"MySpace Girls: Performing Girlhood Online" Jen Almjeld Graduate Lecture 4 Dec. 2006

MySpace beginnings (History, Lit Review) Created October 2003 by Tom Anderson, a film major and musician, and Chris DeWolfe, marketer Purchased this year by Murdoch for $580 Has become part of pop culture - T- shirts, “I’ll MySpace you”

Why MySpace? (Justification) July 2006 the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Deleting Online Predators Act Many schools are banning access; student athletes told not to use online networking sites; countless media warnings Tied to “new media text” / multimodality movement in composition studies

Paying Attention (Lit Review) Cynthia L. Selfe, James Paul Gee, Gunther Kress, etc. recognize the importance of “alternate texts” October 2005, 20.6 million MySpace users (9.2 million age 12 to 24) Reducing this practice to frivolity does not diminish its impact on young writers

Writing oneself (Lit review- Alternate sources) Women, particularly, have long used writing to explore and script their roles in society (commonplace books, scrapbooks, autograph albums) Most often these texts reinforced culturally defined gender roles Same can be said for MySpace, although the site offers a place for “identity play” I feel this ability to “play” identity online makes MySpace much less threatening than many think - is continuation of tradition of writing identity

Research questions (I ended up with 4) Is MySpace participation a new marker of American girlhood? What purpose do girls have for using MySpace - performance, selling oneself, trying on sexuality? What codes, if any, does MySpace provide for “performing” girlhood/womanhood? How does MySpace encourage girls to experiment with and construct identity? How does the public nature of these journal-like activities that were once kept private affect the writer and society?

My project (Research Design) Consider profiles of females ages Will begin with search of local high school and will piggyback names from users’ friends lists Profiles must include at least one image Will consider historic pedagogical roots of the MySpace practice Will focus on ways that girlhood is performed online (Judith Butler) Interested in ways MySpace may explode binaries within the gender binary

Chp 1: Rationale and Outline, Literature Review (Significance of Study) Cynthia L. Selfe’s Technology and Literacy in the Twenty-First Century: The Importance of Paying Attention Jay Bolter and Richard Grusin’s Remediation: Understanding New Media James Paul Gee’s What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy Jonathan Alexander’s Digital Youth: Emerging Literacies in the World Wide Web Situate MySpace in Composition Studies -- as new media text

Chp 2: Growing (and Writing) Into Womanhood in the U.S. (Lit Review) Commonplace books - Kenneth Lockridge, Susan Miller Scrapbooking - Patricia Buckler, Andy Steiner Diaries ? - Cinthia Gannett Autograph albums Margaret Finders’ Just Girls: The Hidden Literacies and Life in Junior High and Mary Pipher’s Reviving Ophelia and Sara Shandler’s Ophelia Speaks Trace history of women’s writing practices intended to construct and question identity

Chp 4: Performing Girlhood Online (Significance of Study) Performativity - Judith Butler Roni Cohen-Sandler’s Stressed Out Girls: Helping Them Thrive in the Age of Pressure 2005 collection called Geographies of Girlhood: Identities in-between Expect to consider representations of friendship, sexuality, self-image, femininity Will discuss templates on MySpace Explore how womanhood is performed / encouraged to be performed on MySpace

Chp 4: Performing Girlhood/ Womanhood Online (Image in lit review) Templates offer options for categorizing sexuality, relationship status, religion, preference for parenting

Chp 5: Building Womanhood Online (Lit Review) Judy Wajcman’s 2004 TechnoFeminism Sharon Mazzarella’s 2005 collection girl wide web: girls, the Internet, and the negotiation of identity Alexander’s 2006 Digital Youth- “composers can negotiate and construct self-represenations in purposeful ways” (105) Identity construction through collection - Lucia Dacome Consider the “culture of fear” being cultivated in media about females in online spaces Explain how identity is crafted in online spaces like MySpace

Chp 6: Further Study (Significance of Study) Review findings Because mine is a pilot study, may discuss ways interviews, surveys could be used in subsequent study Will consider theoretical framework for later study in this area May discuss young men’s representations

Project Timeline/Outline Draft Chp 1-late Feb Final Chp 1-March Draft Chp 2-mid-April Final Chp 2-May Draft Chp 3-mid-June Final Chp 3-early July Draft Chp 4-August Final Chp 4-mid-Sept Draft Chp 5-November Final Chp 5-January Draft Chp 6-March Final Chp 6-April