The Best of Both Worlds?

Abstract

The Disney Channel hit show, Hannah Montana, constructs contemporary US girlhood and notions of femininity in relation to celebrity, such that its primary girl characters, Hannah Montana, Miley Stewart, and Lilly Truscott, as well as star Miley Cyrus, are positioned as particularly post-feminist subjects. In such a context, each of these girls can be understood as having chosen to perform a femininity that finds its locus in the maintenance and control of the body, as an illustration of her power as a girl, though without reference to feminist gains or “empowerment” rhetoric. Via discursive, narrative, and ideological textual analysis, this project explores the circulation of a post-feminist sensibility, as Rosalind Gill refers to it, and its iterations and ramifications for constructions of girlhood in contemporary media foregrounding girls and attracting young female audiences.

Keywords:

• girl
• Disney
• Hannah Montana
• Miley Cyrus
• post-feminism

Notes

1. The pilot reached 5.4 million viewers and retained an audience of about 200 million worldwide through 2008. In addition, it is an Emmy Award nominee, and Miley Cyrus received Teen Choice Awards, Kids’ Choice Awards, and the Gracie Allen Award for “Outstanding Female Lead—Comedy Series (Child/Adolescent)” each year the series aired in its original run.

2. I use this term to help clearly position myself in relation to the discourses of gender and sexuality explored in my research. Kristin Schilt and Laurel Westbrook offer the following explanation for the use of “cisgender” over other terms: “Cis is the Latin prefix for “on the same side.” It compliments trans, the prefix for “across” or “over.” “Cisgender” replaces the terms “nontransgender” or “bio man/bio woman” to refer to individuals who have a match between the gender they were assigned at birth, their bodies, and their personal identity” (Schilt and Westbrook 2009, p. 461).

3. Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, imprisoned in 1928 by the Fascist regime, wrote of “cultural hegemony” as a means of maintaining the Western capitalist state apparatus in which the dominant power can control a society through the dissemination and enforcement of ideas, practices, beliefs, and laws. Stuart Hall has drawn from this conceptualization of hegemony to address the functions of ideologies in modern societies. (See Gramsci 1971 and Hall 1996.

4. The song lyrics, property of Walt Disney Music Company (2006), have been transcribed from episodes and collected from http://www.metrolyrics.com/hannah-montana-lyrics.html.

5. These are lyrics from one of the songs performed on the show and on the soundtrack, “Just Like You,” property of Walt Disney Music Company (2006).