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.