Girls and Cultural Consumption: ‘Typical Girls’, ‘Fangirls’ and the Value of Femininity

In recent years feminist commentators, girls’ studies scholars, parents and guardians have discussed the choices offered to girls with both hope and despair. It seems it is either a great time or a dire time to be a girl. Following the success of twitter campaigns such as #lettoysbetoys, toy aisles across Britain are being ‘de-gendered’, and the success of girls’ engineering toys such as GoldieBlox show the increasing range of roles girls now have access to. However, despite these successes writers such as Orenstein (2012) (amongst countless other online commentators) have expressed dismay at the increased ‘pinkification’ of girls’ cultural lives (even GoldieBlox foregrounds pink and princesses for example). From this perspective, the chasm between what boys can be and what girls can be is as wide as ever.