Shauna Pomerantz
Brock University, Child and Youth Studies, Faculty Member
- Shauna is Professor of Child and Youth Studies at Brock University in Canada. She teaches sociology of childhood, soc... moreShauna is Professor of Child and Youth Studies at Brock University in Canada. She teaches sociology of childhood, social theory, qualitative research methodologies, media studies, and popular culture. Her research interests focus on girlhood studies, youth cultural studies, feminist, post-structural, and post-human theories, gender & education, and sociology of educationedit
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When I entered Ms. ripple’s grade eight Science class, it was abuzz with after-lunch excitement. Girls barely noticed my presence as I sat at an empty stool behind a dull black lab table covered in tag graffiti and liquid paper art. After... more
When I entered Ms. ripple’s grade eight Science class, it was abuzz with after-lunch excitement. Girls barely noticed my presence as I sat at an empty stool behind a dull black lab table covered in tag graffiti and liquid paper art. After Ms. Ripple gave out the instructions for the day’s lab experiment, I turned to the two girls on my left and introduced myself. Ling and Ana were only too happy to have a diversion from the work at hand. They were self-described “quiet Chinese girls” who wore loose fitting jeans, T-shirts, hoodies, and nonlabel sneakers. They did not wear any makeup and both had their hair pulled back in neat ponytails. After a brief explanation as to what I was doing in their school, I took the opportunity to ask them the question with which I had been preoccupied since arriving at ESH six weeks ago: “Can you describe the social groups here.”
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Post qualitative inquiry is an immanent approach to research that I engaged during a study on TikTok with my 11-year-old daughter. In this article, I reflect on how its experimental style enabled a provisional escape from the hierarchy of... more
Post qualitative inquiry is an immanent approach to research that I engaged during a study on TikTok with my 11-year-old daughter. In this article, I reflect on how its experimental style enabled a provisional escape from the hierarchy of adult/child through lines of flight. I also reflect on how binary thinking that disparages children's knowledge permeated our post qualitative inquiry through my authority as a parent making decisions about my child's social media use and as a university researcher making choices about academic theorizing, writing, and publishing. Rather than view these shifts as dualistic and contradictory, I suggest that post qualitative inquiry involves continuous, inseparable flows of blockage and rupture that create transformation. My TikTok education thus comprised learning about a social media application that matters to my daughter, but also attuning myself to moments of movement and stasis that heightened my desire to slip the confines of the adult/child hierarchy in parenting and research.
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This article engages an immanent ontology to theorize how the film Eighth Grade produced affective intensities for me through the detailed, fluid rendering of a teen girl. Drawing on Kathleen Stewa...
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In this chapter, we focus on two themes that offer glimpses into places in smart girls’ lives where possibilities for social transformation might be fostered. First, we explore ways that some of the girls in our study were contesting... more
In this chapter, we focus on two themes that offer glimpses into places in smart girls’ lives where possibilities for social transformation might be fostered. First, we explore ways that some of the girls in our study were contesting popular femininity through micro-resistances. These small yet potentially influential challenges to popular femininity help shift the landscape of girlhood by subtly expanding who and what a (smart) girl can be. Second, we focus on the importance of school culture in fostering girls’ comfort with academic success. If the culture of the school was open to less traditional forms of gender and sexuality, it seemed that smart girls had a much better chance of thriving rather than hiding. Finally, we conclude with a renewed call for greater care in making broad statements – in media outlets and academic research – about girls and boys in school. Greater attention is needed to intersections of identity, such as gender, ‘race’, class, sexuality, age, and nationhood, including privileges and disadvantages that cut across these categories.
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While ESH presented its fair share of social challenges to girls, finding “your own people” was certainly possible if you knew how to look. Style was the most common way in which girls were able to see similarities and differences among... more
While ESH presented its fair share of social challenges to girls, finding “your own people” was certainly possible if you knew how to look. Style was the most common way in which girls were able to see similarities and differences among themselves. As Shen declared in this chapter’s epigraph, if you dressed like this, then you were assumed to be like that. In other words, girls actively worked to showcase aspects of their identities through the subject positions that style represented. When a girl noted that she “really liked” how another girl dressed, it often meant that she liked how that girl was performing her school identity, that she felt an affinity for that identity, and that she was also engaged in, or desired to be engaged in, a similar performance. Style was thus a serious consideration, as girls worked to make sure they wore the right this in order to be recognized as the right that. As Shen further explained, if you did not want to be “perceived” like certain girls, you had to ensure that you were not misrecognized because of your style.
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Before moving on to a discussion of how girls used style to construct and negotiate their identities in the school, it is useful to place the topic within a broader framework by asking an awkward question: How does girls’ style mean?1 In... more
Before moving on to a discussion of how girls used style to construct and negotiate their identities in the school, it is useful to place the topic within a broader framework by asking an awkward question: How does girls’ style mean?1 In asking this question, I am hoping to move away from the customary question, what does girls’ style mean? As I noted in chapter 1, it is impossible to fix style within denotative values, determining, once and for all, what items of clothing indicate in a stable, pregiven form. Style must be read as a shifting system of signs that gains meaning only as it becomes meaning ful within a given context. To suggest that explicit values or “maps of meaning” may be applied to this or any cultural practice only severs it from girls’ fluid and unpredictable expressions of identity.
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Dressing the Part, the subtitle of this book, comes from a conversation that I had with Zeni one dreary Friday afternoon while we were waiting for Ms. Mackenzie to open the door for English class. We were discussing the latest Britney... more
Dressing the Part, the subtitle of this book, comes from a conversation that I had with Zeni one dreary Friday afternoon while we were waiting for Ms. Mackenzie to open the door for English class. We were discussing the latest Britney Spears controversy relating to her video, (I’m a) Slave 4 U. In the video, Britney dances in a large, warehouse-like sauna to a heavy electronic beat with a mass of orgiastic revelers. When the video begins, we see Britney in skintight, low-rise jeans and a flesh-colored top that has been cropped just under her breasts. Her hair is a wild and tangled blonde mane. Her lips are heavily glossed and gently parted. Later, we see her in a hot pink bikini top and a matching pair of.”crotchless” underwear worn over her jeans. She is dripping in sweat, having been whipped into a frenzy by the music and the orgy-like dance. Like all of Britney’s carefully designed videos, the effect of (I’m a) Slave 4 U is startlingly sexual. However, given this obvious intention, Zeni wondered why, in recent interviews, Britney had complained so vehemently about the way the press was criticizing her style. Zeni could not understand her grievance. Wasn’t she dressing provocatively on purpose? Wasn’t she trying to draw attention to herself? Given these facts, Zeni wondered why Britney did not simply “own” her style instead of complaining about the negative attention she was receiving.
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Representations of boys and men in Disney films often escape notice due to presumed gender neutrality. Considering this omission, we explore masculinities in films from Disney’s lucrative subsidiary Pixar to determine how masculinities... more
Representations of boys and men in Disney films often escape notice due to presumed gender neutrality. Considering this omission, we explore masculinities in films from Disney’s lucrative subsidiary Pixar to determine how masculinities are represented and have and/or have not disrupted dominant gender norms as constructed for young boys’ viewership. Using Raewyn Connell’s theory of gender hegemony and related critiques, we suggest that while Pixar films strive to provide their male characters with a feminist spin, they also continue to reify hegemonic masculinities through sharp contrasts to femininities and by privileging heterosexuality. Using a feminist textual analysis that includes the Toy Story franchise, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, and Coco, we suggest that Pixar films, while offering audiences a “new man,” continue to reinforce hegemonic masculinities in subtle ways that require critical examination to move from presumed gender neutrality to an understanding of continued, though shifting, gender hegemony.
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This article engages an immanent ontology to theorize how the film Eighth Grade produced affective intensities for me through the detailed, fluid rendering of a teen girl. Drawing on Kathleen Stewa...
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Post qualitative inquiry is an immanent approach to research that I engaged during a study on TikTok with my 11-year-old daughter. In this article, I reflect on how its experimental style enabled a provisional escape from the hierarchy of... more
Post qualitative inquiry is an immanent approach to research that I engaged during a study on TikTok with my 11-year-old daughter. In this article, I reflect on how its experimental style enabled a provisional escape from the hierarchy of adult/child through lines of flight. I also reflect on how binary thinking that disparages children's knowledge permeated our post qualitative inquiry through my authority as a parent making decisions about my child's social media use and as a university researcher making choices about academic theorizing, writing, and publishing. Rather than view these shifts as dualistic and contradictory, I suggest that post qualitative inquiry involves continuous, inseparable flows of blockage and rupture that create transformation. My TikTok education thus comprised learning about a social media application that matters to my daughter, but also attuning myself to moments of movement and stasis that heightened my desire to slip the confines of the adult/child hierarchy in parenting and research.
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Post qualitative inquiry is an immanent approach to research that I engaged during a study on TikTok with my 11-year-old daughter. In this article, I reflect on how its experimental style enabled a provisional escape from the hierarchy of... more
Post qualitative inquiry is an immanent approach to research that I engaged during a study on TikTok with my 11-year-old daughter. In this article, I reflect on how its experimental style enabled a provisional escape from the hierarchy of adult/child through lines of flight. I also reflect on how binary thinking that disparages children's knowledge permeated our post qualitative inquiry through my authority as a parent making decisions about my child's social media use and as a university researcher making choices about academic theorizing, writing, and publishing. Rather than view these shifts as dualistic and contradictory, I suggest that post qualitative inquiry involves continuous, inseparable flows of blockage and rupture that create transformation. My TikTok education thus comprised learning about a social media application that matters to my daughter, but also attuning myself to moments of movement and stasis that heightened my desire to slip the confines of the adult/child hierarchy in parenting and research.
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Abstract The ‘smart Asian’ stereotype, part of the model minority discourse, depicts Asian students as studious and academically successful. We draw on critical race theory, with a focus on critical whiteness studies and the concepts of... more
Abstract The ‘smart Asian’ stereotype, part of the model minority discourse, depicts Asian students as studious and academically successful. We draw on critical race theory, with a focus on critical whiteness studies and the concepts of democratic and cultural racism, to examine the racialising effects of this seemingly positive stereotype. Drawing on in-depth interviews with over 60 self-identified smart, teenagers from schools in the Southern Ontario, we identified three themes which together illustrate how the ‘smart Asian’ stereotype reflects and reproduces a hegemonic white center. First, a number of our participants deployed, and then trivialised the ‘smart Asian’ stereotype as ‘just joking’. Second, through discussing this stereotype, white participants often excluded students with Asian backgrounds from conceptualisations of what it means to be Canadian and to fit in. Finally, this stereotype was experienced ambivalently by Asian-identified students who found it brought academic rewards, but at the expense of exclusion.
Research Interests: Psychology, Asian Studies, Multiculturalism, Education, Sociology of Children and Childhood, and 15 moreRace and Racism, Critical Race Theory, Race and Ethnicity, Social Justice, School Bullying, Racism, Social Justice in Education, Critical Race Theory and Whiteness theory, Racialization, Critical Whiteness Studies, Canada, Popularity, Anti racism, High School, and Sociology of Childhood and Youth
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... Gonick, M. 2006. Between 'girl power' and 'reviving Ophelia': Constituting the neoliberal girl subject.NWSA Journal , 18(2): 123. View all references), or 'future girls'. ... And I think all of us [in... more
... Gonick, M. 2006. Between 'girl power' and 'reviving Ophelia': Constituting the neoliberal girl subject.NWSA Journal , 18(2): 123. View all references), or 'future girls'. ... And I think all of us [in the focus group] fit that criteria. In keeping with Butler's (19906. Butler, J. 1990. ...
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We are proud to introduce this special issue that was inspired by the 2019 International Girlhood Studies Association (IGSA) conference at the University of Notre Dame (IGSA@ND). At that time, we were not yet acquainted with each other... more
We are proud to introduce this special issue that was inspired by the 2019 International Girlhood Studies Association (IGSA) conference at the University of Notre Dame (IGSA@ND). At that time, we were not yet acquainted with each other beyond exchanging pleasantries and knowing of each other’s academic profiles. Yet we came together as three co-editors and scholars committed not only to the diversification of girlhood studies but also to the larger project of social justice for all. We want to promote such work through this special issue and, in the process, expand perspectives and practices within the field of girlhood studies, as many before us have done.
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In this article I explore the gendered assumptions in the new generation of dress codes that have swept through North American schools in response to how girls are dressing these days. Through a feminist poststructural examination of a... more
In this article I explore the gendered assumptions in the new generation of dress codes that have swept through North American schools in response to how girls are dressing these days. Through a feminist poststructural examination of a particular case in Langley, British Columbia, I locate three contradictory discourses in one school’s dress code policy that positioned girls as irresponsible, deviant, and in need of help. I argue that these discourses reproduce dominant and oppressive forms of gender and sexuality. I conclude by suggesting that much work remains to be done on the minutiae of school policies such as dress codes given that they contribute to how the student(’s) body is thought about, looked at, and treated.
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Our paper critiques the traditional “What is an adult?” debate. Using television as text, we examine untraditional representations of adulthood in order to keep the term “adult” in constant play. We suggest the need to move away from... more
Our paper critiques the traditional “What is an adult?” debate. Using television as text, we examine untraditional representations of adulthood in order to keep the term “adult” in constant play. We suggest the need to move away from fixed notions of maturity in lieu of a fluid understanding that is mediated by social and historical specificities. Something is Rotten in the State of Adult Deve lopment The most ubiquitous discussion in any adult education classroom usually takes place during a firstsession exercise that involves delving into the question, “What is an adult?” The question is so familiar to practitioners and students that we simply take it for granted that there is (or should be) an answer. In such discussions, we make lists of typical adult behaviors, such as marriage, child rearing, employment, moving out, financial independence, paying bills, emotional commitments, and taking responsibility. Each of these characteristics denotes a societal hoop to be jumped through ...
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A powerful and popular argument has dominated discussions of young people’s academic success for the last fi ft een years: girls are thriving in school, while boys are trailing behind (see, for example, Pollack 1998; Kindlon and Thompson... more
A powerful and popular argument has dominated discussions of young people’s academic success for the last fi ft een years: girls are thriving in school, while boys are trailing behind (see, for example, Pollack 1998; Kindlon and Thompson 2002; DiPrete and Buchmann 2013). This patt ern is, in turn, interpreted as a sign that girls now live in a world in which gender inequality has disappeared or perhaps even been reversed. This narrative is part of a postfeminist, neoliberal context that denies structural gender inequalities that hinder girls. Instead, commensurate with a postfeminist, neoliberal sensibility, we see an overwhelming celebration of girls’ individualized accomplishments alongside a failure to recognize any links between girls and gender oppression in the school and beyond (see Harris 2004; Gill and Scharff 2011; Pomerantz et al. 2013). Yet many studies have pointed to the ongoing diffi culties that girls continue to face as they negotiate gender inequality (see Renold a...
Representations of boys and men in Disney films often escape notice due to presumed gender neutrality. Considering this omission, we explore masculinities in films from Disney’s lucrative subsidiary Pixar to determine how masculinities... more
Representations of boys and men in Disney films often escape notice due to presumed gender neutrality. Considering this omission, we explore masculinities in films from Disney’s lucrative subsidiary Pixar to determine how masculinities are represented and have and/or have not disrupted dominant gender norms as constructed for young boys’ viewership. Using Raewyn Connell’s theory of gender hegemony and related critiques, we suggest that while Pixar films strive to provide their male characters with a feminist spin, they also continue to reify hegemonic masculinities through sharp contrasts to femininities and by privileging heterosexuality. Using a feminist textual analysis that includes the Toy Story franchise, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, and Coco, we suggest that Pixar films, while offering audiences a “new man,” continue to reinforce hegemonic masculinities in subtle ways that require critical examination to move from presumed gender neutrality to an understandi...
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This article explores girls' learning about issues of femininity that takes place in the presence of others online, connected through chat rooms, instant mes- saging, and role-playing games. Informed by critical and poststructuralist... more
This article explores girls' learning about issues of femininity that takes place in the presence of others online, connected through chat rooms, instant mes- saging, and role-playing games. Informed by critical and poststructuralist feminist theorizing of gendered subjectivity, agency, and power, the article draws from qualitative interviews with 16 girls in Vancouver, Canada. Girls reported that online activities allowed them
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This article adds to the literature on smart girlhood by exploring the topic through Karen Barad’s theory of post-human performativity. We focus on the transcripts of two participants from a larger study on girls and academic success in... more
This article adds to the literature on smart girlhood by exploring the topic through Karen Barad’s theory of post-human performativity. We focus on the transcripts of two participants from a larger study on girls and academic success in Canada in order to highlight the material, discursive, embodied, and temporal entanglements that co-produce the possibilities for girls’ academic subjectivities. Using a diffractive methodology, we highlight the mutually arising agencies of bodies, hoodies, schools, grades, and media constructions of multi-talented ‘supergirls.’ This analysis highlights the importance of an intersectional approach to academic success alongside an understanding that inequalities, such as sexism, still endure for smart girls. We conclude by emphasizing the power of materiality in girls’ everyday lives to shift understandings of self, school, and smartness, as well as the importance of moving beyond dichotomous and decontextualized accounts of girls’ high achievement that have circulated for over twenty years.
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In this chapter, we focus on two themes that offer glimpses into places in smart girls’ lives where possibilities for social transformation might be fostered. First, we explore ways that some of the girls in our study were contesting... more
In this chapter, we focus on two themes that offer glimpses into places in smart girls’ lives where possibilities for social transformation might be fostered. First, we explore ways that some of the girls in our study were contesting popular femininity through micro-resistances. These small yet potentially influential challenges to popular femininity help shift the landscape of girlhood by subtly expanding who and what a (smart) girl can be. Second, we focus on the importance of school culture in fostering girls’ comfort with academic success. If the culture of the school was open to less traditional forms of gender and sexuality, it seemed that smart girls had a much better chance of thriving rather than hiding. Finally, we conclude with a renewed call for greater care in making broad statements – in media outlets and academic research – about girls and boys in school. Greater attention is needed to intersections of identity, such as gender, ‘race’, class, sexuality, age, and natio...
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In this chapter, we explore the tension between girls’ assumptions of gender equality and the sexism they (or we) identified. When girls did not see sexism in their lives, it sometimes created tensions, which were in turn interpreted as... more
In this chapter, we explore the tension between girls’ assumptions of gender equality and the sexism they (or we) identified. When girls did not see sexism in their lives, it sometimes created tensions, which were in turn interpreted as personal problems that they needed to solve alone. We also juxtapose the stories girls told about their perceptions of gender dynamics in the school to those of boys, who offered a very different perspective. While girls often felt that boys were favored by teachers – allowed to joke around, play the class clown, and derail lessons on a dime – many boys expressed feelings of gender discrimination around assumptions that they were automatic troublemakers.
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This chapter explores the media construction of the supergirl, or a girl who is not only academically successful, but also skilled at sports, extra-curricular activities, and social life. No other example seems to offer better proof that... more
This chapter explores the media construction of the supergirl, or a girl who is not only academically successful, but also skilled at sports, extra-curricular activities, and social life. No other example seems to offer better proof that girls today have it all. Yet, the stories relayed to us by girls who might be deemed ‘supergirls’ suggest that this kind of intensive success comes at a price. The stress and anxiety associated with maintaining perfection is daunting and potentially damaging to girls, who push themselves beyond reasonable limits to stay on top. Such consequences are further compounded by the invisible privilege of class-based and family advantages that very few girls can access.
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In this chapter, we explore tensions in smart girls’ lives by focusing on how girls and boys negotiate gender and peer culture. While girls are deemed to be the new dominant sex in education and beyond, we offer stories that illustrate... more
In this chapter, we explore tensions in smart girls’ lives by focusing on how girls and boys negotiate gender and peer culture. While girls are deemed to be the new dominant sex in education and beyond, we offer stories that illustrate the strategies girls used in order to negotiate their smart identities. We explore the challenges of a smart girl identity in relation to popularity, sexual desirability, fitting in, and standing out. We also explore the strategic negotiations of girls in contrast to boys, who used different tactics to manage their academic success.
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Are girls taking over the world? It would appear so based on magazine covers, news headlines, and popularized books touting girls’ academic success. As a result, many in Western society assume that girls now play on an equal playing field... more
Are girls taking over the world? It would appear so based on magazine covers, news headlines, and popularized books touting girls’ academic success. As a result, many in Western society assume that girls now play on an equal playing field so have nothing to complain about. But contrary to the widespread belief that girls have surpassed the need for support because they are ‘doing well’ in school, smart girls struggle in ways that have been made invisible. Why do some girls choose to dumb down? How do smart girls handle being labeled ‘nerd’ or ‘loner? How do they deal with stress, including the ‘Supergirl’ drive for perfection? How are race and class part of smart girls’ negotiations of academic success? And how do smart girls engage with the sexism that is still present in schools, in spite of messages to the contrary? Set against the powerful backdrops of post-feminism and neo-liberalism where girls are told they now ‘have it all’, Smart Girls sheds light on girls’ varied everyday ...
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In Chapter Five we focus on other contextualizing features of smart girls’ lives: intersections of class and ‘race’. Class emerged as a powerful force. On the one hand, it was a source of advantage and judgment between students, and thus... more
In Chapter Five we focus on other contextualizing features of smart girls’ lives: intersections of class and ‘race’. Class emerged as a powerful force. On the one hand, it was a source of advantage and judgment between students, and thus a tool that some girls used to bolster their privilege and exclude others. But on the other hand, the deep effects of class were also something that was hidden and simplified. Similarly, ‘race’ emerged as a central feature in definitions of academic success, particularly in relation to the stereotype of the ‘smart Asian’. The girls in our study with Asian backgrounds lamented their pigeonholing as automatically good at math and laughed off these racist stereotypes as “just joking around,” yet such assumptions reproduce a narrow idea that being too smart is not only anti-social, but also the mark of a cultural outsider.
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This chapter sets the context for the book by explaining and then challenging the notion that girls are taking over the world because they have been positioned as the new dominant sex in education. Linked to boys’ failure, girls’ success... more
This chapter sets the context for the book by explaining and then challenging the notion that girls are taking over the world because they have been positioned as the new dominant sex in education. Linked to boys’ failure, girls’ success is both celebrated as ‘real’ girl power and criticized as the feminization of schools and the toppling of the traditional gender order. Set against the backdrop of post-feminism and neo-liberalism, this chapter explores how girls have come to be seen as ‘having it all’, though they still struggle in ways made invisible by the ‘successful girls’ narrative.
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This article explores girls' learning about issues of femininity that takes place in the presence of others online, connected through chat rooms, instant mes- saging, and role-playing games. Informed by critical and... more
This article explores girls' learning about issues of femininity that takes place in the presence of others online, connected through chat rooms, instant mes- saging, and role-playing games. Informed by critical and poststructuralist feminist theorizing of gendered subjectivity, agency, and power, the article draws from qualitative interviews with 16 girls in Vancouver, Canada. Girls reported that online activities allowed them
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... than other girls” (Vancouver Province, 1999, p. A19) and that “if the same shirt was worn by a different girl, it may not have been an issue” (Sieberg, 1999, p. B4). The principal of Pine Grove also noted that “on a different young... more
... than other girls” (Vancouver Province, 1999, p. A19) and that “if the same shirt was worn by a different girl, it may not have been an issue” (Sieberg, 1999, p. B4). The principal of Pine Grove also noted that “on a different young woman, [the top] might reveal less cleavage” (p. B4 ...