Abstract
Recently, a number of prominent teen girl activist leaders have been gaining the world’s attention, but how do girls not in the public eye and with less social power think about activism? Moreover, how do girls who may not exclusively define themselves as activists, negotiate their own desire to contribute to social change with challenges they identify as holding them back from doing so? Through qualitative research with eight teenage girls in Toronto, I explore the ways these teen girls define the “activist,” their role in activism, and the challenges holding them back from being more active. My methodology is congruent, reflecting my feminist and youth studies commitment to girls leading research, and my findings indicate that such an approach is crucial in order to truly understand how girls with less social power and public visibility experience the world and their roles within it. Doing so also challenge pre-conceived notions and standards of extraordinary girlhood. The findings coincide with what Catherine Rottenberg refers to as neoliberal feminism. The extraordinariness implicit in visible activism framed the girls from my study’s views on what it would take to be a true activist themselves, which was both intimidating and also at times is in contention with their monumental care and concern for loved ones.
Introduction
Months before I conducted the fieldwork for my doctoral studies research, March for Our Lives 1 happened, on March 24, 2018. This movement prompted me to wonder about how young girls in Toronto might be thinking about activism and social justice after this event received significant media coverage. Later in 2018, teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg, addressed the United Nations Climate Change Conference with a powerful speech about climate change, initiating the global student-led climate strike movement, “Fridays for Future.” This same year, 13-year-old Autumn Peltier, Anishinaabe-kwe member of the Wikwemikong First Nation in Canada, spoke at the United Nations General Assembly, advocating for clean water (Kent, 2018). Her advocacy extends to Indigenous populations’ experiences throughout the world. In this moment of 2018, the teen girl with public visibility is an exceptionally powerful girl. I decided to situate my doctoral focus groups around how teenage girls in Toronto, Ontario, Canada view social issues.
At the time of this study, I was living in Toronto myself, although I did not live in Toronto growing up and did not attend this school board as an elementary or secondary student. I grew up and went to school just north of the city, within Ontario. I position my project within scholarship that explores the various factors that can shape a young person’s perspectives on social issues. As a youth-centered and girls-centered researcher committed to letting the participants lead the project, I refrained from sharing my personal opinions on various social issues and definitions of activism.
With such a massive display of initiative and solidarity amongst young people in the face of injustice, many young people in Ontario, Canada might also feel compelled to embrace such practices. Canada is certainly not without its violent sanctions, after all. 2 Moreover, the Indian Act, originally published in 1876, is a significant marker of Canada’s colonial and racist inheritance which still persists today (Indian Act, 2021).
While there has been a great amount of attention on young activists around the world, I began to think about how there must also be teenagers who care deeply about social change but not know exactly how to affect it. How do teen girls in particular negotiate their own desire to contribute to social change with the challenges that they identify as holding them back from being more active? Taft (2017) found that “teenage girl activists produce narratives of the activist self that are distinct from those produced by adults,” but what about the narratives of the activist self by aspiring activists? (p. 37) Building upon the idea that teen girls do not define themselves in the same way that adults do, the girls in my study expressed varying narratives of what an activist is, as well as ambivalence about the concept. The extraordinariness implicit in visible public activism framed the Toronto girls’ views on what makes a true activist, which was both intimidating and also at times is in contention with their monumental care and concern for loved ones.
This paper focuses on one aspect of a larger interdisciplinary project that explores the teen girl in a variety of contexts and perspectives that ultimately reveal the complexity of care for young people under neoliberalism. I foreground the voices of girls not in the public eye who have less social power than many contemporary public activists. Our focus groups present the girls’ thoughts about what an activist is and how they position themselves within preconceived notions of activism. One aspect of my larger project analyzes these girls’ views in relation to the figure of the extra-ordinary teen girl in popular film and TV. These girls’ accounts exist not only in opposition to those produced by adults, as Taft suggests, but alongside delightfully surprising responses to a variety of narratives around girlhood as they emerge through media texts. This paper will focus on the girls in my study’s responses around social issues, however, their responses around the shows reveal similar findings. Their discussions highlight the dialectical relationship between caring—about the world and loved ones—while also not feeling exceptional or extraordinary enough to do both well.
Mainstream media’s neoliberal agenda that leverages feminist empowerment as a tool to serve its means has been analyzed and critiqued by various scholars (Banet-Weiser, 2018; Erzen, 2012; Gill, 2008; Harris, 2004; McRobbie, 2009; Rottenberg, 2018; Zaslow, 2009). My study offers insight into how teen girls have internalized the neoliberal message of needing to be better and meet an illusory standard as a condition for action. Moreover, the interest and reluctance in performing public activism that the participants in my study express is not compatible with some of their other roles and other values, such as those pertaining to care for loved ones.
Framework
I am situating the teen girl in a neoliberal framework: a framework that values the exceptional individual and an idealized self over interpersonal relationships and genuine care and connection. Connection, care, and relationships are at the heart of what motivates the girls I interviewed. This belief and interest in community and care is at odds with the neoliberal emphasis on individual responsibility and profit over people. The neoliberal ideological principle that is most relevant to my project is its placing of structural responsibility onto the individual. Neoliberal feminism is an underlying conceptual framework of this project that draws attention to the way feminist issues are formulated to support a neoliberal agenda. As the name suggests, neoliberal feminism is a version of feminism influenced by neoliberal principles. Essentially, this dominant feminism works to support the status quo (often indirectly), focusing on self-development and self-improvement as the path toward happiness. Rottenberg contends that in appealing to aspirational women who already have a substantial amount of social, cultural, and economic capital, neoliberal feminism reinforces class privilege and white privilege. Within a neoliberal framework, these aforementioned issues and convictions are in conversation with each other and articulated through the public activist figures of girls who hold varying degrees of power and social visibility.
The debates my project broadly speaks to are that of girl’s empowerment and power, as well as the complexity of care under neoliberalism. While being empowered is a positive experience, empowerment discourse that excludes certain people, and sustains oppression, is a disservice. The girls in my study communicate and understanding of standards of extraordinary girlhood in contemporary society. Importantly, however, these girls’ sentiments around valuing their relationships, caring about their loved ones above all else, and also caring about the planet as well as other people’s suffering call into question what it means to be extraordinary and powerful. My study locates the girl who may not feel powerful enough within discourses of care.
Considerations for the study
When advertising and recruiting for the focus group interviews, I foregrounded the media aspect of the project as opposed to both the media and activism themes. Doing so facilitated a way to explore how teenage girls who are not explicitly drawn to activism think about speaking out against issues that concern them. How are girls who are drawn to a media-specific topic, rather than activism, think about the world and their role within it? The girls in my study are not involved in political organizations or activism.
I emailed all the girls a draft of this article so that they and their parents could let me know if my representation of their views accurately reflects their participation and positions. In this email I also asked them to pick pseudonyms. For the participants who did not pick a name, I assigned random initials for them instead.
There were a total of eight participants by the end of the study: three from School A and five from School B. Although eight participants in total is a small sample size, I was able to glean valuable information from our sessions. This study is not meant to be representative of how all teen girls in Toronto view activism. Rather, the findings offer insight into some voices and perspectives of teen girls with less social power, not be in the public eye.
The study
Methods
This paper focuses on the qualitative research methodology findings of a larger project that incorporates methodologies to compliment the qualitative research. Specifically, I ran small focus group interviews with a total eight 15–16-year-old self-identified girls from two different high schools from the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) in Toronto, Ontario, Canada in November and December 2018. I refer to these schools as School A and School B.
The focus group sessions consisted of brief questionnaires, discussions, video elicitation of the shows that the larger project analyzes, as well as a participatory action project for one of the schools. I met with each focus group from each school on three separate occasions during lunch hour, where I provided pizza lunch each time. I video-recorded every session, which the girls and their guardians consented to. One student from School A preferred to only have her voice recorded, so I arranged the camera in such a way to not have her in the frame. The three sessions focused on different topics. Out of these interviews, it became clear that capitalism and neoliberal feminism underlie the girls’ statements. I became increasingly curious about what girls from Toronto who were not necessarily involved in activist work thought about social justice.
Recruitment and sampling
Prior to conducting my focus groups, there was an extensive recruitment process. I began my recruitment by emailing school principals, and after months of doing so, secured two schools for this project. With the school administrators’ help, I distributed flyers I created in each school along with going to various classrooms to talk about my project. Once students had signed up for the study, I began scheduling the sessions.
Interviews breakdown
Before our first session, I held an informal meeting with the girls from each school to chat about the project and to collect consent forms. In this first gathering, in attempt to make this project as young person-centric as possible, I asked the girls each to vote on one of three shows/movies to watch a clip from and then answer questions about in our study. The other component of this study was to explore relationship narratives as a proxy for connection and care and as a means to discuss values in general.
This paper focuses on the findings from this first focus group interview session, which revolved around the topic of social justice and activism. This session included a questionnaire with some questions that prompted conversations about activism, care, relationships, family, and self-improvement. For both schools, in the first 15 minutes of our first session, the participants individually answered some questions on paper. When we came together as a group, they shared their answers, and I expanded on them, asking them about their values and what they believed could be done to improve on the social issues that were important to them.
Analyzing the findings
After all the focus groups were complete, I transcribed the interviews while watching the video recorded footage, making note of as many non-verbal details as possible. Then, after several times of reading over the transcripts, I was able to breakdown certain statements to recognize similarities and differences in their perspectives around the possibilities of social change, and especially their role within these possibilities. Moreover, themes around caring for their loved ones also became evident when analyzing the transcripts. The details around the role they play in social change reflect other sentiments on the literature of neoliberal rationality as it applies to girls and their sense of self (Gill and Orgad, 2015).
Class and the classroom: Relevant context for the participants
The two schools where I conducted my focus groups are from different neighborhoods in Toronto. School A is a public arts high school in a relatively affluent neighborhood, and School B is a public high school in a lower income priority neighborhood as defined by the City of Toronto’s Neighborhood Improvement Areas under the Toronto Strong Neighborhoods Strategy 2020 (NIA, 2019). Although School A is located in a relatively affluent neighborhood, it is important to note that anyone can audition to attend the school and that not all students are from affluent families. Because these students come from across the city, we cannot assume homogeneity in terms of privilege and access to resources. Students attending School B are more likely to live in the neighborhood where it is located, attending because it is their feeder school. For some less-privileged students, the cost of travelling to an arts-based school like School A may be prohibitive.
For frame of reference, in 2018, the time of this study, the population of Ontario was approximately 14.32 million people, and the population of Canada was 37.06 million people (StatCan). In the TDSB (2018) at large, there were approximately 243,059 students enrolled in elementary and secondary school.
Based on demographic information provided for each school on the Toronto District School Board website, as of December 2017, 61% of the students at School B have a primary language other than English and 15% of the students who provided information about their language have been living in Canada for 5 years or less. These percentages are high, especially compared to School A, where 17% of the students have a primary language other than English, and only 0.02% of students have been living in Canada for 5 years or less (TDSB, 2019). These statistics support that there is a strong immigrant population in School B’s neighborhood; although this information does not tell us the incomes of the families, we can pair this data with information about the neighborhoods in which the schools are situated. Sociologist James (2012), renowned for his work on School B’s neighborhood of Jane and Finch, points out that this area has essentially been understood to be the exemplary “at-risk” community in Canada because of the “inequitable socio-economic structures that mediate individuals’ social circumstances as well as their opportunities and possibilities” (p. 24). The high poverty rate is a consequence of these circumstances, and prompted the creation of the resident-led grassroots organization, Jane and Finch Action Against Poverty (JFAAP) (2019). Dire social circumstances can lead to action. I did not request detailed demographic information from the participants for various reasons, mainly that I wanted them to feel as at ease as possible during our sessions. Requesting ethnic and socio-economic information can be uncomfortable, especially for vulnerable people. I did not think the benefit to having such information for this study outweighed the risk of lowering the morale of the teen girl participants.
Teen girl activists in the public
Recently, there have been numerous notable teen girl activists throughout the world working toward various forms of social justice. These girl activists include Autumn Peltier (born September 27, 2004), Anishinaabe-kwe member of the Wikwemikong First Nation, advocating for clean water advocate; Indigenous environmental and human rights activist Helena Gualinga (born February 27, 2002) from Ecuador; Ontario sex education activists Lia Valente and Tessa Hill; South African environmental activist Ayakha Melithafa (born 2002) from the Western Cape; girls’ education activist Malala Yousafzai (born July 12, 1997) from Pakistan; the Parkland gun control activists; including Emma González and Naomi Wadler; and climate change activists Jamie Margolin (born December 10, 2001) from Seattle; and Greta Thunberg from Stockholm. Some of these girls are more well-known around the world than others, such as Greta Thunberg, but all of them have contributed tremendously toward their causes. It is interesting then that none of the girls I met with for my study mentioned any of these activists in our discussions. Furthermore, the prominence of so many girl activists in the world alongside the numerous speculative fiction film and show adaptations featuring strong lead activist-type girl characters lends itself to a historical-ideological analysis.
In recent history, there have been a number of prominent teen girl activist leaders around the world whom we know about very much because of the fast transference of information through contemporary media. In Rebel Girls (Taft, 2011), for example, Taft explores very specific experiences of five different teenage girl activists across the Americas, reminding us that youth activism does look different in different locations, and that these differences are due to socio-political factors. More recently, on a larger scale, there have been numerous notable teen girl activists throughout the world working toward various forms of social justice. These girls who are compelled to act by care and connection are co-opted by the media to be figures of neoliberal activists.
Because teenagers do not have voting and citizenship rights, they do not have as much sway with political decision makers the way voting adults do (Taft, 2011: 49). Because of this limitation, young people must resort to other means to have their views heard. Bent (2020) asserts that the young activists from March for Our Lives actually “leveraged narratives of age and generation to scaffold their rhetoric of socio-political justice,” and did so through three means: “forwarding a politics of hope, calculated resistance, and political threat” (p. 56). When young people’s political power is limited, as it is in our current adult-centric society, drawing upon generation is one way that young activists frame their concerns, asserting their legitimacy.
Most prominent of these teens right now is environmental activist Greta Thunberg, born January 3, 2003, who began her activism on a large scale at the age of 15. In 2018, she addressed the United Nations Climate Change Conference with a heartfelt and poignant speech about climate change, and then following this, with other students, organized a climate strike movement called “Fridays for Future.” In 2019, student-led protests took place throughout the world as part of this movement. A few weeks later, Thunberg sailed to North America to attend the 2019 United Nations General Assembly where she gave another powerful speech, exclaiming, “how dare you” to the leaders regarding their inadequate work around the climate crisis (Thunberg, 2019: 31). She received much backlash and attacks from climate-change deniers such as U.S. president Donald Trump, to which she responded with a statement that epitomizes that young people are indeed agents of change: “I guess of course it means something – they are terrified of young people bringing change which they don’t want – but that is just proof that we are actually doing something and that they see us as some kind of threat” (Helmore, 2019: par. 11). Young people have indeed been working toward change globally. Throughout the course of this project, several momentous world events have taken place and girl activists have been visibly active in varying extents in these experiences and movements.
Most relevant to youth activism specifically is the involvement of youth in protesting the development of the British Columbia (BC) pipeline that would cross over into the Wet’suwet’en nation. This pipeline crossover would happen without the Indigenous hereditary chiefs’ consent or approval to do so on their traditional territory. Indigenous youth have protested the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) raid on Wet’suwet’en, and these youth, along with settler youth, have also occupied the BC legislature. Currently, there have been numerous ongoing blockade protest actions across Canada, shutting down the railway systems. Because of Canada’s deeply colonial past and ongoing violent activity in the world, including on our home soil, Indigenous rights are a crucial issue. In the early 1990s, Canadians were encouraged to think of ourselves as better than the United States—as kinder people, but also in terms of our country’s foreign policies. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau revived this worldview of Canadians, suggesting that we still see ourselves the “nicest people” and the good nation. Trudeau has continued in its imperial history in the world, however. Canada’s first role in “foreign policy” was with the violation of Indigenous nations. This destruction included a variety of oppressive tactics such as The Indian Act of 1876, reserves, residential schools, and generally, the annihilation of Indigenous communities (Indian Act, 2021). Canada’s colonial roots persist today as evident in the Wet’suwet’en crisis, and young people have come together in protest. Such actions against colonial forces resemble those in Latin America, and while it is impressive and inspiring that such activism exists, the circumstances to which it is a response to are devastating.
More recently, teen girls have been visible activists in the Black Lives Matter—an organization founded by three black women 3 —uprising across America following the brutal murder of George Floyd, amidst the global COVID-19 at that. There have been several mainstream articles illuminating the voices of youth propelling the Black Lives Matter protests (Bennett, 2020; Gray, 2020; Wanshel, 2020; Yelimeli, 2020; Zaveri, 2020). Jessica Bennett in the New York Times foregrounds four teen girls in the U.S. who led protests during this time. Some of these girls were already activists, while others felt driven to action by the horrors unfolding. Tiana (17 years old) explains, “I was never really an activist before. But this movement lit a fire in me. . . I have always had this, like, boiling thing, this boiling passion in my body to want to make a change in the world” (Bennett, 2020: paras 16 and 18). Girls are increasingly taking initiative in the face of an oppressive, violent, and unjust society.
March for Our Lives was a critical moment in contemporary North American history when a youth-led social movement swept the nation. On February 14, 2018, there was a mass school shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in which 17 people were killed and 15 were injured. In response to this tragedy, student survivors of the shooting, Emma González, Alex Wind, Jaclyn Corin, David Hogg, Sam Fuentes, Sarah Chadwick, and Ryan Deitsch led the March for Our Lives demonstration in Washington, D.C. on March 24, 2018, in protest for stronger gun-control legislation. Described as one of the biggest youth-led protests since the Vietnam War (Brownstein, 2020; Lopez, 2018), March for Our Lives gathered approximately 800,000 people according to protest organizers, making it one of the largest single-day protests in the United States’ capital (Lopez, 2018). The fact that this protest was organized by young people is significant. Youth is commonly thought of as a liminal period between childhood and adulthood, and as such, young people are not necessarily viewed as capable of legitimate social or political activity.
Neoliberal conditions
The fantasy of confronting systems of oppression that is ignited in teen girl audiences is what Berlant (2011) refers to as cruel optimism. The stories, adaptations, and media attention attract the girls to desire, while making it difficult for them to actually challenge the structural issues that are complicating the fulfillment of their desire. Political theorist Wendy Brown’s idea of neoliberal rationality also applies here. Following Foucault’s thinking, she asserts that the rationality that governs the state infiltrates the inner working of the individual as well. As an interpellated subject, how we think about ourselves and orient our actions are informed by these capital-enhancing values (Brown, 2015). She argues that we have achieved “the rationality required for self-sovereignty, including being master of our desires, rather than slave to them, as well as resisting social and state interference in our life choices” (Brown, 2015: 97). McGuigan (2014) points out that “signs and symbols of ostensible dissent are joyfully inscribed into capitalism itself through mass-popular forms and practices” (pp. 229–230). This is not to say that there is not value to these depictions and messages; rather, the message here is to think critically about the origins of such projects to better understand their actual significance.
The girls in my study mentioned that their young age was a factor holding them back from participating more fully in activism, but some of them also confessed vulnerability about not having a “thick enough skin” to endure the trials and tribulations that accompany activist work. I argue that this feeling is a product of the very society that is in fact responsible for the very societal problems that these girls care so deeply about. Furthermore, how are these internalized narratives of not being strong enough a product of the social context and lived experiences of (in)equality? Gill and Orgad (2015) argue that the need for women to be confident, regardless of their age, is a “new technology of self, and one that is profoundly gendered” (p. 339). Foucault (1988) developed the idea of a technology of self to explore how individuals connect their own values, behaviors, and bodies with wider discourses (p. 18). For him, it was a way to imbue individuals with agency. For Gill and Orgad, this term opens up a new way of thinking about the relationship between culture and subjectivity, while taking into consideration the role power plays for both.
The figure of a strong confident woman is not in itself problematic, and is in fact crucial to feminism. When it emerges as part of neoliberal feminism, however, it is important to think critically about how it not only might divide girlhood into valuable versus unworthy, using shame as its tool, but also how it might enable more racialized and class-stratified gender exploitation. This type of exploitation is which Rottenberg asserts “increasingly constitutes the invisible infrastructure of our neoliberal order” (Rottenberg, 2019: para. 32). Neoliberal feminism has laid the foundation for Banet-Weiser’s popular feminism that “tinkers on the surface, embracing a palatable feminism, encouraging individual girls and women to just be empowered.” (Rottenberg, 2018: 21). By listening to what teen girls themselves think about the world and the relationships they have or would like to have, the intricacies of these ideological messages become apparent, but so does the astute emotional awareness of young people who know what their personal values are.
Teen girl activism in theory
Teen girl activism has been in the forefront of the news the past few years, but there is a remarkable history of young people engaging in social justice activity throughout the world. Why is gender, specifically girlhood, significant when we talk about youth activism? Insofar as girlhood is a relevant social category, both in terms of capital and citizenship, girls’ involvement in political resistance in the Americas is incredibly meaningful. Postcolonial and transnational theorist Mohanty (2003) asserts that “it is especially on the bodies and lives of women and girls from the Third World/South – the Two-Thirds World – that global capitalism writes its script, and it is by paying attention to . . . these communities of women and girls that we demystify capitalism . . . and envision anti-capitalist resistance.” (p. 514). Perhaps this very oppression is one of the reasons Latin American girls in Taft’s (2011) study in Rebel Girls have more locations where they can develop their political understanding and analysis compared to the girls in North America (p. 109); it is in response to persecution. Furthermore, the rich history and current culture of radical, Left-wing politics in Latin America informs the girls’ political education, while also inspiring them to establish their own critical knowledge, inserting themselves into these movements. In North America today, a decade after Rebel Girls was published, although lacking the rich radical history of Latin America, there is a growing progressive, socialist culture in response to oppressive and/or violent social and political structural powers.
Much of the work done by scholars around teen girls and activism focuses on girls who are currently involved in activism as opposed to girls not involved. While this is understandable, it does not offer insight into how girls think about social issues or why they might not be participating in ways to bring about social change if they want to be. Moreover, as with much scholarship on girls, identity tends to be at the center of the work more so than the external factors and structure in place that set the foundation for how young people are able to act. Whether it is regarding girls participating in traditional activist organizations (Bent, 2013, 2020; Gordon, 2008, 2010; Taft, 2011, 2017) or girls utilizing digital spaces and media for activism (Campbell, 2018; Hunt, 2017; Keller, 2012, 2016; Kimball, 2019; Renold, 2018; Sheridan-Rabideau, 2008), the research on girl activism typically comes back to girls’ identity. Identity might be discussed in both the broad sense, such as in relation to the status quo of the political agent, or as in each girl’s own sense of identity individually and as it relates to their activist community. Moreover, contemporary scholarship on this topic of the girl who is active against social injustice has acknowledged the role of girl power culture, empowerment discourse, and neoliberalism in this recent examination of girl activism in the western world, specifically North America (Gill and Orgad, 2015; Goessling, 2017; Taft, 2004).
Although I am not conducting a comprehensive account of teen girl activism throughout history, it is relevant that such a history exists. Interestingly, in Rebel Girls, Taft (2011) highlights that at the time of publication of her book, activism undertaken by girls has been underexplored in scholarly literature on girlhood and social movements alike. Not only do most of these feminist accounts focus on college-aged women’s experiences, ignoring the teenage girls’, she emphasizes that the research that has been done in girls’ studies has either discussed girls’ acts of resistance in relation to dominant gender norms, or it has spoken of girls as consumers “commodified versions of feminism” (p. 4).
Taft (2020) has since acknowledged that it is no longer the case that teen girl activism is essentially invisible in the media. There has been significant development in the literature on girl activism since 2011 (Brown, 2013, 2016; Cervantes-Soon, 2017; Clay, 2012; Edell et al., 2013, 2016; Keller, 2012; Taft, 2011). Further, the teenage girl activist has become the type of girl media embraces, as exemplified by several activists from around the world who have become recognizable girl activist figures. There can be a number of reasons there is more visibility of teen girl activism today. Taft (2020) speculates one explanation for this attention is simply that there are more girl activists now than there were in the past (p. 2). There is no concrete evidence to suggest this is an exact truth, but it is certainly the reality that today there is an abundance of well-known individual girl activists in the world, some of whom have acquired a sort of celebrity status. Moreover, this media attention arguably feeds the public’s intrigue into these girl figures. The girls that do not fit the mold of the teenage girl activist figure, such as the girls in my study, are still expected to be extra-ordinary, which draws even more attention to the complicated expectations and implications of girlhood in the world today.
Toronto girls on how to solve the world’s problems
In contrast to the visible teen girl activists discussed in this paper, the girls in my study did not participate in public activism. Moreover, they had varying opinions about the type of action that was necessary for their social issues of concern to be resolved. Despite their different ideas, both groups’ responses were very much indirectly informed by values stemming from a neoliberal ideology. They either focused on small-scale individual practices, which is admirable while also reinforcing the idea of personal responsibility (for systemic problems), which was most apparent in the responses from the girls at School A, or they did not think that the change they wanted to see was possible, as was the case for the girls at School B. This change would require universal agreement and collective action about what the problems are, which was unfathomable to them. The girls at School A on the other hand believed that there were things they could do—that we all could do—to affect change. Much of this sense of efficacy came from their knowledge of social and political issues.
I’ve grown up my entire life with a very political family. We always talk about politics, we always watch the news. I was born and raised on this stuff, so ever since I was young. . . As soon as I am of voting age, I am THERE. Whether it is for some weird community person or the prime minister. It makes a huge difference. (CP, 15 years old, School A) My parents actually talked about voting. My dad, he told me. I was pretty young, I didn’t really care at that point. He was like, people were like there’s no way Trump is going to win, so I’m just not going to vote, and then them not voting led to Trump winning, and so me too, as soon as I’m able to vote. . . I think every vote counts. It’s good that people have come to realize that. Yes, they should have realized that beforehand, but it’s good that now people are talking. (Helen, 15 years old, School A)
Although they are adamant about the importance of voting, they are so politically savvy that they also recognize the problems in the current democratic process. CP astutely pointed out that “In Canada the voting system that we have. . . It’s not really that every vote counts. It’s whoever gets the most. It’s kinda like hard to describe. . . The reason people weren’t voting is because they felt like their vote didn’t matter because it really didn’t” (CP). By this logic, we are all responsible for who is in power and also not entirely responsible because of the system in place.
To this end, individual actions are crucial to making some difference.
As noted earlier, many of the actions the girls from School A discussed were individual practices such as conserving energy at home, reducing meat consumption, and being thoughtful and vigilant consumers as ways to affect change in the world. Helen explained, “I’d rather focus on myself, getting everything that I want in check. The whole plastic straw movement. Getting all the plastic, really shrinking my plastic intake. I’d rather focus on that first, then slowly move out into the public so that I have more to fall back on.” Here we see the significance of believing we need to master our individual lives before venturing into the larger sphere. Here we can see the neoliberal rationality at play. For Helen and CP, we must invest in the self first before tackling larger issues. The system, however, ensures that the self is never enough and that we must continue to invest in it.
These girls also expressed frustration that more people don’t take similar simple personal measures to try to improve the world. CP told me, “One thing that really bothers me is that people will go out to a protest and that’s all they’ll do and they’ll be like, ‘Okay! I did something for society.’ You hardly did everything. You showed up, walked around for like a couple hours. Like, sure that’s amazing that you did that, but actually do something that’s going to help society.” Helen chimed in, “even the small things. . . I’m going to use the environment as an example. There are people who’ll just go to rallies and then they’ll go home and leave all the lights on, and then leave the water running. . . People are just like, oh I went to a protest, I had a sign, I took a picture, I posted it online. . . I’m done. And then they don’t actually care.” These girls have integrity, and for them, it is important for our everyday practices to reflect our values.
Although some people may not care about changing their behavior to improve the world as the girls suggest, there are people who do care but are not able to implement individual or collective acts for various reasons. Many people may not have the resources to be able to make these changes, and many may not believe their behavior will truly make a difference, which is not necessarily incorrect. I asked the girls if there is anything on a larger scale that would make it easier for us to do these little things in our everyday lives, or what barriers exist making these changes difficult to practice. CP pointed out that people can become comfortable in their habits and loyal to certain products and that there can be a “mental block.” Helen jumped in to add that people in power, such as Trump who “doesn’t believe in pollution!” can so much as persuade people into following their beliefs, or at least discourage and encourage certain behaving. Although the girls are aware of the challenges in implementing change, they still communicated dissatisfaction and irritation when people do not act in accordance with their values or at least recognize the dissonance.
While the girls at School A communicated a sense of frustration about people not doing their part to affect change, the girls at School B didn’t have such an expectation of others. Instead of communicating dismay about people not doing their part, they expressed a sense of helplessness with respect to truly affecting change. This is where examining the social and cultural contexts of both girls’ experiences would be valuable for further study. The girls from School B who attended this session are first generation immigrants (children of parents not born in Canada) from majority world countries, specifically Philippines and Kenya. One of the girls present during this session was also a first-generation immigrant, but from minority world countries. Bourdieu (1984)’s concept of habitus is relevant in this consideration of social and cultural environments. Habitus encompasses the dynamics and qualities of our social conditions—which are class-based—as they inform our tastes and behaviors. Furthermore, it is worth mentioning that in Rebel Girls, Taft asserts that teen girl activism looks different across the Americas. “Compared to their North American peers, Latin American girls have more places where they can practice expressing their critical knowledges, expand on their skills of political analysis, and learn more extensive political vocabularies” (Taft, 2011: 109). Environment plays a large part in experience. How might the girls in my study’s understanding of people and the world emerge in tandem with their lived experiences?
Because both groups of girls strongly cared about a variety of issues, I was curious about how they thought these issues might be resolved. RD (15 years old, School B) did not need to think about her response when she promptly and emphatically told me, “They can’t. I feel like there’s just too many people in the world and there’s just too many issues so that. . . I mean it can get better, but it will never 100% be fully resolved because there’s always going to be people out there that think differently and have different opinions than you and what you stand for.” JB (15 years old, School B) added, “I mean I have the same like thought, but like, I mean it could get better but some people just have like a certain mindset or thought drilled into their brain, so like I dunno how.” When I asked what it would take to change people’s mindsets they both agreed that it would be difficult to do this. RD added, “for an example, when you grow up with a certain religion in your household, it’s drilled into your mind that there’s only that religion, or it’s that that one thing you can believe in, so it’s the same thing.” The girls from both schools agreed that attitudes and behaviors can be very engrained and specific to the diverse beliefs and values that people have. Although they understand that these attitudes can be difficult to change, the girls at School A seemed more optimistic that change was somewhat in their control. 4
On being and becoming better
Regardless of believing they could make a difference, all the girls in my study, on some level, felt a bit like an activist, although not fully. Specifically, at School A they admitted that their age was one of the reasons they didn’t quite consider themselves to be complete activists. Helen began to explain her thoughts on the topic by saying, “I feel like. . .Once I am old enough to do, to make. . .” and as she trailed off, CP jumped in to help her finish her thought, “old enough to not be treated as a kid, like ‘you can’t say this because you’re a kid, or you can’t do this because you’re a kid’….” This sentiment resonates with what Taft (2017) found in her study with girl activists. Taft (2017) argues that when girls describe themselves as “‘becoming’ rather than ‘being’ activists” they unintentionally are “contributing to their own invisibility and to the widespread dismissal of young people’s politics as merely practice for the future” (p. 28). I had been so immersed in and impressed by the mature and knowledgeable content of what these teens were telling me that I was admittedly caught off guard by the girls at School A lamenting about how their young age was a hinderance to them fulfilling their desire to be activists-proper. It is important to note that the girls at School B were aware of the fact that their young age could be preventing them from being more active, but they quickly denounced it as the main factor; rather, they felt that the irresolvability of the social issues was why they weren’t activists-proper.
The responses from both schools convey an element of defiance against age discrimination and its control over their sense of self. Age is only one of the reasons the girls do not consider themselves to be true activists. Regardless of whether or not they identified as “real” activists, however, they each understood that their sense of self was connected to their beliefs. All the girls in my study understand that it is important to be vulnerable and true to themselves and their values, but that doing so requires them to behave with a certain strength and confidence that they either may not feel they have, or that comes at a cost which they are unwilling to take. The girls at School A in particular conveyed feeling pressure to not let the external environment affect them harshly.
People will yell at me and I’ll just be like trying not to cry, and I think that my parents. . . and I’m really lucky people don’t see me that way, but I know there will be people that will see me that way. I think so much about what people think about me and I don’t want to be seen as like someone who’s a hypocrite. . . Before I really throw myself out there to my full extent, I want to have learned to be okay that there will be people who will say negative things about what I am doing because I really want to be an activist for certain things like inequality/equality. . . Seeing that it’s something I care so much about that if people were to start saying negative things about me because of what I’m doing to try to help equality, I think that would at this point in my life, I think that would throw me off and I would completely just stop doing it. So I’d want to learn to be able to take whatever and just do it. (Helen) I’m just going to agree with you. I feel like I really need to have a tough skin to be a true activist cause there will always be – no matter what you’re fighting about – there will always be someone who’s opposing you, and they will do whatever means necessary to kind of beat you down and say like you’re wrong or that’s not it, and I feel I just really need to build up tough skin so that I can take it and kind of have it just bounce back. I’m not fully there yet. I mean I’m definitely starting to be able to take it a bit more, but like I said there’s always room to grow. (CP)
Helen and CP both emphasized that they want to make sure they are doing the most they can for the world in their personal lives before venturing into the public sphere, but that they also hope this feeling of being not ready will change as they get older. Neoliberal feminism suggests that “the solution to injustice is to work on the self rather than to work with others for social and political transformation” (Gill, 2016: 617). These girls’ responses are understandably complex, and although they are not saying they do not believe in working with others to improve the world, through no fault of their own, their messages are also aligned with a neoliberal agenda of individualism, stratification, and personal responsibility for systemic problems. A further exploration into the school curriculum and the way social justice issues are taught in Ontario schools would provide more information to strengthen this analysis. In her study with urban girls growing up during the girl power period, Zaslow (2009) also found a similar discordance in “the tension between the neoliberal empowerment language and narratives that they adopt, and their real social and emotional experiences of gender, race, and class inequalities” (p. 9). The girls at School B’s refusal to let their age be the reason for not being more active in the public sphere communicates this tension.
Care over risk for the Toronto girls
Although the girls from School B did not seem to believe they needed to improve themselves before tackling large-scale activism, they disavowed even making an effort. What they want for their adult selves is not compatible with what they believe is necessary to affect the change they want to see in the world, and therefore their effort was not worth the cost. Although speaking about policy intervention in the United Kingdom for working class young people’s educational aspirations, Brown’s (2011) attention to the emotional geographies of young people is relevant here. He emphasizes that there is a “disconnection between working class young people’s aspirations and those promoted by policy interventions” (p. 1). The girls at school B especially believed they had much to lose by pursuing activism. RD communicated that she wants to have a family and “be there” for her relatives. She asserted that if she could not see progress being made from her activist efforts, she would feel that her relatives would suffer from her not providing for them what was expected of her.
For her, activism was very much framed as a type of ongoing labor. JB expressed a similar concern for loved ones, adding that privacy was at stake as well. “Once you put yourself out there, there’s gonna be people who don’t agree with what you say or don’t want you addressing certain issues. . . So like once you put yourself out there it’s risky for you and your family.” (JB). Underlying the responses of the girls at School B was an awareness of how their actions would affect others. All this is not to say that the girls at School A are not cognizant of how their behaviors affect other people; rather, based on the conversation we had, this notion did not emerge as a dominant one. At School B, the girls emphasized that making sure their loved ones were taken care of was of utmost importance. As such, the effort and labor of activist work were not worth the potential consequences.
Even though there were factors that the girls described as holding them back from being more socially active, they all undeniably cared deeply about the issues they raised. Part of the reason they felt so strongly about these topics is that they were personally connected to them. Helen explained, “I think a big part of why I’m so involved in certain things is just because I actually see them firsthand. The ones I see firsthand are the ones. . . I care more about.” This sentiment rang true for all the participants in my study. CP’s dissatisfaction with the representation of the LGBTQ2+ community in popular media, despite some progress being made on the subject, is tied to her connection to the issue. She asserted, “I feel as a member of that community, it’s just not really represented as much as it should be.” The traditional heteronormative romance narrative in popular media is problematic for CP. Similarly, traditional gender roles that emerge from a heteronormative discourse were frustrating for Helen who also expressed concern about the gender pay gap. She explained that her family life did not conform to traditional gender role expectations, with her mother being the working parent, and her father being a stay-at-home dad. “I was always that one person that had that when usually it was the other way around and everyone was so shocked. . . You shouldn’t be shocked when a man is doing that stuff. . . Either one who does it should be fine.” Similarly, JB’s concern about equality and rights for immigrants was connected to her Filipino family’s experience: “Cause like my parents being immigrants and stuff, so like it was hard for them. . . When you’re not from a specific country, they just look at you different. Treat you different.” RD echoed JB’s sentiment that her family’s experiences, as well as her own affective interpretations of these struggles, have informed her views and values. “I’ve been told stories by my grandparents, and I’ve been told stories by my mother, and I’ve seen it with my own eyes when I go to Kenya. . . I just see the poverty, I see the violence that happens at home, and I see that sometimes the world is just not the best place to be in, and sometimes. . . Mental health affects that as well, and they all tie in together. . .” (RD). Even though the concerns raised varied, they are indeed connected.
All the girls expressed genuine care and concern for the lived inequalities that they and their loved ones’ have experienced. Passion in itself is not enough to bring about change, however. RD added, “There’s just too many things and too many issues to tackle. Solving one issue won’t solve another.” Despite being personally connected to certain problems, it is difficult if not impossible, to tackle them all unless we address the systemic root. All these issues most certainly will not adequately be resolved as long as an individualistic mentality dominates minority world consciousness.
Collective struggle
Implicit in the girls’ statements is that community and collective struggle are the solution to the issues that matter to them. While I didn’t specifically ask them about particular activists, the only one they named was Martin Luther King Jr. and not any of the mainstream ones that have been in the media recently. This opens larger questions about curriculum and learning. The girls I met with vehemently oppose polished representations of experiences that are in reality complex. To deny or alter the truth is to perpetuate the status quo and the neoliberal agenda. Although collective action appears to be an overwhelming concept to these girls, on some level they are aware of its potential to catalyze change. If enough people can come together to tackle the systemic causes of these inequalities, the change they hope for might be more within reach. True collective action might even ultimately mitigate the negative repercussions that they worry activism would have on family life, even though it was hard for the girls at School B in particular to imagine this being worth the effort.
Conclusion
The extraordinary girl with a public persona has become increasingly pervasive, and is especially pronounced with remarkable girl figures in the media. The girls in my study are aware of standards of exceptional girlhood, even as they engage in their own activisms that may not meet a standard of what it means to be a true activist with public visibility. RD even recognizes that in school they are learning about social issues that in the past would not have been discussed. “I’d say probably all of us are activists in a way because in school we’re told to stick up to these things and stick up for those things and we learn about issues. We’re learning about issues that were never really brought into the light about five years ago, so I think that’s just one step that an activist takes and so I feel like somehow we’re all contributing to that” (RD). Although the girls expressed some ambivalence at first about their roles in activism, there was no question that they care deeply about injustice. It is not that these girls in my study do not think of themselves as activists broadly, but that there are internalized messages that to be activists like those in the public eye requires self-improvement.
The group interviews with the girls highlighted a variety of themes, directing my attention toward some core ones related to neoliberalism. The ideological system from which this powerful girl emerges—and revolts against—continues to prioritize a discourse of individualism and self-improvement over relationships, genuine care, and connection. The better world that they value, and their desire to work on becoming better highlight internalized neoliberal messages. As noted throughout this study, care is secondary to the individual achievement that neoliberalism encourages. Although some of the girls may feel the pressure to become better or stronger versions of themselves, their underlying care and concern for their loved ones and for making the world better is more important. Care and connection, when embraced and leveraged, serve to locate the teenage girl as being rather than simply becoming in the world.
Limitations and future research
As with any major research project, this one has its limitations. The incredibly small sample size is undeniably a concern. Regardless of this small study size, the findings lay a foundation for future research. Moving forward, research that explores the ways girls not in the public eye express care will be valuable in understanding how society can support them. I anticipate that care and connection will continue to be the primary concern for these teen girls. Continuing to speak with girls directly will provide more insight into their views and values, but also the barriers that they experience.
Footnotes
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
