"MySpace Girls: Performing Girlhood Online"

Jen Almjeld

Graduate Lecture

4 Dec. 2006

MySpace beginnings (History, Lit Review)

Created October 2003 by Tom Anderson, a film major and musician, and Chris DeWolfe, marketer

Purchased this year by Murdoch for $580

Has become part of pop culture - T-shirts, “I’ll MySpace you”

Why MySpace? (Justification)

July 2006 the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Deleting Online Predators Act

Many schools are banning access; student athletes told not to use online networking sites; countless media warnings

Tied to “new media text” / multimodality movement in composition studies

Paying Attention (Lit Review)

Cynthia L. Selfe, James Paul Gee, Gunther Kress, etc. recognize the importance of “alternate texts”

October 2005, 20.6 million MySpace users (9.2 million age 12 to 24)

Reducing this practice to frivolity does not diminish its impact on young writers

Writing oneself (Lit review-Alternate sources) Women, particularly, have long used writing to

explore and script their roles in society (commonplace books, scrapbooks, autograph albums)

Most often these texts reinforced culturally defined gender roles

Same can be said for MySpace, although the site offers a place for “identity play”

I feel this ability to “play” identity online makes MySpace much less threatening than many think - is continuation of tradition of writing identity

Research questions (I ended up with 4) Is MySpace participation a new marker of

American girlhood? What purpose do girls have for using MySpace

- performance, selling oneself, trying on sexuality?

What codes, if any, does MySpace provide for “performing” girlhood/womanhood?

How does MySpace encourage girls to experiment with and construct identity?

How does the public nature of these journal-like activities that were once kept private affect the writer and society?

My project (Research Design) Consider 25-35 profiles of females ages 16-18 Will begin with search of local high school and

will piggyback names from users’ friends lists Profiles must include at least one image Will consider historic pedagogical roots of the

MySpace practice Will focus on ways that girlhood is performed

online (Judith Butler) Interested in ways MySpace may explode

binaries within the gender binary

Chp 1: Rationale and Outline, Literature Review (Significance of Study)

Cynthia L. Selfe’s Technology and Literacy in the Twenty-First Century: The Importance of Paying Attention

Jay Bolter and Richard Grusin’s Remediation: Understanding New Media

James Paul Gee’s What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy

Jonathan Alexander’s Digital Youth: Emerging Literacies in the World Wide Web

Situate MySpace in Composition Studies -- as new media text

Chp 2: Growing (and Writing) Into Womanhood in the U.S. (Lit Review)

Commonplace books - Kenneth Lockridge, Susan Miller

Scrapbooking - Patricia Buckler, Andy Steiner Diaries ? - Cinthia Gannett Autograph albums Margaret Finders’ Just Girls: The Hidden

Literacies and Life in Junior High and Mary Pipher’s Reviving Ophelia and Sara Shandler’s Ophelia Speaks

Trace history of women’s writing practices intended to construct and question identity

Chp 4: Performing Girlhood Online (Significance of Study)

Performativity - Judith Butler Roni Cohen-Sandler’s Stressed Out Girls:

Helping Them Thrive in the Age of Pressure 2005 collection called Geographies of Girlhood:

Identities in-between Expect to consider representations of

friendship, sexuality, self-image, femininity Will discuss templates on MySpace

Explore how womanhood is performed / encouraged to be performed on MySpace

Chp 4: Performing Girlhood/ Womanhood Online (Image in lit review)

Templatesoffer optionsforcategorizingsexuality,relationshipstatus,religion,preferencefor parenting

Chp 5: Building Womanhood Online (Lit Review)

Judy Wajcman’s 2004 TechnoFeminism Sharon Mazzarella’s 2005 collection girl wide web: girls,

the Internet, and the negotiation of identity Alexander’s 2006 Digital Youth- “composers can

negotiate and construct self-represenations in purposeful ways” (105)

Identity construction through collection - Lucia Dacome Consider the “culture of fear” being cultivated in media

about females in online spaces

Explain how identity is crafted in online spaces like MySpace

Chp 6: Further Study (Significance of Study)

Review findings Because mine is a pilot study, may

discuss ways interviews, surveys could be used in subsequent study

Will consider theoretical framework for later study in this area

May discuss young men’s representations

Project Timeline/Outline

Draft Chp 1-late Feb

Final Chp 1-March

Draft Chp 2-mid-April

Final Chp 2-May

Draft Chp 3-mid-June

Final Chp 3-early July

Draft Chp 4-AugustFinal Chp 4-mid-Sept

Draft Chp 5-NovemberFinal Chp 5-January

Draft Chp 6-MarchFinal Chp 6-April