The final MediaCom Seminar of the academic year in the School of Media,
Communication and Sociology at the University of Leicester will take
place on *Friday 26 May *with *Professor Natalie Coulter (York University,
Toronto)*. The seminar is hosted by the Media and Gender Research Group.
The seminar will take place *3:00-4:30pm* *on* *Friday 26 May in* *Bankfield
House Lecture Theatre *– all welcome.
School of Media, Communication and Sociology
University of Leicester
Bankfield House
132 New Walk
Leicester
LE1 7JA
*"Happy girls are the prettiest": Depoliticizing tween girls one t-shirt
at a time. *
In the current neoliberal marketplace the tween girl plays an important
role in anchoring the activity of consumption as a space of fun. The fun
aesthetic is woven through much of tween culture. The tween girl that we
often see in photographs in catalogues, magazines, stock photos and
corporate online spaces is repeatedly shown in a state of fun. There is a
ubiquity of images of tween girls laughing and smiling as they tell secrets
to each other and feign surprise. They squeeze together to pose for selfies
in such spaces as the beach, the bedroom and the mall. The girls are in a
perpetual state of fun.
Obviously the overt message of this corporate framing aligns tween
consumption as fun. But there is more to it than simply using fun as part
of the corporate brand as a means to sell goods. The work of tweenhood, as
we are told by the cultural industries of girlhood is the work of fun. The
positioning of tween girls as the “celebrators of fun” reveals much about
the cultural expectations of girls and girlhood in the marketplace.
The purpose of this paper is to theorize the affective spaces of young
tween girls in the current moment of neoliberal capitalism. The paper will
use both Cook’s (2011) notion of consumer epistemologies in children’s
marketing and Sara Ahmed’s (2014) work on happiness as affect to explore
how the representation of fun is a political practice that legitimates the
tween market and positions the “fun” girl as an idealized neoliberal
citizen who fetishizes consumption as an apolitical site of fun.
*Dr Melanie Kennedy*
*Lecturer in Media and Communication*
*Programme Director of BA Media and Communication and BA Media and Society*
School of Media, Communication and Sociology
University of Leicester
Bankfield House
132 New Walk
Leicester
LE1 7JA
Tel: 0116 223 1624
https://leicester.academia.edu/MelanieKennedy
<https://email.le.ac.uk/owa/redir.aspx?C=hMkiTDeBJF9X2bvimpuGDxjV8_w6Ndn99QKHGXCuzXXWIbg-OI3UCA..&URL=https%3a%2f%2fleicester.academia.edu%2fMelanieKennedy>
Book Reviews Editor for *Celebrity Studies* (Routledge)
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