Abstract

Worries about the marketing of fashion to pre-teen girls and the power of fashionable clothes to sexualize these girls, have been on-going for some time. However, there is little research with this age group of girls that explicitly explores the ways in which fashionable clothes are understood and worn by the girls themselves and the impact on their sense of identity. Yet girls are increasingly considered in childhood sociology to be competent social actors able to articulate something of their own interactions and understanding of their social worlds. This study uses focus groups, participant photography and interviews with 32 predominately white, middle-class girls from the South of England, to examine pre-teen girls’ fashion practices to address this gap in knowledge. This article argues that young girls are active and thoughtful in their consumption of dress, aware of the construction of gender norms in responding to aged sexual expectations as they decide what to wear. In considering the context of their constructions of aged, gendered and (a)sexualized identity, girls code-switched between identity forms, actively constituting their subjectivity through clothing.

摘要

对向青春期前的女孩推销时尚以及时尚服装使这些女孩性感化的力量的担忧已经持续了一段时间。然而，很少有针对这个年龄段女孩的研究明确探讨女孩自己理解和穿着时尚服装的方式以及对她们身份感的影响。然而，在童年社会学中，女孩越来越多地被认为是有能力的社会行为者，能够表达自己的互动和对社会世界的理解。这项研究使用焦点小组、参与者摄影和对来自英格兰南部的 32 名主要是白人的中产阶级女孩的采访，来检查青春期前女孩的时尚实践，以解决这一知识差距。这篇文章认为，年轻女孩在服饰消费方面是积极和深思熟虑的，在她们决定穿什么时，她们意识到性别规范的构建是为了回应老年人的性期望。在考虑构建老年、性别和（a）性化身份的背景下，女孩在身份形式之间进行了代码转换，通过服装积极地构成了她们的主体性。