Girl talk
Subtitle: adolescent magazines and their readers
By: Dawn H. Currie
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Published: 1999
Place of publication: Toronto
Language: eng
Number of pages: 362
ISBN-13: 9780802044150; 9780802082176
Subjects: Sex role in mass media; Women's periodicals, American; Teenage girls; Périodiques pour la jeunesse; Adolescentes; Rôle selon le sexe dans les médias; Books and reading; Presse féminine américaine; Youths' periodicals; Identité sexuelle; Livres et lecture
Description: "Current feminist debate finds itself at an impasse concerning the significance of magazines for adolescent girlsare they full of oppressive prescriptions of femininity, or celebrations of female-centred pleasure and resistance against the patriarchy? The question has been examined largely by middle-aged academics, in some cases far removed in age and education from the intended consumers of these magazines, and the assumptions they have reached about the messages absorbed by young women may be completely wrong." "Dawn Currie takes a new approach, by looking at the readers themselves and how they interpret the messages of the magazines in their everyday lives. Based on interviews with forty-eight girls aged thirteen to seventeen, this book challenges many assumptions that have arisen through researchers making their own interpretations, such as that of the supposed appeal of glossy photo spreads and advertisements."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: 'Girls doing girl things' : a study of girls becoming women; title: Just looking : exploring our point of entry; title: Materialist feminism : the ideology of women's magazines; title: Materialism revisited : doing girl talk; title: From text as specimen to text as process : reading as everday practice; title: Teenzine reading : the social life of texts; title: From pleasure to knowledge : the power of the text; title: Doing and undoing : the everyday experience of subject-ivity; title: Calling cultural constructions into question; title: Towards a materialist analysis of texts : reading sociologically.