| Summary: | In today's modern world, girls are represented in confusing and contradicting
ways. Media portrays girls as dealing with epidemic levels of depression and self
mutilation while at the same time point out that girls are participating in alarming levels
of violence and competition. Layered within these media images is the popular culture
driven commodification of all things pink and powerful which gives the public perception
that girls ought and do feel confident in their bodies. All of these confusing messages
leave teen girls with very little room to negotiate their own gendered identity as they
make their way through secondary schooling. This research focuses on an on-going
school-based gender awareness program entitled Girls' Nite. Girls' Nite is designed to
encourage girls to make sense of and redefine the confusing and often competing
discursive messages presented to and about girls within the secondary school setting.
I conducted a month long study in the urban Canadian secondary school in which
this program is running. During my time at Westside High I conducted interviews,
observed classes and supervised the Girls' Nite sleepover. I also assisted some of the
participants to make educational documentary films about their experiences with the
Girls' Nite program. These films accompany the thesis and readers are asked to view
them as part of the process of reading this thesis. This research is also informed by my 4
years spent as a staff member at this school and by my position as a staff advisor to the
Girls' Nite program during those years.
My findings suggest that Girls' Nite is successful in its attempts to allow young
women the space to make sense of and re-envision what it means to be a young women
amongst confusing and competing discourses about girlhood. Through their involvement
in Girls' Nite, the young women were better able to understand how they are positioned
within the discourses of gender and power and, in some cases, race, ethnicity and
sexuality. As a result, the research participants re-envisioned the way they defined and
enacted power and resistance. Finally, they challenged others in position of power within
the school to question expectations of femininity and the impact that those expectations
had on the female students of their school.
By placing this research at the intersection of girl studies and education, I draw
attention to the complex ways that girls are constructed within the school setting and
examine the ways that girls can construct their own meaning about girlhood within this
school setting. Through examining the complexity involved in the way young women
worked to produce and promote change amongst themselves and others within their
school, I hope to show that girls are not passively shaped by active others; rather they can
and will actively re-envision the discourses through which they are shaped. Through the
inclusion of a discussion on where boys fit into this program, I hope to offer the
possibility that under the right circumstances, girls and schools can be used as sites for
social change in order to combat the current backlash against girls' newfound social
visibility. === Education, Faculty of === Educational Studies (EDST), Department of === 1 DVD === Graduate
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