A reception study was employed to examine how girls and young women construct meaning in the television program Beverly Hills, 90210. Using age-segregated focus groups, the author attempted to uncover specific themes that helped to identify how meaning is created differently by girls and young women at different developmental stages. This article is divided into three sections. The first situates the problematic in historical and theoretical context. The second section discusses the methodology of this study. It contains the theoretical justification for the methods employed and grounds the research in an interpretive paradigm. In the final section, seven themes that emerged during the research are explicated.
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