This master’s thesis examines the Swedish gymnastics troupe, the Sofia Girls 1942-1964 from the perspective of gender and girlhood. The aim is to analyse the construction of the Sofia girl by their leader Maja Carlquist, the audience and the girls themselves, focusing on their characteristics, abilities and experiences. By applying Yvonne Hirdman’s theory of the Gender contract on another subject than the housewife, the girl, it is possible to discover a more nuanced history on gender. The results show that through her leadership of the Sofia Girls, Carlquist created the idea of a particular kind of girl to present to the world. This girl was strong, yet feminine, natural, and resolved to the ideals of womanhood while also challenging them. The girls who adapted to this construction, therefore agreeing to this particular kind of gender contract, were given opportunities to travel and were situated in positions of responsibility. This gave them self-esteem as they continued their lives. Thus, by conforming to the ideals, opportunities were created for the girls rather than holding them back. In this sense, the Sofia Girls displayed signs of progress during a period where it was rare at best.

In this thesis I have studied the conflicts that arose in Vara when the municipality ordered a sculpture by the artist Katharina Grosse in collaboration with The National Swedish Public Art Council and the Swedish Transport Administration in 2012. The aim of the study is to analyze the meaning-making of the sculpture as a process determined by social negotiations concerning variables such as identity, societal hierarchies and education. The material is foremost consisting of interviews with employees from The National Swedish Public Art Council and Vara municipality, a local objector whom organized a protesting Facebook group and a local newspaper journalist. The material is analyzed with discourse theory in order to examine how the discourses about public art are characterized in a local context today and how its meaning continually is being constructed and reconstructed through this. By studying the resistance and critique against The Blue Orange in Vara as local fragments of a more global context the analysis also targets how the practices and meaning-making of art in the public domain are conditioned by political ideologies and societal structures such as the neoliberal market, economic growth and competition. The protesters and protagonists of the art work places the sculpture in different narratives about the municipality where the municipality is either described as something progressing; moving from a state where something is lacking, or as something with a fixed identity and already defined. The latter narrative is used by those who criticize the art work because it does not reflect their perceived shared identity while the former motivates the advocates who want to create a more distinct municipal identity, a branding of sorts, to attract tourists and stimulate economic growth. These narratives demonstrates how debates revolving art works and the public domain can bring up articulations and everyday experiences of power structures, citizenship and societal norms.