Images of the Body from Popular Culture: Engaging Adolescent Girls in Critical Inquiry

The purpose of this paper is to highlight how I use images from teen magazines to engage girls in critical inquiry about the body. This process is about co-constructing bodily knowledge and reflecting critically on this knowledge. The analysis is broken into three main parts: (a) tapping girls' interests; (b) helping girls name how they experience their bodies; and (c) using images to critique dominant stories of the body. Within each of these sections, I will foreground the process by looking at the curricular tasks as well as the verbal engagement through which the girls and I negotiated the tasks together. The data are used to illustrate the pedagogical possibilities of engaging girls in critical inquiry on body. I conclude the paper by discussing the pedagogical possibilities for studying the body with adolescent girls that emerged and reflect critically on the struggles involved in the process of engaging girls in critical inquiry.