What Happened To Girl Power? Girls and Nostalgia

Abstract

This paper will draw on qualitative data collected through interviewing girls talking about music video, to interrogate how girls understand and negotiate contemporary discourses of femininity, which are produced as potentially offering new spaces of negotiation for girls (McRobbie, 1997), and in particular the concept of girl power. The data was collected across a series of focus groups conducted with girls aged thirteen and fourteen. In some ways the advent of girl power marked a division in feminist generations. Although the implication of a divide between generations of feminism is conceptually useful in framing the idea of new and old femininities, there are of course no clear cut divisions. Through analysis of the girls’ talk, this paper will highlight how the girls define girl power through a discussion of what is not girl power, and express nostalgia for the loss of the girl power they identify as represented by the Spice Girls.