Table Of ContentTalking Young Femininities
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Talking Young Femininities
Pia Pichler
Goldsmiths, University of London
© Pia Pichler 2009
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2009 978-0-230-01328-5
All rights reserved.No reproduction,copy or transmission of this
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in accordance with the Copyright,Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2009 by
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Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC,
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ISBN 978-1-349-28458-0 ISBN 978-0-230-23459-8 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230234598
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09
For Roger
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Contents
Acknowledgements ix
Transcription Conventions x
1 Girls’ Talk as a Resource for Identity Construction 1
The discursive construction of (gender) identities 3
The girls’ talk 6
Analysing girls’ talk 9
Overview of chapters 13
Part I Talking Young Femininities: Identity
and the Interplay Between Gender, Ethnicity
and Social Class 19
2 Cool and Socially Aware Private-School Girls 23
Socially aware girls 25
Cool girls 34
Real girls 57
Conclusion 61
3 Sheltered but Independent East End Girls 64
Mothers and daughters 67
Loving families 84
Grown-ups or adolescents? 93
Conclusion 102
4 Tough and Respectable British Bangladeshi Girls 105
British Asian identities: a crossdisciplinary overview 106
Tough girls: truanting and teasing 109
Respectable girls: balancing discourses of love and dating 123
Traditions of marriage 135
Conclusion 147
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viii Contents
Part II Sex Talk and the Construction of Young
Femininities 151
5 Self-disclosing Sex Talk: Self-determined Girls 159
Direct approach to sex talk 160
Personal self disclosure 162
Pro-sex discourse 164
Discourses of morality, romance, pleasure, resistance and
self-determination 167
Conclusion 186
6 Playful Sex Talk: ‘Good Girls’ and ‘Bad Girls’ 188
Strategies to prevent serious sex talk 190
Sex talk in a playful frame 195
Conclusion 214
7 Impersonal Sex Talk: Knowing Girls 216
Academic sex talk 217
Sex talk about others 227
Childhood sex talk 233
Conclusion 242
8 Conclusions 244
Notes 250
Bibliography 254
Index 267
Acknowledgements
Above all I would like to thank the girls in all three groups for making
this book happen. I would also like to express my gratitude to Alan
Durant, Eva Eppler, Janet Maybin and Joanna Thornborrow for taking
the time to read draft chapters, and to Jan Blommaert, Judith Broadbent,
Anthea Irwin, Claire Lindsay and Siân Preece for their helpful
comments, suggestions and feedback which all aided the development
of this research project. Above all, my thanks go to Jen Coates for never
tiring of reading draft chapters for this book, for inspiring my own
research and supporting me on both an academic and a personal level.
Iam also very grateful to the Arts and Humanities Research Council for
supporting this research project (Research Leave Grant AH/E004636/1).
Finally, I would like to thank Roger for being my source of calm and
sanity at times when I was anything but, and my mother and brother for
their continuing support.
This research project is supported by
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