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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™
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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
The Business Of The Girl: Celebrity And The Professionalization Of Girlhood In Early Twenty-First Century Media Culture, Jessica Elizabeth Johnston
The Business Of The Girl: Celebrity And The Professionalization Of Girlhood In Early Twenty-First Century Media Culture, Jessica Elizabeth Johnston
Theses and Dissertations
The achieving “can-do” girl, who thrives in her personal, academic, and aspirational endeavors, emerged in response to self-help crisis literature of the 1990s urging mothers to manage their daughters’ low self-esteem. However, even as media industries have adopted the successful girl subject in popular film, television, and digital marketing campaigns, public conversations of tween and teenage girls still identify rising levels of anxiety and self-doubt that diminish girls’ confidence well into adulthood. Responding to what critics call the “confidence gap,” girl culture of the twenty-first century has organized itself around the affordances of social media and digital celebrity in the …
Lifestyle Tv For Men: The Nostalgic Fantasy Of History Channel's Blue-Collar Infotainment, Stephanie Ann Menders
Lifestyle Tv For Men: The Nostalgic Fantasy Of History Channel's Blue-Collar Infotainment, Stephanie Ann Menders
Theses and Dissertations
This work considers the commercial and ideological implications of History's branding shift as exemplified by the debut of its reality programming slate in 2007. History's blue-collar infotainment, which focuses on men in rugged and traditional forms of work, represents a masculinized and conservative response to the feminized and often socially liberal-minded lifestyle-programming trend. The social, industrial, and cultural context within which these texts exist, particularly the 2008 recession and the growing emphasis on workplace and TV diversity, are foundational to History's rejuvenated brand. Themes from Ice Road Truckers, Ax Men, Swamp People, Pawn Stars, American Restoration, American Pickers, and Forged …