Digital Girlhoods

Tween girls in America today are growing up on social media, posting selfies and sharing “stories.” In Digital Girlhoods, Katherine Phelps emphasizes tween girls’ agency on social media vis-à-vis identity formation, content creation, and community building. When a tween girl posts a video on YouTube asking the world, “Am I pretty or ugly?”, she is also asking, “Who am I?” This content makes visible the pitfalls and potentials of these tweens creating their own digital narratives—and it asks us to take them seriously.

Featuring in-depth interviews with a cross section of tween girls, Phelps allows them to give meanings to their relationships with social media and their peers in their own words. As tween girls embody and negotiate the many contradictions of American girlhoods through social media participation (for example, the “Pretty or Ugly” YouTube trend), Phelps asks, how are tween girls living and experiencing girlhoods in the digital age?

The processes of experiencing and enacting tweenhood and girlhood online are explicitly gendered. Digital Girlhoods thoughtfully considers what tween girlhoods look and feel like in America today.

Reviews
“Digital Girlhoods is a lucid and persuasive study and impressive account based on interviews and textual analysis. It comprises a detailed investigation of tween girls navigating early adolescence through many digital platforms and seeking out modes of self-realization where they both succumb to dominant culture’s gendered expectations and simultaneously challenge the frames of judgment. Despite the recent waves of feminism, what we see is the iterative power of social media to recast and confirm contemporary feminine subjectivities.” —Angela McRobbie, Professor Emeritus at Goldsmiths College, University of London, and author of Feminism, Young Women and Cultural Studies: Birmingham Essays from 1975 Onwards

“Digital Girlhoods puts tween girls’ voices front and center to understand how they navigate the tensions, contradictions, and complexities involved in their careful, cautious, and strategic content creation on social media. Phelps offers an insightful exploration of how tweens ‘do girlhood’ online amidst the pushes and pulls of empowerment and disempowerment. Through a fascinating examination of the ‘am I pretty or ugly?’ trend and listening to tweens, she reveals that, despite adult concerns and the realities of online bullying and ‘drama,’ social media provides a hugely valuable space for girls to feel visible, connected, and supported. This is a must-read in the field of digital girlhood studies.” —Melanie Kennedy, Lecturer in Media and Communication at the University of Leicester, and author of Tweenhood: Femininity and Celebrity in Tween Popular Culture

“Digital Girlhoods cuts through contemporary panics about tween girls’ online practices, presenting a nuanced picture of their rich digital lives that reveals tween girls to be agential, sophisticated, and creative social media users. Drawing on interviews with tween girls, Phelps makes a convincing case for rejecting simplistic narratives about social media risks and instead encourages us to listen to tweens to better understand the complexities of their online experiences. An important read for not only media scholars but parents of tween girls too.” —Jessalynn Keller, Associate Professor of Critical Media Studies in the Department of Communication, Media and Film at the University of Calgary, and author of Girls’ Feminist Blogging in a Postfeminist Age

About the Author
Katherine A. Phelps is teaching faculty in the Gender and Women’s Studies Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.