Future Girls, transcendent femininities and new pedagogies: toward girls' hybrid bodies?

Abstract Media provides a material site for girls' identity formation and presents conflicting images of femininity, which challenge young women's self-expression and physicality development. The 'problem' with girls' physicality has not been resolved, but rather complicated by discourses of new femininities in sport, fitness and health promoted by the new economies. Girls' conscious and unconscious consumption of messages of new powerful femininities might be troubling for some girls, especially 'Other' girls and/or girls 'at risk,' whose physicality collides with the emerging image of the new girls. Therefore, in this paper, I contend that an investment in the third-wave feminist agenda is still necessary to engage scholars, educators and girls in critical conversations about media, genders, the body and identity. To this end, first I discuss the feminist reappraisal of Foucault's analysis of the body as an emancipatory socio-educational and political project for (en)gendering research on the feminine 'docile body' in society. Second, I highlight emerging contemporary monocultural discourses of the 'Alpha Girl' and the 'Future Girl,' powerful sporty, fit and healthy femininities that contradict discourses of the traditional feminine docile body, and I analyze the ways these new images subsume race, class, religion and disability. Finally, I conclude this article by advocating the adoption of critical media pedagogies as a potential strategy for schooling girls' hybrid bodies. Keywords: Feminist agendasIntersection gender/race/classBodyPedagogy