Gossip Girls in a Transmedia World: The Sexual and Technological Anxieties of Integral Reality

Authors

  • Kim Toffoletti Deakin University, Australia

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21153/pecl2008vol18no2art1173

Keywords:

Gossip Girl, postfeminism, sexuality

Abstract

The proliferation of sexualised imagery of children and adolescents – especially girls – within media and advertising has elicited considerable public debate and academic discussion within Australia and overseas. Within these debates, girls are commonly configured as being ‘at risk’, that is, in danger of being sexualised, objectified and exploited. They are said to be in danger of growing up believing that popularity and success are tied to sexual appeal (Durham 2008; Reist 2008; Rush and La Nauze 2006). Books for young people are not exempt from these critiques, with children’s literature implicated in the agendas of mainstream consumer culture (Kline 1993). A case in point is Cecily von Ziegesar’s hugely popular Gossip Girl series, which has come under fire, most notably by American feminist Naomi Wolfe (2006) in a review essay for the New York Times. Wolfe criticises the books, and others like them, for fostering the sexualisation of young women through the championing of sex, shopping and status as the pathways to social approval and personal fulfillment for teenage girls. While acknowledging an established history of texts that grapple with the dilemmas of adolescence – including themes of sexual exploration and identification – Wolfe insists that these newer versions of the genre are not in keeping with ‘the frank sexual exploration found in a Judy Blume novel’, but instead present us with ‘teenage sexuality via Juicy Couture, blasé and entirely commodified’ (Wolfe 2006).

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Author Biography

  • Kim Toffoletti, Deakin University, Australia

    Kim Toffoletti is a lecturer in Gender studies at Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia. She is the author of Cyborgs and Barbie Dolls: Feminism, Popular Culture and the Posthuman Body (2007, I. B. Tauris). Her research interests include post-feminism and popular culture, posthumanism, gender/technology debates and female football fandom.

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Published

2008-12-01

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Section

Articles

How to Cite

“Gossip Girls in a Transmedia World: The Sexual and Technological Anxieties of Integral Reality” (2008) Papers: Explorations into Children’s Literature, 18(2), pp. 70–77. doi:10.21153/pecl2008vol18no2art1173.