“We Didn’t Have Adventures Like That”: The Lure of Adventure Stories and Courageous Females for Girls Growing Up in the United States During the Mid-20th Century
Restricted accessResearch articleFirst published online April, 2014
“We Didn’t Have Adventures Like That”: The Lure of Adventure Stories and Courageous Females for Girls Growing Up in the United States During the Mid-20th Century
Based on oral history interviews conducted with 30 women born in the United States in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, this project presents women’s memories of their girlhood relationship to popular media and culture. Specifically, they told us about a preference for adventure stories including those of adventurous and/or strong real-life females. We conclude with a discussion of how these findings may reflect the social-cultural constraints placed on girls growing up at that time such that adventure stories enabled them to live vicariously and to negotiate a future identity in which they too could lead lives of daring and adventure.
Banet-WeiserS.Girls Rule! Gender, feminism, and nickelodeon. Critical Studies in Media Communication200421(2): 119139.
2.
BeharR. (1994) Translated woman: Crossing the border with Esperanza, Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
3.
BrumbergJ. J. (1997) The body project: An intimate history of American girls, New York, NY: Random House.
4.
CaprioB. (1992) The mystery of Nancy Drew, New York, NY: Source Books.
5.
Christian-SmithL.Christian-SmithL.Constituting and reconstructing desire: Fiction, fantasy, and femininity. Texts of desire: Essays of fiction, femininity, and schooling1993London, England: Falmer Press, pp. 18.
6.
Hains, R. C., Thiel-Stern, S., & Mazzarella, S. R. (2011). “We didn't have any Hannah Montanas”: Girlhood, popular culture, and mass media in the 1940s and 1950s. In M. C. Kearney (Ed.), Mediated girlhood: New explorations of girls' media culture (pp. 113–132). New York: Peter Lang.
7.
DaviesB. (1993) Shards of glass: Children reading and writing beyond gendered identities, New York, NY: Hampton Press.
8.
DouglasS. (1995) Where the girls are, New York, NY: Three Rivers Press.
9.
DurhamM. G.Constructing the “new ethnicities”: Media, sexuality and diaspora identity in the lives of South Asian immigrant girls. Critical Studies in Media Communication200421(2): 140161.
10.
FindersM. (1997) Just girls: Hidden literacies and life in junior high, New York, NY: Teachers College Press.
11.
Forman-BrunellM. (1993) Made to play house: Dolls and the commercialization of American girlhood, 1830–1930, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
12.
FoucaultM. (1978) The history of sexuality: An introduction, New York, NY: Pantheon.
13.
GrahamM.BorderJ.DecaluweG.FoemmelJ.McGrawK.Adolescents’ hero identification and self-perception. Perceptual and Motor Skills200193: 7177.
14.
GrayM. L. (2009) Out in the country: Youth, media, and queer visibility in rural America, New York: New York University Press.
15.
HainsR. C. (2012) Growing up with girl power: Girlhood on screen and in everyday life, New York, NY: Peter Lang.
16.
HallS.HallS.du GayP.Who needs identity?Questions of cultural identity1996London, England: Sage, pp. 117.
17.
HatchK.KearneyM. C.Little butches: Tomboys in Hollywood film. Mediated girlhoods: New explorations of girls’ media culture2011New York, NY: Peter Lang, pp. 7592.
18.
HolubS. C.TisakM. S.MullinsD.Gender differences in children’s hero attributions: Personal hero choices and evaluations of typical male and female heroes. Sex Roles200858: 567578.
JonesG. (2002) Killing monsters: Why children need fantasy, super heroes, and make-believe violence, New York, NY: Basic Books.
21.
KatzE.WartellaE.WhitneyD. C.WindahlS.Publicity and pluralistic ignorance: Notes on the spiral of silence. Mass communication yearbook 41993Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, pp. 89100.
22.
KearneyM. C.Recycling Judy and Corliss: Transmedia exploitation and the first teen-girl production trend. Feminist Media Studies20044(3): 265295.
23.
KearneyM. C.Birds on the wire: Troping teenage girlhood through telephony in mid-twentieth-century U.S. media culture. Cultural Studies200519(5): 568601.
24.
KearneyM. C. (2006) Girls make media, New York, NY: Routledge.
25.
KearneyM. C.New directions: Girl-centered media studies for the twenty-first century. Journal of Children and Media20082(1): 8283.
26.
MazzarellaS. R. (2005) Girl wide web: Girls, the Internet, and the negotiation of identity, New York, NY: Peter Lang.
27.
MazzarellaS. M.HainsR. C.Thiel-SternS.Girlhoods in the golden age of U.S. Radio: Music, shared popular culture, and memory. Journal of Radio and Audio Media201320(1): 117133.
28.
MazzarellaS. R.PecoraN.Revisiting girls’ studies: Girls creating sites for connection and action. Journal of Children and Media20071(2): 105125.
29.
NashI. (2006) American sweethearts: Teenage girls in twentieth-century popular culture, Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
30.
NelsonC.ValloneL. (1994) The girl’s own: Cultural histories of the Anglo-American girl, 1830–1915, Athens: University of Georgia Press.
31.
PecoraN.MazzarellaS. R.PecoraN.Identity by design: The corporate construction of teen romance novels. Growing up girls2002New York, NY: Peter Lang, pp. 4977.
32.
Rogers-CherlandM. (1994) Private practices, New York, NY: Taylor & Frances.
33.
ScheinerG. (2000) Signifying female adolescence: Film representations and fans, 1920–1950, New York, NY: Praeger.
34.
SchrumK. (2004) Some wore bobby sox: The emergence of teenage girls’ culture, 1920–1945, New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan.
35.
SladeC.VolkmerI.Perceptions and memories of the media context. News in the public memory: An international study of media and memories across generations2008New York, NY: Peter Lang, pp. 195210.
36.
StokesC.MazzarellaS. R.“Get on my level”: How Black American adolescent girls construct identity and negotiate sexuality on the Internet. Girl wide web 2.0: Revisiting girls, the Internet, and the negotiation of identity2011New York, NY: Peter Lang, pp. 4568.
37.
StoughtonM. L.RayA.A study of children’s heroes and ideals. Journal of Experimental Education194615: 156160.
38.
Thiel-SternS. (2007) Instant identity: Adolescent girls and the world of instant messaging, New York, NY: Peter Lang.
39.
Thiel-SternS.HainsR. C.MazzarellaS. M.Growing up White and female during the American Great Depression: Popular communication, media, and memory. Women’s Studies in Communication2011, Fall/Winter34(2): 161182.
40.
TiegenK.EngdalH.BjorkheimJ.HellandS.Who would you most like to be like? Adolescents’ ideals at the beginning and end of the century. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research200044: 526.
41.
ValloneL. (1995) Disciplines of virtue: Girls’ culture in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
42.
VolkmerI.VolkmerI.Globalization, generational entelechies, and the global public space. News in the public memory: An international study of media and memories across generations2008New York, NY: Peter Lang, pp. 1326.
43.
ZelizerB. (1998) Remembering to forget: Holocaust memory through the camera’s eye, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
