Week 13: Online Culture

 

I was looking at this website called gURL.com. It is an online girls forum that was recommended on a parenting website as safe and "clean" space for young and adolescent girls to explore and socialize online with other girls their age. The website, I believe takes a number of security measures to protect girl members online, one of which is every time a girl-member sends a 'friend request' to another girl-member, parents of both girl-members are intimated via an automated email sent directly to the parents' in-box; and only after parents of both members consent by clicking a link provided in the email can the 'connection' between the two girls be possible.

The forum has got a lot of stuff on it for girls to keep them busy for hours at an end - bulletin boards, miniblogs and profiles, games, trivia, advices, quizzes and advertisements. I can totally visualize a 16 year old spending most of her leisure in here, playing games, making friends and learning important in the process.

" There's plenty to gain from becoming a gURL:

• meet new people from all over the world in our shout out boards
  
• become a gURL advice buddy (or find one)!
• create your own polls for other gURL members to take in the shout out boards
• get creative on our boards--you can post pictures and change fonts and colors in your posts!
  
• give and get advice from other gURLs in our advice gURL panel or on our shout out boards
  
• create your own room on gURL
• get your comics and stories published
  
• voice your views about everything and anything on our boards, in our dig or dis feature, or in clips about clips
  
• and there are many more benefits to come...

"Are you a back-stabber? Find out in this quiz." (From gURL.com)

Week 11: Girls and Print Media

Image from www.nzherald.co.nz

The Cosmopolitan is widely considered as the original girls' (big girls, not little girls) magazine. It was launched in 1972 in UK and has ever since been notorious for emblazoning the word S-E-X on it's cover unabashedly. I didn't know this (obviously because I have never been encouraged to read Cosmopolitan), but an interesting trivia about the magazine is that ever since it's launch in 1972, it has never failed to use the 'S-word' on its cover in a single issue. As an article on the popular magazine (it is second in circulation only to Glamour) in the Newzealand Herald (http://www.nzherald.co.nz/) mentions, "Sex is Cosmo's nuts and bolts, its DNA". However, arguably, Cosmopolitan is not a sex magazine; it's purpose being not to provide its readers with kink, but to educate. The Newzealand Herald article mentions: "Much has been made of Cosmo's critical role in sex education, back when nice girls wouldn't dream of discussing anal sex over their own dead bodies, never mind tea and biscuits." However, much of this education simply boils down to learning what 'men prefer in women' as is evidenced in articles such as "Men's all new sex wish list", "what's really on his mind" and "how to control his roving eyes".

Week 10 (Driscoll)

Catherine Driscoll's 2002 book, Girls (Driscoll, C (2002). Girls: Feminine Adolescence in Popular Culture & Cultural Theory. New York: Columbia University Press) would have been a really good and enjoyable book had it not been A book. Had it been in three volumes, instead of being in three parts, it would have been fantastic! There's no question of doubting the scholarship of this woman; but the book is crammed with names - names of people, theorists, theoretical positions and perspectives, films, books, you name it. And none of these are really explained or elucidated in the context of girls and girlhood.

I mean, I am new to this field (haven't had really read any of the theorists Driscoll refers to) and I am trying to gain an understanding of the issues, concerns and scholarships in the field through this book. Now, that's in my opinion is a bad idea; the book only manages to throw me off. I mean, imagine having to read a book where in every 10 words, you come across a word (a name, a term, a concept) that makes absolutely no sense to you. I really struggled through this book and wouldn't recommend it to a beginner like me.

But I got to hand it to Driscoll for managing to cram a 3000 page multivolume work into a 300 page softcover book, and still make some sense!

Week 9: Bedroom Culture

I was looking for images of girls’ rooms online, when I found this website called Better Homes and Gardens. In this website I found a series of 20 images advertised as Bedrooms Just for Girls (http://www.bhg.com/decorating/kids-rooms/kids-rooms/bedrooms-just-for-girls/) I have collected the images of some of these model bedrooms for girls here.

See. Spot. Fun!

Girly in Green

Little Girl, Big Pink Style

Pink Glamour Room

Limeade

Week 8: Girls and Cultural Productions (Driscoll Part 3)

I was wondering what to do for the spatial analysis. I wanted to analyze a toy shop exclusively meant for girls, if there be any, or, otherwise, I thought an exclusive girls section of a children’s toy shop would do just as fine. Being new to State College, I did not know much about the area and so I decided to look online, hoping to find a children’s toy store in the State College area that could be reached without a car. When the google search revealed nothing, I decided to change the search string and searched for “girls games” instead. What I found was several gaming websites like www.girlgogames.com and www.girlsgames.com, dedicated exclusively to girl gamers. I also found a guysgames.com meant for boy gamers and several other websites for girlgamers. A quick look at the ‘Top 10’ games for girls in one of the two gaming site listed above, revealed 3 cooking games, 4 Dressing (or Dress Up) games, 2 make-over (Hair and Nails) games, and one kissing game.

Week 7: Reflection on Field Trip

Last week my field trip was to the library and back home. I checked out a DVD of Lolita and watched it on my computer. Vladimir Nobokov’s celebrated 1955 English novel about a middle-aged man’s tumultuous and obsessive sexual relationship with a 12-year-old girl was turned into a successful film by Stanley Kubrick in 1962. A later 1997 version was directed by Adrian Lyne. Watching the movie (1962) made me wonder about its incredible popularity. To me, it seemed like just an average movie. Possibly the popularity of the movie is just a reflection of the popularity of the book.

Week 5: Becoming a Girl (Driscoll)

As I am reading the first 100 something pages of Driscoll’s book where she talks about what ‘being a girl’ means from different perspectives, time frame and theoretical positions, I can’t help but think of another way of becoming a girl – a literal way: through sex change. I wonder how that might fit into the given scheme of things, particularly in Indian contexts where such things are still big taboos?

One of my friends from India is a LGBT activist and researcher. She once told me about this couple she knew. The girl was in school with her and she knew the boyfriend primarily through the girlfriend, and only later discovered other connections. The couple had been together for several years, before the boyfriend realized that she had always felt like a girl inside and wanted to change sex. The story was narrated to my friend by the girlfriend, who expressed her concerns and confusions about her boyfriend suddenly turning into a girl. Put that way, the story probably sounds funny, but as far as I have learned from my friend it had a rather sad ending for the couple. It pains me to think what ‘becoming a girl’ could entail for people like them, especially in an unsympathetic and unforgiving conservative society.

Week 4: American Sweethearts (Ilana Nash)

Nancy Drew is one among the ‘American Sweethearts’. Nancy Drew is a fictional amateur detective character in a children’s mystery series founded by Edward Stratemeyer in 1930. Since then Nancy Drew books are still in print. The books are ghostwritten under the pseudonym of Carolyn Keene. In the 1980’s a new series called Nancy Drew Flies was created that featured an older and professional Nancy Drew as a pilot and had romantic plots. In 2004, the Nancy Drew series was replaced by a new series called Girl Detective. Nancy Drew books have been translated into over 45 different languages and there has been 5 films, 2 television shows and a number of popular computer games based on Nancy Drew.

[Screenshot of ‘Nancy Drew – Lat Train to Blue Moon Canyon’ – a Nancy Drew mystery computer game in which the Hardy Boys has invited Nancy Drew (represented in the game by the player) on a train ride out West. Their hostess, socialite Lori Girard has gathered the best minds in mystery to solve a century-old secret and the haunted train is their best clue. The game can be played at two different levels – the Junior and senior detective.]

Week 3: Girls and Subculture (Angela McRobbie)

Wikipedia defines ‘subculture’ as:

In sociology, anthropology and cultural studies, a subculture is a group of people with a culture (whether distinct or hidden), which differentiates them from the larger culture to which they belong. For example, if a particular subculture is characterized by a systematic opposition to the dominant culture, it may be described as a counter-culture.

Dick Hebdige has argued that subculture that brings together like minded individuals who feel neglected by societal standards and allow them to develop a sense of identity is a subversion of normalcy.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subculture)

On the other hand, attributing the term to Theodore Roszak, the term ‘counter-culture’ is defined as “the cultural equivalent of political opposition”.

What then is the difference between subculture and counter-culture? Are they two terms for the same thing?