The purpose of the study was to investigate teenage girls' attitudes toward fashion advertising and media. The study also sought to determine the influence of class enrollment and employment on attitudes toward fashion advertising. The data were collected by questionnaires administered to 121 high school girls enrolled in child development and fashion design major study classes. Descriptive statistics were computed along with a t-test for the difference between means for independent samples. Teenagers were found to possess many positive attitudes toward fashion advertising and to view print advertising less negatively than broadcast advertising. A highly significant difference was found between attitudes toward fashion advertising and class enrollment. In addition, a significant difference was found between attitudes toward fashion advertising and employment.

This project is an interrogation of three examples from recent popular culture of girlculture, specifically texts that target young female consumers: the Spice Girls, Scream and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. These examples are fundamentally different than texts from earlier female targeted generic models because they not only reflect the influence of the feminist movement, they work on feminism's behalf. The project's methodology grows out of feminist film theories and cultural studies theories. One chapter is dedicated to each text, and each reading works to reappropriate girlculture texts for a counter-hegemonic agenda by highlighting the moments when each text manages to subvert its mass mediated conservative biases.

This study discusses how adolescent Black and Latina girls read the femininities made available in pop culture texts and how they take up those femininities when they narrate personal experiences. The purpose of the study is to explore how girls engage in pop culture on an ongoing basis, how these everyday engagements shape their understandings of themselves as girls, and how these engagements are themselves performances that both maintain and threaten the boundaries between boy and girl. In addition, this study witnesses the deconstruction of those meanings (Derrida, 1967/1997), exploring how attempts to make femininity mean something ultimately undermines itself. As pop culture has come to saturate everyday life, American schools, following the Common Core State Standards’ (NGA, 2010) mandate for curriculum driven by “sufficiently complex,” canonical texts, have narrowed the scope and purposes of literacy instruction in schools. This research serves as a starting point for curricula that support young people in making sense of pop culture and their relationship to it. Situated within a poststructural feminist theoretical framework, this study uses qualitative methods to make the literacy processes through which girls make sense of pop culture texts visible and to elicit narrations of the personal experiences in which girls take up the femininities made available pop culture texts. The findings suggested that girls make sense of these femininities by reading both in-narrative and out-of-narrative—standing back from the text and treating it as a text. In their readings and discussions of pop culture texts, the girls cited and inscribed discourses of femininity, constituting themselves as respectable girls by deliberately making judgments about women’s physical appearance on screen. Specifically, they acted to draw a line between what they saw as appropriate and what they saw as inappropriate. This repetitive act was one way they performed respectable femininity, stabilizing discursive meanings of gender and also holding open the possibility of the line being placed differently. The findings also suggested that storytelling as a site of discursive agency as the distance between the moment of experience and the moment of narration held open the possibility of reformulation and renegotiation of meanings.

Gender disparity in education is a global challenge. School-age girls are often denied equal opportunities as enjoyed by boys. This research aims to improve the poor state of female education in Pakistan by exploring options to develop a community space for college age girls in Swat. This thesis focuses on the former princely state of Swat in northern Pakistan, an example of a place whose history of prioritizing education is largely overlooked. The Swat state heavily promoted education, but following its merger with Pakistan in 1969, many of the institutions it had created faltered. The Taliban takeover of the area in 2007 – 2009 further exacerbated the decline of education in the valley. Drawing upon the experiences of Ophelia’s Place in Eugene, Oregon, and field interviews with over a hundred college girls and administrators, I have identified activities to enhance girls’ education in Swat by developing innovative after-school possibilities.

Sun, Li. / Thesis Ph.D. Chinese University of Hong Kong 2015. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 254-286). / Abstracts also in Chinese; some appendixes in Chinese. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on 26, October, 2016).

This study explores the intrapersonal and interpersonal ecological factors that influence adolescent females' perceptions of sex and the extent to which their perceptions of sex impact onset of sexual intercourse as they mature. Particular attention is given to how depression influences individual, personal and social factors in an adolescent female's life, to shape her attitudes towards sex, and determine her engagement in sex as she reaches young adulthood. Ecological Systems Theory is used to examine the extent to which individual, family, and social factors impact adolescent females' perceptions of sex and onset of sexual intercourse. Data are from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. Multinomial logistic regression reveals that the factors associated with less positive perceptions of sex are age, self-esteem, sexual intercourse, religiosity and connection to mother and peers, as well as, depression in combination with religiosity and connection to one's peers. More positive perceptions of sex are linked with depression, connection to one's school, as well as, depression in conjunction with aging and sexual intercourse. Results from the logistic regression analysis determines that less positive perceptions of sex delay onset of sexual intercourse among adolescent females; however, adolescent females' attitudes towards sex vary greatly in determining onset of sexual intercourse as they mature. Furthermore, there is no association between depression and adolescent females' perceptions of sex in predicting onset of sexual intercourse as they progress into young adulthood. The findings from this study suggest that programs focused on shaping attitudes toward sex should assist young women in forming a definite opinion about their decision to have sexual intercourse or abstain from engagement in sexual intercourse. A female's age, sense of self-worth, emotional state, and religiosity as well as the strength of her relationships with parents, peers and school must be considered when addressing her sexual health. This investigation supports the use of Ecological Systems Theory as a useful theoretical framework for examining the factors that influence adolescent females' perceptions of sex and engagement in sexual intercourse. A more cognitive investigation of the relationship between depression and the factors in an adolescent female's life that influence her attitudes towards sex and how depression affects an adolescent female's perception of sex and her decision to engage in sexual intercourse is warranted as this study finds only minor support for the use of Ecological Systems Theory when exploring the association between depression and adolescent female sexual health. / Graduation date: 2006

Graduation date: 2006 / The purpose of this dissertation was to explore the experience of gifted girls transitioning from elementary school to sixth and seventh grade. The current counseling literature in this area found that gifted girls often struggle emotionally when transitioning to sixth and seventh grade. The bulk of this literature was based on quantitative research methods, and often on girls who were older. For the field of counseling it is important to add literature to the field that expresses the views of girls who are in sixth and seventh grade, and that their views are expressed qualitatively. Qualitative research methods were utilized for this study, specifically the use of grounded theory. Seven research participants were selected and interviewed over a four-month period. Three of these participants were in sixth grade at the conclusion of the study, and one was in seventh grade. Three seniors in high school were also interviewed to provide confirming data throughout the study. The interview data was coded and analyzed using grounded theory techniques. The major findings of this study were that for these gifted girls transitioning from elementary school to sixth and seventh was not as difficult as the literature had stated. With a strong sense of identity, these gifted girls were able to balance their desire to work hard academically and their interest in extra-curricular activities. In being able to balance their academic lives, they were able to make friends and build connections. The connections they made in turn contributed to their sense of self and their experiences of sixth and seventh grade. The implications of these findings are that gifted girls who have a strong sense of who they are, and a connection to others can move through this transition smoothly. For counselors working with this population it provides another understanding of the issues that face gifted girls in sixth and seventh grade.

This case study focuses on the influence of certain sociocultural factors on the ability of adolescent girls to fulfill their potentials. Specifically, the purpose of this research is to advance an alternative perspective on the relationship between the sociocultural influences of friendship, mother/daughter relationship, school experience, and body image and a loss of potential among adolescent girls from a historical, poststructural, postmodern-feminist perspective. The dissertation is presented in the form of narrative from both the author’s and girls’ and women’s perspectives in order to seek a rich and thick description. Throughout the study, the author integrates moments from her own journey during adolescence with the young girls and their mothers or grandmothers encountering the oftentimes overwhelming negative sociocultural challenges existing today. The data consist of interviews with four girls and four women; interviews with two school personnel; and observations covering 7 weeks of guided discussion groups. Personal stories are closely examined with current and in-depth research to produce valuable insight and recommendations linking sociocultural factors and potentiality among adolescent girls. In general, these data contribute to an existing body of knowledge as well as advance educational theory regarding adolescent girls and potentiality. Moreover, these findings bolster the argument that, although realistic approaches to create necessary change require a certain resignation to the forces that exist within our culture, educational psychologists will increase the discipline’s impact on students by conducting comprehensive research that creates and supports genuine efforts to teach girls effective strategies on ways to not relinquish control to relentless, disingenuous sociocultural pressures. The case study indicates that, although many positive gains have been made to support young girls, there remain many obstacles as well.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri--Columbia, 2003. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 285-308).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2002. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 139-148). Also available on the Internet.