Spectacular Girls Media Fascination and Celebrity Culture

"Referring to her line of study as & Feminist girls media studies, Projansky focuses on the relationship between girls and the media. The book provides ample support for her chosen approaches, theories, and opinions. Indeed, the book is well-written and prolifically sourced...." (Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly) "The book provides useful material to help girls understand their lives better and to broaden peoples horizons. It provides a critical approach to the dominant media that gives us only certain, selected images of girls." (Libri & Liberi) "Spectacular Girlsaddresses both the insistent visibility of the contemporary girl in media culture and the elisions of race and class that make so many girls invisible. Providing an astute intervention into both girlhood studies and feminist media studies,Projanskyexplores multiple media manifestations of girlhood; from television and film to sports and activism,Spectacular Girlsbrings into critical view the mediation of the girl in postfeminist culture." - Yvonne Tasker,University of East Anglia "Making her case with conviction and rigor, Projansky persuasively argues that popular cultures treatment of girls has vacillated between spectacularization and protectionism. Compelling and original,Spectacular Girlsis excellenta forceful and nuanced critique of the gender and age politics of our media culture." - Diane Negra,co-editor of Gendering the Recession: Media and Culture in an Age of Austerity "Projanksy's push to change the ways girls are perceived within media, by the public, and within scholarship, from an expectation of white heteronormativity to a more intersectional vision that includes race and sexuality, using 'what Ella Shohat calls a polycentric, multicultural feminism,' is laudable. Projanksy wants 'to see beyond or around the 'mean girls' and the 'Taylor Swifts,' as she puts it, to develop a mediascape that presents more complicated understandings of girlhoodone that the public might embrace even if it's hesitantly, like a teenage girl, balking abit and looking in other directions." (Women's Review of Books)

"Spectacular Girls addresses both the insistent visibility of the contemporary girl in media culture and the elisions of race and class that make so many girls invisible. Providing an astute intervention into both girlhood studies and feminist media studies, Projansky explores multiple media manifestations of girlhood; from television and film to sports and activism, Spectacular Girls brings into critical view the mediation of the girl in postfeminist culture."-Yvonne Tasker, University of East Anglia