Two seminal works examining adolescent girls’ experiences were originally published in 2002 and revised in 2009 and 2011 respectively: Rosalind Wiseman’s Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and Other Realities of Adolescence and Rachel Simmons’s Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls. Through extensive...

I

Female characters have been underrepresented throughout the history of media. Sink and Mastro (2017) found twice as many men as women in their sample of prime-time television shows. A study by Anderson and Daniels (2016) confirmed that male characters not only outnumbered female characters but also dominated the amount of dialogue spoken. The disparity was also evident in Disney films. According...

Although mean girls existed long before its release, the term “mean girl” was catapulted into the popular culture lexicon by the 2004 film Mean Girls. The film borrowed many of the qualities and antics of the leader of the Plastics, Regina George, from research collected by Rosalind Wiseman (2002) in her book Queen Bees and Wannabes, such as giving backhanded compliments...

One of the most prevalent tropes in tweencoms is the cheerleader. In fact, the trope is so prevalent and meaningful that I dedicate an entire chapter to just this one representation in girl world. The stereotypical female cheerleader in real life has evolved over time. Originally, in the mid-1800s to early 1900s, cheerleaders were exclusively male. A standard of masculinity, cheering was seen as a...

Television programs created for children and adolescents are fraught with victims of physical and relational aggression. As reported in chapter 2, 92 percent of popular children’s shows contained social aggression, much of which is framed as humorous (Martins and Wilson 2012). At issue in this chapter is the targets of aggression. Victims of relational aggression tend to have higher rates of...

Wiseman (2009) found that at some point adolescents begin to show a lack of respect for adults. Children resist the influence of their parents as they strive to become more independent. They turn more and more to their friends, even when their friends are mistreating them. Although they may be trying to help, adults are often guilty of mishandling situations when peers are both physically and...

II

The theme of popularity comes up time after time in girl world. Groups of young people, because of the close proximity and hours of forced interaction in schools, develop social hierarchies. Adolescents are ranked using criteria established to determine one’s place or status among his or her peers. Popularity is defined as “a measure of social impact or visibility in the peer...

Friendship is an important part of the tween years. Roselind Wiseman (2009), author of Queen Bees and Wannabes (basis of the movie Mean Girls), noted that “friendships can be the key to surviving adolescence” (3). Friendships, however, present challenges such as jealousy and conflict. Wiseman further argued that early experiences of conflict affects girls’ future...

Anyone who believed the old adage “sticks and stones can break my bones but words can never hurt me” likely has never been verbally bullied or mercilessly teased. Because verbal aggression might not appear as harmful as physical aggression, its severity may be unheeded. In fact, victims of relational aggression are likely to be depressed, lonely, emotionally distressed, and alienated...

The negative effects of media violence on young viewers (e.g., learning aggressive behaviors and attitudes, desensitization, and exaggerated fears) have been well documented. Additional issues arise when violence is mixed with humor. Potter and Warren (1998), in their content analysis of one composite week of television programming, found the rate of violence was higher in comedy programs than...

The punk band Bikini Kill’s 1991 fanzine is often credited for the first significant use of the term “girl power” (Coscarelli 2016). According to Hains (2009), that version of girl power (i.e., anticommercial, consciousness-raising, and outside the mainstream) has little in common with its current meaning. The term today more closely resembles the girl power touted by The...

Adolescent girlhood in particular has been a popular topic for entertainment media. Even two of the most highly renowned books that address real-life experiences of girls, used in this analysis, have been the basis for fictional movies. The made-for-TV-movie Odd Girl Out (2005), adapted from the book of the same title (Simmons 2003), follows a dramatic storyline as it portrays...

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Patrice A. Oppliger received her Ph.D. in Mass Communication from the University of Alabama. Her research focuses on the influence of the media and popular culture on adolescents’ development, using a variety of qualitative and quantitative research methods. She has published three books: Wrestling and Hypermasculinity (2004); Girls Gone Skank: The Sexualization...

Children and Youth in Popular Culture features works that interrogate the various representations of children and youth in popular culture, as well as the reception of these representations. The series is international in scope, recognizing the transnational discourses about children and youth that have helped shape modern and postmodern childhoods and adolescence. The scope of the series ranges...