Growing up with Girl Power. About the History of Popular Culture Targeted for Girls

Authors

• Aino Tormulainen Itä-Suomen yliopisto

Abstract

The 1990s witnessed girls and women as strong and powerful main characters for the first time on a larger scale. This phenomenon was called Girl Power, which is a complex concept that encourages girls to be traditional feminine objects and powerful subjects at the same time. Girl Power uses neoliberal language of choice giving girls and women a sense that they can choose what they want to do and who they want to be in their lives. One generation has now grown up with these kinds of culture images that give more space for girls and women. The article presents the main ideas and the background of the phenomenon; what kind of a social and cultural phenomenon girl power was? The aim is to find out how girl power culture has affected women's ideas about their experiences of growing up. The girl power culture is analysed from the perspective of today by using oral history material. Experiences of women born in the 1980s show that for them girl power has given the chance to try new things and to be proud of being a girl. Even though the adults criticized the phenomena, girls themselves used it for their own purposes.