The author discusses Claudia Card's life work in that it concerns character development under heteronormative patriarchy as pertaining to the American Girl Just Like You doll. American Girl advertises this doll as a doll that can help little girls feel strong, powerful, unique, and ready to take on the world. The word "feminist" is not used in any of the company's marketing, but the company is clearly trying to market the idea that the (...) Just Like You line is empowering for girls. The author argues that the Just Like You doll discourages learning the skills that are required for world traveling, and that it also implies that such skills are not important. In order to successfully engage in cross‐cultural world traveling, one must leave arrogant perception behind and begin to understand how the other sees himself or herself as a subject in that world. (shrink)

This essay explores the American Girl Just Like You doll through a variety of feminist lenses. It was inspired by my experiences chaperoning my friend Grace to the American Girl Store in New York City, and returning to the store to shop for my own doll. I returned to the store because I was not sure why I was so extremely disturbed by this doll. The doll is not emaciated, not overtly sexy, (...) and marketed along with outfits that supposedly send girls the message that they can achieve their goals. She comes in a variety of skin, eye, and hair colors, and the line is therefore marketed as racially and ethnically sensitive. I argue that although the Just Like You line appears to be empowering and racially sensitive on a superficial level, an in-depth feminist analysis indicates that it is not. In fact, the Just Like You line is highly problematic from a feminist perspective. (shrink)

For more than fifteen years, Melissa Ann Pinney has been making photographs of girls and women, from infancy to old age, to portray how feminine identity is constructed, taught, and communicated. Her work depicts not only the rites of American womanhood—a prom, a wedding, a baby shower, a tea party—but the informal passages of girlhood: combing a doll's hair, doing laundry with a mother, smoking a cigarette at a state fair. With each view, we gain a greater understanding (...) of the connections between mother and daughter, and by extension the larger world of family, friends, and society. Pinney's approach to interpreting girlhood became more complicated and complex when her daughter, Emma, was born eight years ago. Emma's childhood evoked in Pinney her own girlhood and gave her work new meaning and purpose. Ultimately, Regarding Emma shares with all of us the incremental and the ritualistic changes that take place in a woman's life over time. Her photographs are artistic and social documents that reveal the subtle and bold aspects of feminine identity—documents whose reach will extend well beyond the walls of America's leading galleries and museums into the hearts and homes of everyday Americans. "Melissa Ann Pinney is making powerful art. In matters of light, color, and composition she is flawless. But these are not simply constructions of elements. These photographs bear witness to the speed at which the little girl becomes the old woman, to the fleeting, breathless beauty of childhood, to life itself, which leaves us stunned in its wake."—Ann Patchett, from the Foreword "Melissa Ann Pinney provides a compelling portrait of American girls as they make their way from infancy to adulthood. Using her daughter's childhood as a point of departure, she traces the complex terrain of adolescence and budding femininity. The results are photographs marked by empathy and grace."—Sylvia Wolf, Sondra Gilman Curator of Photography, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City "These photographs by Melissa Ann Pinney impart a sense of the special and sacred everyday rituals we take for granted. She appreciates at once the transient nature of what she finds and its gravity. Her pictures describe so well the wonder, and beauty, and centrality of the things we know best and the people we see often."—Sandra S. Phillips, Curator of Photography, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art "Melissa Ann Pinney's record of life with her daughter, Emma, adds a new and touching chapter to our knowledge of the lives of women and girls."—Adam Gopnik, author of Paris to the Moon and a staff writer for The New Yorker "Melissa Pinney's passionate, painstaking investigation of the stages of women's lives is impressive for its rigor and courage. Her themes aren't imposed on the pictures or on the women, men, and children who people them; instead, they arise from her attentive study of particularities— of the ways human lives are etched on the surfaces of faces and the positions of bodies in real spaces and places, mundane but radiant. When she turns from the lives of others to her own life, the shift is seamless but the volume swells, the emotions grow more pointed and the paradoxes more painful, joyous, and direct. This is remarkable work by an artist at the height of her powers."—Peter Bacon Hales, author of William Henry Jackson and the Transformation of the American Landscape. (shrink)

This study examines the socio-cultural significance of dolls as Roman girls' toys. It focuses on a sample of ivory, bone, and cloth dolls, many of which have ornate hairstyles, molded breasts and, in some cases, delineated genitalia. As the only explicitly gendered toys from the Roman world, these constitute unique bodies of evidence for exploring questions of socialization and identity formation, and assessing ancient ideals. Often treated as relatively straightforward objects that prepared girls for futures as wives and mothers, this (...) study argues instead that they were more complex and conveyed mixed messages to their young owners. By isolating three specific features of the dolls , situating these in their historical and ideological milieux, and linking them with expectations for girls known from literary sources, the dolls' multivalence as artifacts of gender and status is revealed. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 9, September 2020, Page 78-80.

In-depth interviews with white middle-class Dutch and American girls demonstrate two important differences in the cultural beliefs and processes that shape their negotiation of heterosexuality. First, Dutch girls are able to integrate their sexual selves into their relationships with their parents, while reconciling sexuality with daughterhood is difficult for the American girls. Second, American girls face adult and peer cultures skeptical about whether teenagers can sustain the feelings and relationships that legitimate sexual activity, while Dutch girls are (...) assumed to be able to fall in love and form steady sexual relationships. This research suggests important differences in institutionalized forms of heterosexuality. It also suggests the significance of girls’ relationships, and the cultural perceptions and processes that shape those relationships, for their sexual subjectivity. (shrink)

"A probing and intelligent explanation of dieting and weight obsession that points to religiosity, morality, and absolution from guilt as the primary agents motivating women's irrational quest for thinness."--Choice.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Epigrams of PhilodemosBarbara Hughes FowlerDavid Sider, ed. The Epigrams of Philodemos. With introduction and commentary. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. vi 1 259 pp. Cloth, $65.David Sider’s edition of Philodemos’ epigrams is exemplary. It includes a preface stating the reason for such a production; an introduction which treats the life of Philodemos, his connections with Piso and the Epicureans on the Bay of Naples, (...) the Herculaneum papyrus, his contribution to the epigrammatic [End Page 311] form, a comprehensive treatment of his metrics, his place in the Greek Anthology, and a review of the manuscripts and of early printed editions (1494–1600) of his works; and Sider’s explanation of his arrangement of the poems, with a list of seven suggested emendations. This is followed by a concordance of printed editions and of manuscripts. Sider treats thirty-eight epigrams, including some of doubtful attribution and two which are, for metrical and other reasons, almost certainly not by Philodemos. The commentary is followed by a detailed discussion of P. Oxy. 3724, testimonia relating to Philodemos, an extensive bibliography, an index of passages cited, and a general index.The text, translations, and commentary are distinguished not only by their learning, which is prodigious, but by their literary sensitivity. If Sider discusses meter, he shows how it relates to the subject matter of the epigram at hand. On his epigram 8 (AP 10.21), a frantic prayer to Aphrodite, he says, “Unusually for Philodemos, there is no A-caesura in any of the four hexameter lines, which produces a rushed quality.” Again on his epigram 25 (AP 5.306) he remarks, “Not only do we have a rare spondaic fourth foot, it is especially surprising after three dactyls, for whereas DDDDDS is among the commonest of metrical shapes,... dddsds is one of the rarest (indeed, only here in Phil.). The result is a heaviness in these words which emphasizes the contrast with the preceding.” The preceding lines are a girl’s description of her would-be lover’s passionate kisses; the following lines are her complaint that when she is ready, he is unable or unwilling to make love.Another astute remark is on 12 (AP 5.132): “Given the greater variety of sibilants in Oscan than in Latin or Greek, there may be the additional point that the notion of the elegant Sappho sung by a Campanian is funny, esp. if in recital Phil. exaggerated the sibilants of ” Again, on 3 (AP 9.570) Sider suggests that may refer to Xantho’s doll-like quality—as opposed, for instance, to the eighteenth-century idea that she was a bee.Informing Sider’s literary judgments is a fascinating array of facts, including that is a Phrygian loan word, that the pigeon was the sacred bird of the Galloi, the variable price of figs, that goose, lamb, kid, and hare livers were eaten, the cheapness of good tripe sausage, that eunuchs wore women’s clothing, and that muzzles were not used in races but were used in the training of horses.A major thrust of Sider’s commentary is his belief that certain of Philodemos’ epigrams can be read in the light of his Epicureanism. Although 13 (AP 5.24) may owe as much to the epigrammatic tradition as to Epicurean doctrine, Sider’s note on Epicurean notions of the composition of the soul as comprised of both rational and irrational parts is of value. So the same soul both foretells and, foretelling, desires. On 27 (AP 11.44), an invitation to Piso to come to dinner on the Twentieth, an Epicurean holiday, Sider is more persuasive, for he compares the epigram to a passage of Philodemos’ On Epicurus which discusses [End Page 312] Epicurus’ own invitation to attend a feast. On 28 (AP 11.35), a description of foods brought by friends for a dinner, Sider comments, “A poem listing the modest ingredients for a meal which would be appropriate for Epicureans.” He also reads 29 (AP 9.412) as an Epicurean commentary: today we must enjoy our simple repast, for tomorrow we, like Antigenes and Bakkhios, may die. On 31 (AP 11.318... (shrink)

In January 2014, seven‐year‐old Charlotte Benjamin wrote a letter to LEGO in which she described a lack of LEGO options for girls. Charlotte's letter has since gone viral. Many critics of the LEGO Friends theme have cited it in articles and blog posts about how this girls theme reinforces negative gender stereotypes. LEGO introduced the Friends theme in early 2012 explicitly as the "girls theme" to replace the unsuccessful LEGO Belville theme. Many fans of LEGO found the gender imbalance unfortunate, (...) because, as studies indicate, playing with blocks, in particular in structural play, can significantly enhance spatial and mathematical skills. LEGO's solution was to create a theme in which purple and pink colors dominate the fictional place: Heartlake City. LEGO also introduced a new kind of figure: the mini‐doll. The mini‐doll is different from the traditional LEGO minifigures in being less blocky, more styled and taller; it is also a bit more feminine in appearance. (shrink)

While most high school students will obtain future social class positions consistent with their class backgrounds, a handful of students are exceptions to this rule, being either upwardly mobile working-class students or downwardly mobile middle-class students. Highlighting predominant patterns, research typically ignores such students precisely because they are exceptions to the rule. This article, based on ethnographic research among white and Mexican American high school girls in California's Central Valley, foregrounds the experience of upwardly mobile working-class students showing how (...) race/ethnicity, class, and gender intersect in the lives of these young women, shaping their educational mobility. Using a comparative approach, this article examines the similarities and differences between white and Mexican American working-class girls' experiences of mobility. The article first describes the various contingencies leading to the girls' mobility, then explores their subjective experience of mobility, in both cases noting the girls' different experiences according to their race/ethnicity. (shrink)

Black girls regularly experience gendered, racial structural violence, not just from formal systems of law enforcement, but throughout their daily lives. School is one of the most central and potentially damaging sites for Black girls in this regard. In this paper, I draw attention to the role of the beauty salon as a space of renewal for Black women and girls as they navigate systems of oppression in their daily lives and report on the ways in which a specific beauty (...) salon in Chesterfield County, Virginia, supported a group of Black high school girls. The study focuses on the exposure of Black girls to carceral measures in school settings and speaks to the role of African-American beauty salons as spaces where collective care from violence can manifest and strategies to interrupt racialized gendered violence against Black girls can emerge. As Co-Investigator of this study funded by the Department of Justice, I created the “scholar-artist-activist lab,” consisting of a small group of undergraduate and graduate students facilitating workshops with a mixed gender group of Black high-school students, to discuss, interact, and participate in social justice-centered exercises. I focus here on the experiences of the Black girls who participated in the study. (shrink)

For nearly thirty years, Melissa Ann Pinney has been photographing girls and women, from infancy to old age, to portray how feminine identity is constructed, taught, and communicated. Pinney’s work depicts not only the rites of American womanhood, but also the informal passages of girlhood and adolescence. With each view—from solitary subjects in pensive moments to complex family and social situations—the audience gains a richer understanding of the connections between a daughter and her parents, grandparents, and the larger world (...) of friends and society. The pictures also reflect the ways in which a girl’s world in 2010 differs from the world Pinney knew growing up in the 1960s, and the ways in which the making of a person can transcend time and place. Girl Ascending is a sequel to Pinney’s widely praised first book, Regarding Emma: Photographs of American Women and Girls. Of that previous book Janina Ciezaldo wrote in Aperture, “Pinney brings compositional integrity, knowledge of color, and a Midwestern richness of light to her inquiries.” This second volume is even more accomplished, mature, and stylistically consistent. As David Travis writes in his introduction, “Pinney has regained that sense of wonder, making her view of girls ascending into young women both believable and enchanting.” Pinney’s photographs are powerful and insightful. As social and artistic documents, they reveal the subtle and bold aspects of feminine identity as it is expressed in American places and spaces, both private and public. (shrink)

Even strong, fearless, and badass Black girls and Black women need affirmations-- now more than ever. Fievre shares inspirational words of wisdom through fabulous Black female trailblazers who changed the world. You don't always have to be strong. Sometimes taking a break to focus on your mental health is bravery in itself. We find ourselves needing reminders that we are incredible and more than enough. Fievre shares strategies that will give you the dose of radical self-affirmation you deserve. -- adapted (...) from back cover. (shrink)

The pioneering anthology Home Girls features writings by Black feminist and lesbian activists on topics both provocative and profound. Since its initial publication in 1983, it has become an essential text on Black women's lives and writings. This edition features an updated list of contributor biographies and an all-new preface that provides a fresh assessment of how Black women's lives have changed-or not-since the book was first published. Contributors are Tania Abdulahad, Donna Allegra, Barbara A. Banks, Becky Birtha, Julie Carter, (...) Cenen, Cheryl Clarke, Michelle Cliff, Michelle T. Clinton, Willie M. Coleman, Toi Derricotte, Alexis De Veaux, Jewelle L. Gomez, Akasha (Gloria) Hull, Patricia Jones, June Jordan, Audre Lorde, Raymina Y. Mays, Deidre McCalla, Chirlane McCray, Pat Parker, Linda C. Powell, Bernice Johnson Reagon, Spring Redd, Gwendolyn Rogers, Kate Rushin, Ann Allen Shockley, Barbara Smith, Beverly Smith, Shirley O. Steele, Luisah Teish, Jameelah Waheed, Alice Walker, and Renita Weems. (shrink)

American suffrage history is dominated by white suffragettes; however, this essay aims to bring to light another vibrant dimension of the American women’s suffrage movement. Mabel Ping-Hua Lee turned tides when she marched horseback at a women’s suffrage parade at the age of sixteen, and further entrenched herself as a prominent Asian-American suffragette as she continued to fight for women’s suffrage throughout her lifetime, although the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 barred her and all Chinese people from (...) voting or obtaining citizenship until the act was repealed in 1943. This article explores many dimensions of Mabel through several of her primary environmental and personal influences, from Guangzhou, China to New York City’s Chinatown, which all shaped her into an admirable, and selfless social justice advocate that claims an unforgettable chapter in American and Asian-American political history. (shrink)

This book focuses on social phenomenon that impact the lives of adolescent females of color. The authors highlight the daily challenges that African-American, Chicana, and Puerto Rican teenage girls face with respect to peer and family influences, media stereotyping, body image, community violence, pregnancy, and education. The authors also emphasize the incredible resiliency that young women possess in countering many of the social barriers confronting them.

This paper explores the complex meanings of paizein and its compound sumpaizein used in connection with young girls and/or Eros in archaic Greek poetry. My basic question is whether the verb necessarily implies a knowing eroticism on the part of the character whom it describes, or whether it is the poet's way of inviting the audience to share his knowledge at the expense of the character, a kind of "wink" of complicity. I argue that there are fundamental ambiguities in this (...) particular use of paizein and that the instability of its semantic field is linked to the liminality of the stage of life to which it commonly refers. When Eros "plays," we know we should be on guard, but a young girl's "play" is somewhat more difficult to interpret. In this context, I suggest that Greek poetry can represent the liminality of a girl's sexual status through the physical setting in which the action takes place: the "players" are placed in a natural environment that reflects their stage in life, namely, the moments just before the loss of innocence, and that locus itself is open to divergent interpretations dependent on the sexual "knowledge" of the viewer. The notion "girls at play" thus resists any single interpretation, as the girls' sexual status always contains within it the potential for rapid and drastic change. (shrink)

This paper revisits Tocqueville’s famous portrait of the American female, which begins with assertions of her equality to males but ends with her self-cloistering in the domestic sphere. Taking a cue from Tocqueville’s extended sketch of the “faded” pioneer wife in “A Fortnight in the Wilderness” and drawing connections to Tocqueville’s criticisms of the division of industrial labor, I argue that the American girl’s ostensibly free choice to remove herself from public life is not an act of (...) freedom. Rather, it is a manifestation of a particular type of unfreedom that reveals underappreciated connections between the two great dangers about which Democracy in America warns: tyrannical majoritarianism and soft despotism. My argument that the girl’s choice to withdraw from public life is coerced rather than free thus highlights the nonpolitical sources of oppression that exist within democratic societies. The paper concludes by raising questions about the need for coercion within Tocquevillian democracy and the implications of this for Tocqueville’s “new” political science—indeed, for his liberalism more generally. (shrink)

From the Parade Child to the King of Chaos depicts the pedagogical life history of an extraordinary teacher educator and internationally renowned curriculum scholar, William E. Doll, Jr. It explores how his life experiences have contributed to the formation and transformation of a celebrated teacher educator. From the child who spontaneously led a parade to the king of chaos who embraces complexity in education, complicated tales of Doll’s journey through his childhood, youth, and decades of teaching in schools (...) and in teacher education are situated in the historical, intellectual, and cultural context of American education. Seven themes are interwoven in Doll’s life, thought, and teaching: pedagogy of play, pedagogy of perturbation, pedagogy of presence, pedagogy of patterns, pedagogy of passion, pedagogy of peace, and pedagogy of participation. Based upon rich data collected over six years, this book demonstrates methodological creativity in integrating multiple sources and lenses. Profoundly moving, humorous, and inspirational, it is a much-needed text for undergraduate and graduate courses in teacher education, curriculum studies, theory and practice of teaching and learning, life history studies, chaos and complexity theory, and postmodernism. (shrink)

The black women's club movement is frequently seen as definitive of "first-wave" African American feminism. However, this six-volume collection from the History of Feminism series draws together key documents that show the varied political work African American feminists were undertaking well before the turn into the 20th century. African American Feminisms brings together writings that document distinctly African American feminist organizing from as early as the late 1820s through female benevolent and literary societies, as well as (...) writings that document African American feminist participation in black political concerns such as emigration and colonization, discrimination in public transportation, and anti-lynching. African American women also negotiated competing demands within interracial reform movements like abolition, woman's rights, temperance and suffrage, as well as within organizations like the black church, making documents that offer insight into those unique demands key to understanding black feminist arguments and rhetoric. Pursuing a varied feminist rhetoric that ranged from advocating domestic and maternal feminism to defending black womanhood, African American feminists focused on larger social reforms as well as agitating for material changes in the lives of African American women and girls. African American feminists were also keenly attuned to opening useful venues to black feminist voices, from the pulpit to the press, and urged the women that followed them to continue this work. This collection, which includes a variety of genres from the spiritual autobiography to the platform speech and the pamphlet, goes beyond the more common focus on the "greats" of black feminism to include lesser known black feminists and some unidentified women who contributed to black feminist debate on a variety of topics. _African American Feminisms, _edited and with an introduction by Teresa Zackodnik, is destined to be welcomed by those interested in women's studies, feminism, and African American history as an invaluable reference resource. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:American Journal of Philology 122.2 (2001) 223-253 [Access article in PDF] The Economics Of Roman Elegy: Voluntary Poverty, The Recusatio, And The Greedy Girl Sharon L. James Roman love elegy presents sexual relationships between elite men and women of lower status in apparently reversed gender and power positions, so that the male is enslaved to his beloved domina. This metaphorical reversal, however, actually retains standard Roman social (...) structures, suggesting an inequity even within a private love affair: rather than sharing goals and desires, lover and beloved stand in a gendered opposition. Historically, elegy has been interpreted from the perspective of its male speakers, and much scholarship has focused on the characterizations of those speakers. But as it is legitimate to study the male elegiac speakers' viewpoint, it is likewise appropriate to consider that of his preferred love object and frequent addressee, the elegiac doctapuella. Since much of elegy is directed at a fictive, if named, woman, 1 such an approach may illuminate some of its rhetorical strategies and gender values, particularly as they derive from and relate to Roman gendered power constructs. Since elegy in particular generically anticipates the perspective of the docta puella, 2 and makes it a structural element of the [End Page 223] genre, to read elegy from that perspective provides both a necessary corrective or balance to the dominant male voice of the genre and a revelation of its inherent disingenuity. I will examine two related topoi of elegy--the recusatio and the problem of the "greedy girl"--from the position of the puella, a viewpoint that demonstrates the relationship between these two topoi and reveals the engine of Roman love elegy to be self-interested sexual persuasion rather than sincere confession of passion. 3This approach requires identifying the elegiac puella, the counterpart to the recognizable elite male speaker of Roman love elegy, the lover-poet. In my view, she is a fictional construct based upon the courtesan of New Comedy--that is, she is an elegant, educated woman who has no financial security and thus must earn her own living while she can. 4 [End Page 224] Identifying her in this way has several consequences, but only two concern us here.The first consequence is that many apparently individual character traits in an elegiac puella turn out to be professionally motivated behavior, as dictated by both Dipsas and Acanthis in Amores 1.8 and Propertius 4.5. A primary example is greed, for which the elegiac speakers never tire of criticizing their puellae, as though avaritia were a character flaw of a specific woman rather than a professional obligation. 5 Thus, when the lover-poet in Propertius 2.16 complains that Cynthia always weighs the purses of her lovers ("semper amatorum ponderat una sinus," 2.16.12), he is actually describing the behavior prescribed for her not only by the lena Acanthis, in poem 4.5 but in the pages of Roman comedy as well. 6 Comedy routinely presents the courtesan's needs and the young lover's desires as being at odds. The same structure of economic opposition governs the elegiac love affair: the puella plays a generic, professional part that may conflict with her personal inclinations or character (cf. Thais and Bacchis in Ter. Eun. and Hecyra). She is also presented as retaining her self-control while her impassioned lover loses his. 7 Like other courtesans of Roman comedy, Phronesium (Plaut. Truc.) is fully aware of both her present material and social circumstances and the [End Page 225] expiration date of her professional viability. Thus she necessarily seeks money and gifts from her lovers, both to maintain her attractions as an elegant woman 8 and to prepare for the future when she will no longer be able to practice her profession. Her literary granddaughter, the elegiac puella, does likewise (see, as noted above, the instruction of Acanthis and Dipsas, particularly lines 59-62 of Prop. 4.5 and 49-56 of Am. 1.8), and here it is worth recalling that even the male speakers of elegy allude... (shrink)

(2008). B Is For Burqa, C Is For Censorship: The Miseducative Effects of Censoring Muslim Girls and Women's Sartorial Discourse. Educational Studies: Vol. 43, No. 1, pp. 17-28.

This essay examines Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) in light of new archival findings on the medical practices of Dr. James Norcom (Dr. Flint in the narrative). While critics have sharply defined the feminist politics of Jacobs’s sexual victimization and resistance, they have overlooked her medical experience in slavery and her participation in reform after escape. I argue that Jacobs uses the rhetoric of a woman-led health reform movement underway during the 1850s to (...) persuade her readers to end slavery. This essay reconstructs both contexts, revealing that Jacobs links enslaved women’s physical and sexual vulnerability with her female readers’ fears of male doctors’ threats to modesty and of their standard bleed-and-purge treatments. Jacobs illustrates that slavery damages women’s health as much as heroic medicine, and thus merits the political activism of her readers. Specifically, Jacobs dramatizes her conflicts with the rapacious physician-master at moments that are crucial to women’s health: marriage, pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood. Ultimately, this essay advances a new understanding of the role of health reform in social change: it galvanized other movements such as women’s rights and abolition, particularly around issues of bodily autonomy for women and African Americans. (shrink)

The variably sequenced tripartite noun phrase, παῖδες, παρθένοι, and γυναῖκες, is shown to be a coordinated noun series signifying “girls, virgins, and women,” not, as hitherto interpreted, παῖδες as “male youths” or as “boy and girl children” plus “virgins and women.” Further, “virgins” in this phrase is primarily an age designation meaning “emergent adolescent or virgin-aged girls.” The tripartite phrase is thus female-specific, and it reflects the three life stages of underage girlhood, emergent adolescent “virginhood” (or maidenhood), and womanhood (...) as a sexually active wifehood and procreative motherhood. In relation to female groups, the tripartite phrase refers to females of mixed ages from girlhood to child-bearing womanhood. Although important in itself for raising the social visibility of girls and women in antiquity, this semantic argument also brings forth important new evidence from the orator Hyperides, the Peripatetic Clearchus, the historian Diodorus, and the Roman imperial-era Adoulis inscription about the sexual tenor and sexually acquisitive goals of populace-ravaging warfare against underage girls, virgin-aged girls, and women. The Neoplatonist Proclus discloses the resultant social availability of underage girls, virgin-aged girls, and women to be sexually objectified and maltreated. These new insights reaffirm the value of linguistics and philology as powerful tools of socio-historical inquiry. (shrink)

This article argues that postwar Seventeen magazine, a publication deeply invested in enforcing heteronormativity and conventional models of girlhood and womanhood, was in fact a more complex and multivocal serial text whose editors actively sought out, cultivated, and published girls’ creative and intellectual work. Seventeen's teen-authored “Curl Up and Read” book review columns, published from 1958 through 1969, are examples of girls’ creative intellectual labor, introducing Seventeen's readers to fiction and nonfiction which ranged beyond the emerging “young-adult” literature of the (...) period. Written by young people – including thirteen-year-old Eve Kosofsky (later Sedgwick) – who perceived Seventeen to be an important publication venue for critical work, the “Curl Up and Read” columns are literary products in their own right, not simply juvenilia. Seventeen provided these young authors the opportunity to publish their work in a forum which offered girl readers and writers opportunities for intellectual development and community. (shrink)

(2009). A Critical Analysis of School Enrollment and Literacy Rates of Girls and Women in Pakistan. Educational Studies: Vol. 45, WOMEN AND EDUCATION, pp. 424-439.

Volume 20, Issue 7, July 2020, Page 120-122.

Based on a qualitative study of 48 teenage mothers living in the Denver metropolitan area, this research examines the loss of multiple attachments, including mothers, siblings, and other extended family members and friends, among African American and Latina girls who become young mothers. Through life history narratives, this article explores the isolating effects of teen motherhood on the relational world of young mothers and the transition to “forced autonomy” that emerges out of the relationship strains in the teen mothers’ (...) lives. Faced with ruptures in significant childhood attachments and strains in the mother–daughter bond, young mothers develop strategies of accommodation to cope with the disruptions to connectivity and the demands of forced autonomy that are the result of early motherhood. These findings are interpreted through the frame of self-in-relation theory as this theoretical perspective has been informed by the scholarship on race and ethnicity. In reengaging the discourse on race, class, and gender, our findings contribute to the field in a number of significant and related ways: first, through an investigation into relationship loss and repair among teen mothers; second, by addressing the conditions under which teen mothers gain acceptance in their families; and third, in applying self-in-relation theory to the experience of adolescent girls of color whose relational lives are disrupted by the stigma and adversity of teen motherhood. (shrink)

Though long regarded as a scene of mother-daughter domesticity during peacetime, Iliad 16.7–11 reveals the destruction of normal life for a daughter and her mother on the verge of being captured by ancient Greek warriors. As such it provides exemplary insight into this fundamental aspect of ancient warfare. Further, as reinterpreted here, the simile gains great dramatic and emotive power, strengthens the Homeric characterization of Achilles as a forthright speaker given to poetic realism, and heightens the tragedy of Patroclus by (...) revealing how Achilles by his own admission fails to fulfill his protective role as Patroclus' warrior mother. (shrink)

Teens' experiences with reproductive health care have been ignored by both the “social problems” moral discourse on teen pregnancy and feminist critiques of medicalization. These perspectives are both gendered and racialized in ways that marginalize African American teen mothers. Interview data with 51 poor African American teen mothers suggest that their reproductive experiences occur within very different contexts than those that have inspired feminist criticisms of medicalization. Before their pregnancies, teens are largely denied access to formal health care (...) services and reproductive information and knowledge, and once pregnant, like adult women, they alternately embrace and resist specific aspects of medical care. Their perspectives provide insights into women's experiences with the formal medical system from an understudied social location, and their narratives expand our understanding of how women's and girls' sexuality is socially constructed as problematic and managed, controlled, and regulated in particular ways depending on their social locations. (shrink)

The present paper, adopting some of the tools offered by Cognitive Linguistics, namely the mechanisms of conceptual metaphor and metonymy, is a qualitative study of a sociolinguistic nature. Its overall purpose is an attempt at exhibiting a paradigm shift in the representation of women in Anglo-American proverbs. Combining the potential of the cross-fertilisation between Cognitive Linguistics and paremiological studies, the study appertains to the sense-threads embedded in the figurative language of proverbs, with the main focus on a cognitive semantic (...) analysis of selected Anglo-American paremias directed towards women and animals. The main goal of the research is the juxtaposition of the meaning coded in two proverbs of traditional status, as representatives of a larger group of paremiological units (i.e. A woman, a cat, and a chimney should never leave the house; A whistling girl and a crowing hen always come to no good end), reflecting the deep-rooted gender-biased ideology in patriarchal Anglo-American society, with the content of the selected anti-proverb (i.e. The early bird gets up to serve his wife breakfast in bed) and a contemporary proverb (i.e. A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle), serving as sample evidence of the heralds of a paradigm shift in the issue of gender stereotyping stored in paremiological wisdom. The paper shows that the motivation behind the use of the analysed proverbs is to be accounted for by reference to the mechanism of metaphor-metonymy interaction, while the rise of new gender-related proverbs can be regarded as a sign of socio-cultural changes. Specifically, through the medium of modern paremiology, asymmetrical representation of male and female gender, coupled with traditional masculine and feminine characteristics as well as social roles, appears if not endangered then, at least, to be taking a promising path. (shrink)