“Street Girl”

Abstract

This article is located in the body of feminist work on “girl culture” that has as its focus the shifts in constructions of femininity. A number of feminists have contextualised these shifts within the broader discursive influences of neo-liberalism, post-feminism, and “girl power,” each of which produce the millennium “girl” subject in particular ways. The independent, “sassy,” and “sexually free” girl may be seen as constructed at the intersection of these discourses. Nonetheless traditional discourses of femininity endure and “post-feminist” girl must negotiate the contradictory tangle of conventional femininity and feminism. Drawing on these ideas, this article examines representations of teenage femininity and sexuality in the New Zealand soap, Shortland Street. Focusing on the main teenage character, Claire, the article analyses ways in which she is produced within conventional and “new” discourses of femininity. These analyses suggest Claire is re/produced as a “postmodern” girl for whom sexual “freedom” assumes a compulsory quality that positions her as sexually desiring and agentic but also as a promiscuous “skank.” The article concludes by considering the “impossibility” of femininity for young women in modern times.

Keywords:

• soap opera
• post-feminist
• girls
• sexuality
• femininity