Troubling safe choices: Girls, friendship, constraint, and freedom

South Atlantic Quarterly

Volumn 107, Issue 2, 2008, Pages 231-249

  Probyn, Elspeth ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 62249095458     PISSN: 00382876     EISSN: 15278026     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1215/00382876-2007-064     Document Type: Review

References (43)

1. Michael McKinnon and Clara Pirani, "Baby Bonus Boosts Birthrate by 10,000," Australia (Sydney), September 16, 2006, www.theaustralian.news. com.au/story/0,20867,20420 374-601,00.html
2. As cited by Leslie Savan in "Op Ad: The Trad Trade," Village Voice. March 7, 1989
3. This is a comment in the New Humanist referring to the Australian journalist Virginia Haussegger's complaint that feminism "stole" her babies. Lesley Johnson, "Domestic Bliss!" New Humanist 119.6 (2004), http://newhumanist.org.uk/804 (accessed January 24, 2007)
4. See Savan, "Op Ad," 49
5. and Elspeth Probyn, "Perverts by Choice: Towards an Ethics of Choosing," in Feminism Beside Itself, ed. Diane Elam and Robyn Wiegman (New York: Routledge, 1995), 261-82
6. Michèle Le Dœuff, "Pierre Roussel's Chiasmas," I and C 9 (1981-82): 39-70
7. Probyn, "Perverts by Choice."
8. Louis Althusser, "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses," in Lenin and Philosophy, and Other Essays, trans. Ben Brewster (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972), 86-129
9. For the best feminist use and critique of Althusser, see Teresa de Lauretis, Technologies of Gender (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986)
10. One could also think here in the terms delivered by the economic historian Harold A. Innis and his distinction of societies based in time versus those of space. Little happens in the former, which are stable and rooted in spatially limited forms of communication. The latter, exemplified for Innis in space-embracing forms of communication, are inherently unstable but more open to change and individual innovation. H. A. Innis, The Bias of Communication (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1964)
11. For one of the best explanations and extensions of Innis, see Arthur Kroker, Technology and the Canadian Mind: Innis/McLuhan/Grant (Montreal: New World Perspectives, 1984)
12. In this I am indebted to John Nguyet Erni's research with Anthony Fung on youth cultures of consumption and friendship in Hong Kong. Erni and Fung, "Dislocated Intimacies: A Social Relational Perspective on Youth, Sex, and the Popular Media" (paper presented at the "Communicating Sexual Health" workshop, Department of Gender and Cultural Studies, University of Sydney, August 2006)
13. also published in Perspectives: Working Papers in English and Communication 15.1 (2003): 30-51; hereafter cited parenthetically by page number as "Dislocated."
14. Erni and I are at the early stages of a comparative project on youth, and we are both fascinated by youth culture in mainland China. The insights of Australian researchers - such as Chris Berry, Fran Martin, and Audrey Yue, eds., Mobile Cultures: New Media in Queer Asia (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003)
15. and Elaine Jeffreys, ed., Sexuality and Sex in China (London: Routledge, 2006) - about Chinese sexual cultures have been central to reorienting my thinking. While I make no pretense to being an expert on Chinese culture, my discussions with fellow researchers and the experience of teaching gender and consumption to young people from the People's Republic of China have reignited my interest in how young people navigate cultural consumption and changing patterns of intimacy in ways that seemingly disrupt the ontological status of choice.1 11 To quote from CNN, "Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, who entered celebritydom when they first starred as infants on the TV show Full House, successfully transformed their star appeal into an entertainment and consumer products empire through their company Dualstar Entertainment. The twins now have a slew of licensed products, such as books, video movies and dolls." In addition to sexualizing "tweens," Mary-Kate was a pinup girl on pro-anorexia sites because of her defiant and starving body. Parija Bhatnagar, "Olsen Twins Pitch New Clothing Line to Wal-Mart," CNN, March 29, 2006, http://money.cnn.com/2006/03/28/news/companies/walmart-twins
16. Angela McRobbie, "Notes on Postfeminism and Popular Culture: Bridget Jones and the New Gender Regime," in All About the Girl: Culture, Power, and Identity, ed. Anita Harris (London: Routledge, 2004), 3-14. Hereafter cited parenthetically by page number as "Notes."
17. Margo Kingston, blog, http://webdiary.smh.com.au (accessed January 24, 2007; site now discontinued). Kingston is an independent Australian journalist
18. Fay Weldon, What Makes Women Happy (London: Fourth Estate, 2006), 47-48
19. WHO, The World Health Report 2005 - Make Every Mother and Child Count, www.who.intwhr/2005/en/index.html (accessed September 10, 2006)
20. Charlotte Brunsdon, "Feminism, Postfeminism, Martha, Martha, and Nigella," Cinema Journal 44.2 (2005): 110-116, 113
21. See Leslie Cannold, What, No Baby (Fremantle, Austr.: Curtin University Press, 2005)
22. Virginia Haussegger, Wonder Woman: The Myth of "Having It All" (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2005)
23. and Virginia Haussegger, "The Sins of Our Feminist Mothers," Age (Melbourne), July 23, 2002, 7
24. Helen Garner, The First Stone: Some Questions about Sex and Power (Sydney: Pan Macmillan, 1995)
25. Ariel Levy, Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Use of Raunch Culture (Melbourne: Schwartz Publishing, 2005)
26. Maureen Dowd. Are Men Necessary When the Sexes Collide (New York: Putnam, 2005)
27. Kate Crawford, Adult Themes: Rewriting the Rules of Adulthood (Sydney: Pan Macmillan, 2006), 91
28. Victoria Jane Ward and Beth Cooper Benjamin, "Women, Girls, and the Unfinished Work of Connection: A Critical Review of Girls' Studies," in All About the Girl, 15-28
29. Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens, and Scott Lash, Reflexive Modernization: Political Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994)
30. and Nikolas Rose, Inventing Ourselves: Psychology, Power, and Personhood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996)
31. Deborah Tolman, "Doing Desire: Adolescent Girls' Struggles for/with Sexuality," in Sexualities: Identities, Behaviors, and Society, ed. Michael S. Kimmel and Rebecca F. Plante (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 87-98
32. Elizabeth A. Povinelli, The Empire of Love: Toward a Theory of Intimacy, Genealogy, and Carnality (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 3. Hereafter cited parenthetically by page number as Empire
33. Suiming Pan, "Transformations in the Primary Life Cycle: The Origins and Nature of China's Sexual Revolution," in Sexuality and Sex in China, 21-42
34. and Elaine Jeffreys, introduction to Sexuality and Sex in China, 1-20
35. James Farrer, Opening Up: Youth Sex Culture and Market Reform in Shanghai (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 179. Hereafter cited parenthetically by page number as Opening
36. James Farrer, "Sexual Citizenship and the Politics of Sexual Storytelling among Chinese Youth," in Sexuality and Sex in China, 102-23
37. Michel Foucault, "Friendship as a Way of Life," in Foucault Live Interviews, 1966-84 ed. Sylvère Lotringer, trans. John Johnston (New York: Semiotext(e), 1989), 203-9. Hereafter cited parenthetically by page number as "Friendship."
38. Ethan Watters, Urban Tribes: Are Friends the New Family (London: Bloomsbury, 2004), 117
39. Marilyn Friedman, "Feminism and Modern Friendship: Dislocating the Community," Ethics 99 (1989): 275-90. Hereafter cited parenthetically by page number as "Feminism."
40. "Amy," interviewed by author, Sydney, November 10, 2005
41. "Meg," interviewed by author, Sydney, November 10, 2005
42. Barrie Thorne and Zella Luria, "Sexuality and Gender in Children's Daily Worlds," in Sexualities, 74-86
43. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things (New York: Vintage, 1973), xv