Girls, Style, and School Identities―Dressing the Part

Writing against the grain of popular perception and moral panic, Shauna Pomerantz offers a fascinating look at the importance of style for girls in school. Fighting assumptions that girls today are dupes of media and capitalism, Pomerantz skillfully argues that style is a significant cultural practice that demands to be taken seriously in the lives of girls. By exploring style as “social skin”, or a necessary condition of subjectivity, Pomerantz is able to get to the heart of the way girls negotiate a recognizable identity for themselves. Based on a year long ethnography at an urban, multicultural high school in Vancouver’s east side, Pomerantz contextualizes style as a form of expression that enables girls to produce fluid and multiple identities, social networks, individual images, expressions of agency and power, and cultural affiliations.

Shauna Pomerantz is Assistant Professor of Child & Youth Studies at Brock University in St. Catharines, Canada.