(More Than) Grrrl Power! Girls Studies at UCF

In honor of our next in-person class, and the chapter on Prom, I'm sharing an excerpt from a short story I wrote awhile back about my high school experience. Haha...it's a little t.m.i...but I think it's pretty funny, and it's true. Alright.... “Prom Date” Sitting there with my legs stuck to a leather couch clutching a ball of black tulle and sequins, balancing an overnight bag and rolling my neck back and forth waiting, thinking, “Get here, get here, get here, get here.” This is my sharpest memory from the morning after. The doorbell rings and I leap up, waddling to the front door of my girlfriend’s house. My mother peers through the glass of her front door, with cupped hands and a look of concern on her face, and a lump settles into my throat. “Thank you…um, I’ll see you later.” I mumble the expected polite good-bye, and sneak out the door while simultaneously dropping and catching my things. As I climb into the car, it smells sweaty and American. Tennis rackets scatt...

In a society increasingly centered around Facebook, Myspace, LiveJournal, blogs, and various other personal spaces carved out from an almost mythological cyber space, girls are presented with more escapist opportunities than ever before. Where who you are can be tidied up in a controlled manner; a bulleted list of likes and dislikes, musical taste and extracurricular activities; it is easy to make a profile of who you want to be…not necessarily who you are . I’m guilty of it; if I think that I look anything other than pretty in a tagged picture on Facebook, I immediately untag it. There’s the email, the Facebook email, the cell phone, the house phone, the…the list goes on. I got rid of Facebook for awhile because it actually became too taxing to keep up the “internet me” in addition to the “real-life me.” Girls are so distracted, it is no wonder their diverted attentions are often mistaken for confusion or incapability. I found it interesting that in “A Virtual Room of One’s Own,” R...

As a 13-or-so-year-old girl, pop culture was an integral part of my identity. I loved music, but had difficulty bonding with other girls over it. My friends either didn't like the same music as me or weren't as passionate about it as I was. Different types of music went along with different types of cliques and I wasn't a part of any of them. I looked to the internet to feed my pop culture and music obsessions, whether it be perusing fan sites for artists, posting on message boards, or listening to music online. I remember visiting a lot of artist fan sites created by girls and talking through various internet venues to girls from around the country, bonding over our love for certain musicians. It is only now, reflecting upon the importance of the internet within girl culture, that I realize how important these rituals were to me. This huge part of my identity existed almost entirely within this virtual reality, as Foucault would put it in an "other space" o...

This either good girl or bad girl identity situation made me laugh today because reading the Merskin article finally gave light of what a bad girl can be. For some reason, I always thought bad girls were BADASSES! To me, the bad girl was always someone who ditched boring classes, stole from the mall, wore heavy eyeliner and was never afraid of boys-in fact, she’d kick his ass if need be. It never occurred to me that bad actually meant a girl of lesser quality despite the fact that I’m pretty interested in what it was like to be female generations before me, where being good was a much more serious affair. I mean, one of my favorite movies is Splendor in the Gras-which is ALL about trying to maintain the pureness of being good. My brain is just funny like that sometimes. (Trailer for Splendor in the Grass: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMs6eC0ZBQE ). Anyway…it’s just insane to me to that this hierarchy exists between humans and especially women because we are still very...

Is all the academafeminist jargon getting to anyone else? It's so frustrating to start out an article about girl's websites and suddenly find myself "negotiating" the murky "discourses" of "actualized" and "idealized" spaces....bla! Like seriously did Reid-Walsh and Mitchell have to spend an entire two pages comparing websites to Foucalt's idealized spaces? Like are Foucalt's guest room anecdotes really relevant, or are they just convenient scholarly analogies? To respond to what they had to say, though....as I was readding I found myself feeling left out of these independent online spaces for girls. I was entering my junior year of highschool when my 13 or 14 year old friend made a myspace page for me, and then I never really personalized it. I was definitely fascinated by the myspace world, though, and the way other girls made a space for themselves and used it to interact with people from all over. Finding girl-made websites th...

Although I enjoy learning about girls' lives and find the subject fascinating, I can't help feeling disconnected from girls and girlhood. Perhaps it is because I have rejected my girl self. Come to think of it, my girlhood was not much different from that of the average girl. I had low self esteem and felt self conscious about my body. I thought I was ugly and that there was something wrong with me. I developed later than most girls; I didn't get my period until I was 17. I was flat chested until college, and I never felt sexually attracted to boys until just a few years ago. I just remember feeling like I wasn't a normal girl and would never be one. Overall, I was just uncomfortable and confused with my body and sexuality. Adolescence was a tough time for me, and I'm glad that it's over. I am now proud of my sexual self and comfortable with my body. I am confident in my abilities and have become a leader in organizations whose causes I care about. Wh...

Girls making their own webpages,I believe, is an excellent way to get their identities, voice, frustrations,interests out to other people. I don't know how common the webpage format that was mentioned in the text is anymore, focusing on a homepage and guestbook, but I would agree that girls simulate their world into a "virtual bedroom." I had never thought of the term "wallpaper" as relating to ones own room, but pages like myspace, livejournal or any other intractive forum that you can design really allows for girls to personalize their ideas. "Web sites constructed or deisgned by girls are one of the few spaces under their control," it is almost an escape, if your home life or living situation is unbearable you have your place to vent, connect, share with your friends rather than explaining it over the phone and maybe your little brother walking in. You can also manifest your dreams, "...a girl can obtain a "room of one's own," no...

First off, I really enjoyed "Making An About-Face," because this article spoke so much truth that is so easy to relate to. This one line I definitely felt a connection to, "In preparation for womanhood, she has been trained, by her mother, magazines, and manners to be a good (i.e., compliant, orderly, quiet), and willing participant in the ideology of preferred femininity." I love that part, because all growing up my parents would always tell me to act like a lady, or that boys don't like that, every time i burped, or did anything that was "un-lady like." In fact they still do that, but now I just don't care and I do what I want. But magazines and t.v. definitely tell you how to be a lady, even if your mother doesn't reinforce those manners everyday.  Next up, I adore what Rebecca Walker said in Driscoll (2002) as she describes a ""rigid ideological second wave feminism" that doesn't fit anymore: Constantly measuring up to so...