Milkie Melissa, “Contested Images of Femininity: An Analysis of Cultural Gatekeepers’ Struggles with the “Real Girl” Critique”

This article came is written in the same journal “The Gendered Society,” but a different author, Melissa Milkie, wrote it. This article examines the various interpretations of women. The research provided by Milkie illuminates the struggles of femininity by examining how cultural gatekeepers respond to girls as a vocal critique of inauthentic media images. She interviews with10 editors at two national girl magazine organizations to provide a rare glimpse into their contradictory responses to requests for depicting what they quote as "real girls." The editors share in the critique, claiming they should change images, but cannot. In these accounts, they reveal struggles over altering narrow images of femininity at the organizational and institutional levels. Editors also justify these girls as misguided by calling on the media organizations norms and schemas about how the “good” reader is supposed to understand the images. Ironically, the editors claim that they can change images but should not, because the power of a girl’s resistance is tempered, as both sets of responses lead to the girls critique being inefficacious in redefining femininity. The study contributes to an understanding of how femininity is defining cultural institutions as an operation to create and sustain gender stratification.

Reference: Melissa, Milkie. “Contested Images of Femininity: An Analysis of Cultural Gatekeepers’ Struggles with the “Real Girl” Critique.” in Kimmel, S. Michael and Aronson, Amy. (Eds) The Gendered Society Reader. Oxford University Press: New York, 2008.