Girls: Feminine Adolescence in Popular Culture and Cultural Theory. . - book review

Adolescence,  Winter, 2002  

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DRISCOLL, Catherine. Girls: Feminine Adolescence in Popular Culture and Cultural Theory. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002. 377pp. $52.50 (h), $19.50 (p).

The Spice Girls, Tank Girl comic books, Sailor Moon, Courtney Love, Grrl Power: do such things really constitute a unique "girl culture"? Driscoll begins by identifying a genealogy of "girlhood" or "feminine adolescence," and then argues that both "girls" and "culture" as ideas are too problematic to fulfill any useful role in theorizing about the emergence of feminine adolescence in popular culture. She relates the increasing public visibility of girls in western and westernized cultures to the evolution and expansion of theories about feminine adolescence in fields such as psychoanalysis, sociology, anthropology, history, and politics. Presenting her argument as a Foucauldian genealogy, Driscoll discusses the ways in which young women have been involved in the production and consumption of theories and representations of girls, feminine adolescence, and the "girl market."

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COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group