Girls, Aggression, and Intersectionality: Transforming the Discourse of "Mean Girls" in the United States (Routledge Research in Gender and Society)

"From media images of 'mean girls' to the disproportionate punishment of Black, Latina and/or queer girls in schools and the justice system, female aggression has become a public concern. Scholars, educators, policymakers and parents are scrambling to respond to the perceived upsurge in girls' bullying, peer pressure, and aggression/violence. Girls, Aggression and Intersectionality examines how intersecting social identities {u2013} such as race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, age, and others - shape media representations of, and criminal justice reactions to, female aggression. The book focuses on three overarching questions: How do race, class, and/or sexuality influence media images of female aggression? How do aggressive girls' intersecting identities affect law enforcement and criminal justice responses to their aggression? How are diverse groups of girls trying to resist their labelling and criminalization? Using intersectionality as a conceptual framework, this insightful volume deconstructs a unitary analysis of 'female aggression' and transforms the mainstream discourse that paints girls as inherently 'mean.' Girls, Aggression and Intersectionality will appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as postdoctoral researchers, interested in fields including Gender Studies, Women's Studies, Youth Studies, Criminology and Media and Culture"--Provided by publisher Cover 1 Title 6 Copyright 7 Dedication 8 Contents 10 List of tables and figures 12 About the contributors 13 Acknowledgments 17 Introduction 18 Part I Media representations of girls’ aggression and violence 26 1 Girls and violence: moral panics and the policing of girlhood 28 2 Constructing the “bad girls” hype: an intersectional analysis of news media’s depictions of violent girls 41 3 Intersectionality and the news framing of “bad girls” 62 4 The female world of love and ritual violence: the Slender Man case and popular news depictions of female adolescent violence 89 5 The new famous: deconstructing African American girl fights on social media 107 Part II Criminalization and resistance 124 6 All the rage: contextualizing intersectionality and violence in delinquent girls’ lives 126 7 A critical review of sexism, racism, and aggression in female survivors of sex trafficking 147 8 Inappropriately aggressive and dangerously submissive: Latina girls navigating and resisting racialized sexualization in the New Latino Diaspora 170 9 A critical view of female bullying and aggression: Pacific Islander girls confront patriarchy, racialization, and imperialism 191 Index 212 Edited By Krista Mcqueeney And Alicia Girgenti-malone. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.