Just Girls by Margaret Finders: Way Ahead of the Curve in Girls Studies

Hello. I'm back, and I'll try to make up for lost time.  First, as promised, a return to showcasing some great research about girls: I want to call your attention to Margaret Finders' 1996 book, Just Girls: Hidden Literacies and Life in Junior High. [I first learned about the book years ago from Cynthia Lewis, a member of my graduate committee who was based in the College of Education at Iowa (and now, fortunately for me, she's at the University of Minnesota), and who has done some excellent girls studies research in her own right.]

The book is an ethnographic look at a group of girls in a junior high and how books play a central role in their social lives as well as their construction of identity. Finders echoes some of the earlier scholarship about girls that discusses how many get caught up in a pattern of perfection and being nice. Although this particular stereotype has been completely overshadowed by the new stereotype of the mean girl, I think it is still so relevant -- maybe even moreso now that popular culture and media no longer represents girls as "troubled" (i.e. Reviving Ophelia), and now that they are reportedly outshining boys in the classroom (you can see an earlier blog about my feelings about this so-called "boys crisis").  Finders really captures the entire junior high/middle school scene so well with her conversations with and observations of girls, and that makes the book truly a pleasure to read. 

Also, one of her main observations is that girls are often dismissed for their reading choices, and that so much of their reading is not the traditional, school-oriented reading but rather, "hidden" literacies, such as note-writing, graffiti, zine reading. She sees this type of reading as very important with regard to gender and identity negotiation even though it is unsanctioned and viewed as unimportant by most adults and school authorities. This argument reminds me of the article that ran in last Sunday's New York Times about whether digital literacy -- chatting with friends, reading and writing fan fiction, and generally, just reading online -- is as important as traditional reading of traditional materials and questions whether traditional reading will be displaced.  While I personally value traditional reading -- books and newspapers being at the top of my list, obviously -- I agree that it's a mistake to dismiss alternative literacies and their importance within adolescent social culture. Frankly, if we want these traditional reading cultures to survive at all, we should be paying much closer attention to how these new forms of literacy can enhance and work with them. (Do you hear me, old-school newspaper executives?!)

In any case, it's more than a decade old now, but I highly recommend Just Girls because its arguments are still poignant and examples are still relevant.