Girls’ Gendered Identities and the Media: Feminist Dis/Identifications

This paper is based on some of the findings of my Masters dissertation: a feminist analysis of middle-class teenage British girls’ construction of gendered identity in relation to media consumption. I will discuss girls’ interpretation of commodified third wave feminism and seek to establish what kind of feminisms, if any, they create through this process. I will use the ideology of romance to explore how girls occupy a particular discursive position that discourages them from feminist identification. I argue that a process of dialogue with younger women is needed in order to create a feminism that is both relevant to their experiences and politically motivated. The paper will close by considering how, given the value of pojavascript:void(0);pular culture and the media in young women’s lives, we can utilize these resources creatively to help us imagine new feminisms.