Showing results for "Girls" in Media Studies

A new edition of the first book in the acclaimed Pop Classics series The Worst. Movie. Ever. is a masterpiece. Seriously. Enough time has passed since Showgirls flopped spectacularly that it’s time for a good hard look back at the sequined spectacle. A salvage operation on a very public, very expensive train wreck, It Doesn’t Suck argues that Showgirls is much smarter and deeper than it is given credit for.

At the fragile intersection of myth and memory stands a girl—often eclipsed by the legend she became. The Girl Who Would Be Marilyn Monroe dares to strip away the satin, the spotlight, the studio-invented shine, to reveal the tender child beneath: a girl marked not by fame but by longing. Longing for love, for safety, for the kind of permanence the world never offered her. This is not simply another biography. It is a resurrection.

Ferguson might be the worst, but it is not the first. Ferguson is just the latest of hundreds of examples of Black mob violence around the country. White Girl Bleed a Lot: The Return of Racial Violence to America and How the Media Ignore It was written for the deniers: reporters and public officials and others who deny Black mob violence has reached epidemic levels.

It was the 1960s - a time of economic boom and social strife. Young women poured into the workplace, but the “Help Wanted” ads were segregated by gender and the “Mad Men” office culture was rife with sexual stereotyping and discrimination. Lynn Povich was one of the lucky ones, landing a job at Newsweek, renowned for its cutting-edge coverage of civil rights and the “Swinging Sixties.” Nora Ephron, Jane Bryant Quinn, Ellen Goodman, and Susan Brownmiller all started there as well. It was a top-notch job - for a girl - at an exciting place. But it was a dead end.

Gidget: Origins of a Teen Girl Transmedia Franchise examines the multiplicity of books, films, TV shows, and merchandise that make up the transmedia Gidget universe from the late 1950s to the 1980s. The book examines the Gidget phenomenon as an early and unique teen girl franchise that expands understanding of both teen girlhood and transmedia storytelling, providing an invaluable insight into this iconic franchise for students and researchers in film studies, feminist media studies, and youth culture.

In Hunting Girls, Kelly Oliver examines popular culture's fixation on representing young women as predators and prey and the implication that violence - especially sexual violence - is an inevitable, perhaps even celebrated, part of a woman's maturity. In such films as Kick-Ass (2010), The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011), and Maleficent (2014), power, control, and danger drive the story, but traditional relationships of care constrict the narrative. Even the protagonist's love interest adds to her suffering.

"If not you, then who? If not now, then when? We need more women to speak up and make their voices heard. Young women have valuable experiences and perspectives. We need you in this fight.” Senator Elizabeth Warren, from a Girl’s Guide to Joining the Resistance So—the presidential election...