RR 2008/296 Girl Culture: An Encyclopedia

摘要

Although "girl culture" is a modern phrase, many of the customs and commodities associated with youth and femininity today, from proms to the colour pink, have denned what it is to be a girl for generations. The trend of "Kids growing older younger" (KGOY) could be seen as a return to the eighteenth century style of dressing young girls in scaled-down versions of adult clothing, whereas the dolls and domestic toys of traditional playtime have battled feminist reprobation to remain as popular as ever. New generations bring about changes in pastimes and perspectives that become popular are replaced and later recreated - the term "tomboy" was coined in the sixteenth century, but now has a more positive meaning - as girls project a personal and social image onto contemporary culture. Girl Culture: An Encyclopedia aims to provide a recent history of girlhood through essays and entries on how girls are perceived, from the 1920s into the twenty-first century.