culture have provoked widespread debates and calls for action in many Western developed nations. The girls’ agentic subject position challenges our understandings of childhood vulnerability and innocence for this age group (Harris 2005; McRobbie 2008; Nayak and Kehily 2013). It is difficult for adults to acknowledge pre-teenage girls’ agency while considering how their ‘age and gender … overlap and intersect in complicated ways with sexuality, race, ethnicity and social class’ (Cook and Kaiser 2004, p. 223). The commercial aspect of tween culture targets the complex nature of the tween age group promoting products that acknowledge the girls’ growing maturity and their desire to fashion a feminine self that is acceptable to their friends and peers. The prodigious nature of tween girl culture has essentially linked a commercial persona with this age group. There is a perception that the marketing persona of tween exists beyond its commercial entity. Within this framework tween girls are narrowly defined by their consumption activities and other important social and cultural influences are largely overlooked.

Understandings of girlhood and young, feminine identities in the local, social worlds that girls live in have long been explored by feminist and youth scholars as ‘the street, school, and home remain significant spaces in young people’s lives’ (Harris 2004, p. 100; see also Aapola et al. 2005; Hey 1997; McRobbie 2008; Pomerantz 2008; Thorne 1993; Walkerdine 1990). Explorations of the absence of young women in youth cultures in the 1970s made way for the ‘can-do’ girls and girlpower of the 1990s (McRobbie 1994; Harris 2004). Critical analysis of the normative femininity presented to young girls in teenage magazines prevailed through the 1980s and 1990s (Durham 1998; McRobbie 1991). The significance of friendships to girls has been extensively explored from the 1990s (George 2007; Hey 1997; Pomerantz 2008). Girlhood scholars have explored the complex juncture of difference, identity, race, class, sexuality, appearance, and gender practices in the many and varied local, social environments of girls (Nayak and Kehily 2013, p. 5). Within this scholarship the motivation for this book was to explore the shift in contemporary understandings of girlhood and ‘young feminine identities that is offered’ to pre-teen girls who are positioned on the increasingly blurry boundaries of childhood in contemporary Western society (Harris 2005, p. 222). In this book I consider contemporary influences in the girls’ everyday behaviours and practices and explore how they merge with pre-teen girls’ consumption activities. My exploration was informed by the lack of engagement with the consumer-media tween culture demonstrated by the pre-teenage girls I knew, including my own daughter. While elements of the girls’ lives were obviously influenced by consumer culture there was so much about these girls that existed outside these boundaries. While the girls liked to dress up and to go shopping their alignment with the tween girl culture was tenuous and their desire to consume motivated by a variety of factors.

As I reflected on their indifference towards tween culture I was reminded that even the most glittery and sparkly tween girls live ordinary, everyday lives beyond the fantasy worlds presented to them by the consumer-media tween culture. Yet tween scholarship and our broader cultural understandings of tween have largely focused our contemporary understandings of pre-teens on the globalised commercial personae of tween, overlooking the changing nature of other social and cultural influences in the girls’ lives. Influences such as family, schools, and local neighbourhoods which have undergone their own changes throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries are less obvious in contemporary explorations of pre-teen culture. Calls to address this gap in our broader understandings of the tween age group have been made by governments around the world (NSW Commission for Children and Young People 2005; Public Health Agency of Canada 2011; The Children’s Society 2009; The Senate 2008).

This book aims to present a different perspective of pre-teen girls’ lives. In this book I present an exploration of the everyday nature of the lives of a class of 11- and 12-year-old tween girls and consider their behaviours and actions in relation to their desire to achieve a sense of belonging in their local spaces and places. My understandings are drawn from my year with a class of pre-teen girls in a Melbourne primary school. Spending the entire school year with these girls I developed valuable insights into the complex nature of their everyday actions and behaviours. The girls’ desire to develop relationships with their friends and peers was pivotal to their ability to achieve a sense of belonging in this space. As I discovered, the complexities of the girls’ considerations and negotiations of friendship and belonging in this space were often obscured by the outwardly simplistic nature of their actions and behaviours. The value of time was vital as I considered the nuanced and intricate meanings in the girls’ behaviours and practices over the entire school year. The links between the girls’ desire for freedom, friendships and belonging, their consumption activities, family’s social location, the school, and their local, social worlds were unmistakeable. The girls’ frustrations at their ambiguous place of in-betweenness, no longer children but not yet, and not wanting to be, teenagers was palpable.

My aim in shifting the focus from the global nature of tween to the local environment of school follows other girlhood scholars and introduces the significance of the girls’ localised meaning-making (George 2007; Hey 1997; Pomerantz 2008, Thorne 1993; Walkerdine 1990). In this space I consider the argument that the influence of the consumer-media tween culture is not independent of other important social and cultural influences in the lives of pre-teenage girls (Cook and Kaiser 2004). Throughout the book I explore how the girls’ consumption activities are inherently entwined with the girls’ desire for freedom and independence as they seek to achieve a sense of belonging in their own local, social worlds. I introduce the voices and insights of these 13 intriguingly ordinary girls to highlight how the things that matter to them are evident in their everyday considerations and negotiations of belonging. While this is an exploration of a group of tween girls it is also the 13 individual stories of the girls from Year 6C and their final year in primary school. I hope that the respect and admiration I had for the lives of these intriguing tween-aged girls is evident throughout this book. Their eagerness to share their lives with you in this book was contagious. While my analysis is undertaken through an adult lens I have attempted to move beyond our adult perceptions of the girls’ behaviours and listened to the girls’ understandings as they shared valuable insights into the meaning-making of their everyday practices. This is not knowledge of how these girls negotiate a tween identity, but, more importantly, it is knowledge of how ordinary 11- and 12-year-old girls might be fashioning their own sense of self, and belonging every day, in their own unique local, social worlds (MacDonald 2014).

Organisation of the Book

I begin this book with a brief overview of childhood as a stage separate from adulthood. I consider our existing understandings of girlhood and young, feminine identities alongside the diverse, shifting, and complex discourses of childhood that enabled the emergence of the tween phenomenon at the end of the twentieth century in Chap. 2. An overview of the ethnographic study I conducted in the Melbourne primary school highlights the significance of local spaces to pre-teenage girls’ negotiations of belonging. I introduce Pugh’s concept, the economy of dignity, to demonstrate the framework for my exploration of the significance of belonging. In Chap. 3 I explore the meaning of shopping centres beyond their role as retail outlets to the girls. The chapter considers how the consuming practices of tweens, while influenced by the globalised aspect of the tween market, are undertaken in shopping centres and locations in their own social worlds (Nayak 2003). I separate the art of consuming from the act of consumption and acknowledge the girls’ desire to ‘hang out with their friends’ in shoppi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Frontmatter
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Understanding the Local, Social Worlds of Pre-teens
• 3. Pre-teen Girls’ Desire for Freedom and Independence
• 4. Consuming Technology
• 5. Stepping Stones to Facebook
• 6. Consuming Spaces: Pre-teens Negotiating Their Social Worlds
• 7. The Everyday Nature of Pre-teen Girls’ Lives
• 8. Conclusion: Family, Media, and Locality
• Erratum to: Childhood and Tween Girl Culture
• Backmatter