What a Girl Wants, What a Girl Needs: Analyzing Postfeminist Themes in Girls’ Magazines

[摘要] Girls’ magazines play an important role in the maintenance of gender perceptions and the creation of gender by younggirls. Due to a recent resurgence within public discussion and mediated content of feminist, postfeminist, and antifeministrepertoires, centered on what femininity entails, young girls are growing up in an environment in which conflicting messages are communicated about their gender. To assess, which shared norms and values related to gender are articulatedin girl culture and to what extent these post/anti/feminist repertoires are prevalent in the conceptualization of girlhood,it is important to analyze magazines as vehicles of this culture. The current study analyzes if and how contemporary postfeminist thought is articulated in popular girl’s magazines. To reach this goal, we conducted a thematic analysis of threepopular Dutch teenage girls’ magazines (N = 27, from 2018), Fashionchick, Cosmogirl, and Girlz. The results revealed thatthe magazines incorporate feminist, antifeminist, and as a result, postfeminist discourse in their content. The themes inwhich these repertoires are articulated are centered around: the body, sex, male–female relationships, female empowerment, and self-reflexivity. The magazines function as a source of gender socialization for teenage girls, where among othergendered messages a large palette of postfeminist themes are part of the magazines’ articulation of what it means to bea girl in contemporary society.

[学科分类] 医学（综合）

[关键词] feminism;gender;girl magazines;postfeminism;The Netherlands