Description: "With this book Nash (Western Michigan U) adds to growing body of work in 'girls' studies,' a literature that includes Mary Bray Pipher's Reviving Ophelia (1994), Z e Fairbairns's Daddy's Girls (1992), and Delinquents and Debutantes, ed. by Sherrie Inness (1998). At the heart of Nash's study is the argument that patriarchal society views female teenagers as 'empty' and that young girls are constrained by this stereotype. Although the theoretical underpinnings of Nash's work are somewhat garbled -- her introduction brings together Edward Said's concept of Orientalism, Louis Althusser's idea of the superstructure, and a sprinkling of genre theory in a not especially helpful way -- her readings of midcentury US culture and its consumers are quite good. The book claims to examine the construction of a mythology of girlhood, but it never really makes good on that claim and might have benefited from a more sustained conceptualization of cultural production and consumption. The book is strongest when it is grounded in solid thinking about the cultural texts and their historical contexts -- for example, in readings of the 'Nancy Drew' series, Shirley Temple films, and the television program Gidget. Overall, this book makes a valuable contribution to this emergent field. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper -- division undergraduates through faculty. -- J. M. Utell, Widener University" -- Choice, December 2006

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