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Abstract
From 1990, North American children’s television animation was revolutionised due to the regulation of children’s television under the 1990 Children’s Television Act, the rise of cable channels and the dissemination of third-wave feminism into the mass media. Consequently, children’s television animation saw greater representation of girl characters, both in terms of the number of characters and their roles in narratives. Lyn Mikel Brown proposes that despite these developments, girlhood subjectivity in media remains dependent on attaining the approval of boys and men. My research on the representation of girls in children’s television animation aired in North America between 1990 and 2010 builds on Brown’s concept of “girl typing,” a discourse that categorises girls as superficially opposed archetypes. I use textual, discourse and narrative analysis to examine children’s television animation through a feminist poststructuralist framework. The series I explore in detail are Nickelodeon’s As Told By Ginger, Disney’s Recess and MTV’s Daria, which feature girl characters of varying ages and gendered subjectivities. In each of these series, I examine how girls are represented within discourses of gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, age and class, how different girl types interact and how opportunities for transitioning into a different subjectivity are portrayed. Each of these series feature subverted transformation narratives, in which a girl is called upon, or forced, to perform a different form of girlhood. Within these narratives, girls must disavow their new subjectivity after a moment of sameness panic, wherein they realise that they risk losing their own identity. I argue that while the form of girlhood represented as correct changes according to variables such as the target audience and brand identity of the series in question, the girl typing discourse is ultimately structured around the belief that girls’ identities are mutable, performative, and interdependent.