Daddy's Girl: Young Girls and Popular Culture - Hardcover

Walkerdine, Valerie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0674186001 ISBN 13: 9780674186002

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 1997

Synopsis

Little girls are tiny, adorable, vulnerable and innocent, but when the little girl comes from the working class, she is something else. Just what she is, how we see young girls, how they see themselves and how popular culture mediates the view is the subject of this book. The study looks at girls on television, in films, in advertisements and popular songs and figures such as Annie and Shirley Temple in any number of her plucky poor girl roles. Walkerdine takes the reader into the homes and confidences of working class girls today and explores their portrayal and manipulation as part of the production of civilized femininity. At the centre of this work is the issue of how girls are taught to think of themselves and how their depiction puts them in their place. This concern leads to questions about television and parental control, about Freud's seduction theory and the origins of fantasy, about the political and erotic meaning of the gaze our culture trains on the little girl and about academic's approach to the subject.

About this title

Review

"Daddy's Girl" should act as a springboard for much-needed discussions about the way popular culture influences and reflects both how we view little girls and how they form their own identities...Combining her personal narrative of growing up working-class with studies of icons such as Little Orphan Annie and Shirley Temple and accounts of visits to the homes of working-class families, Walkerdine exposes deep-seated hypocrisies.

Well before the Ramsey murder blew Ýthe world of children's beauty contests¨ open, British psychologist Valerie Walkerdine was researching the effects of popular culture on preteen working-class girls. She presents the results of her research in "Daddy's Girl..".Obviously, this is timely stuff, but there are other reasons for bringing it to a general audience. Preteen girls have traditionally been overlooked in the world of cultural studies, while teenagers have received a fair amount of attention...Yet if the child-pageant world is anything to go by, interplay between girls and popular culture begins far earlier than adolescence. Looking at girls ages 6 to 10, examining their absorption of popular culture, should then yield important data about our cultural production of femininity. It does...Walkerdine's...research is still probably the deepest, least sensationalist work currently being done in this arena. -- Sarah Coleman "San Francisco Bay Guardian"

Well before the Ramsey murder blew [the world of children's beauty contests] open, British psychologist Valerie Walkerdine was researching the effects of popular culture on preteen working-class girls. She presents the results of her research in "Daddy's Girl"...Obviously, this is timely stuff, but there are other reasons for bringing it to a general audience. Preteen girls have traditionally been overlooked in the world of cultural studies, while teenagers have received a fair amount of attention...Yet if the child-pageant world is anything to go by, interplay between girls and popular culture begins far earlier than adolescence. Looking at girls ages 6 to 10, examining their absorption of popular culture, should then yield important data about our cultural production of femininity. It does...Walkerdine's...research is still probably the deepest, least sensationalist work currently being done in this arena.--Sarah Coleman "San Francisco Bay Guardian "

Walkderdine's...challenge to certain feminist conceptions of today's problems is both refreshingly iconoclastic and worth considering. She provides a provocative historical analysis of the portrayal of girls in "Annie, ""Lolita, " the Shirley Temple movies, "My Fair Lady, " and "Gigi." She also offers her view of the implications of British television programs like "Minipops, " where young girls, primarily working-class girls, dress up like adult woman rock stars and gyrate provocatively while they sing pop songs full of sexual innuendoes.--Kathleen Malley-Morrison "Boston Globe "

About the Author

Valerie Walkerdine is Foundation Professor of Critical Psychology, University of Western Sydney Nepean.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0674186001
• ISBN 13: 9780674186002
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 192