Girlhood, Beauty Pageants, and Power
Trailer Park Royalty
Summary
Excerpt
Table Of Contents
- Cover
- Title
- Copyright
- About the author
- About the book
- Advance Praise for Girlhood, Beauty Pageants, and Power
- This eBook can be cited
- Dedication
- Table of Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Chapter One: Rural Beauty Pageant Culture, Girlhood, and Power
- Historical Roots of Beauty Pageants
- Pageant Community and Culture
- Beauty Pageants, Girlhood, and Social Class
- Girlhood Studies: A Brief Background
- Research Process
- Bricolage: Cultural Studies, Poststructural Feminism, and Poststructuralist Ethnography
- Chapter Two: Situating the Bricolage: Research and the Critical Tradition
- Curriculum Studies: Tying Schools and Culture
- Becoming a Bricoleur
- Theoretical Bricolage: Towards a Critical Approach
- Epistemology
- Critical Epistemology
- Reaching a Critical Approach to Research
- Foucault: The Road to Poststructural Analysis of Power
- Critical Theory
- Foucault
- The Move to Postmodern Thinking
- Emancipation From Existing Power Structures
- Power, Knowledge, and Discipline
- The Power/Knowledge Relationship
- Time and Place: Docile Bodies
- Measuring Disciplinary Success
- Working Towards a Framework for Analysis
- Chapter Three: Bricolage: Cultural Studies, Poststructural Feminism, and Poststructuralist Ethnography
- The Road to Critical Ethnography
- Working Towards Interpretation: Critical Hermeneutics
- Continuing Interpretation: Post Structural Feminism
- Completing the Research Lens: Cultural Studies
- Common Ground: Making the Bricolage
- Reflexivity
- Analysis
- Validity and Credibility
- Chapter Four: Pageant Culture, Media, Social Class, and Power
- Media Influence: What Is a Pageant Girl?
- Social Status and Pageant Participation: What Motivates Participation?
- Opportunities of Future Success
- Pageants as Platform for Fortune and Prizes
- Pageants as a Ticket to Stardom
- Pageants as a Ticket to Class Mobility
- Pageants Provide Way to Live Up to Society’s Focus on Winners
- Pageants Provide Way to Improve Social and Economic Standing
- Pageants Elevate Social Status of Family
- Pageants Provide Proof of Beauty
- Pageants Offer Way to Play “Dress Up” and Be a Princess
- Pageants Make Winners Holders of Values or Ideals
- Pageants Provide Definition of Beauty in Terms of Race
- Pageants Create Moral Ideals
- Pageants Create Beauty Ideals
- Artifice and Transformation
- Pageants Are Vehicles for Developing Self-Esteem
- Pageants Instill Skills for Competition
- Successful Pageant Girls Often Seen as Superficial
- Pageants Can Be a Rite of Passage
- Conclusion
- Chapter Five: Conclusions and Directions for Future Study
- Change as a Choice
- Acknowledgement of Power Operations
- Causing Change in Structures of Discipline
- Future Research
- Reflections on Findings
- Final Thoughts
- Series Index
Elisabeth B. Thompson-Hardy
Girlhood, Beauty Pageants,
and Power
Trailer Park Royalty
PETER LANG
New York • Bern • Berlin
Brussels • Vienna • Oxford • Warsaw
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Thompson-Hardy, Elisabeth, author.
Title: Girlhood, beauty pageants, and power:
trailer park royalty / Elisabeth B. Thompson-Hardy.
Description: New York: Peter Lang, 2018.
Series: Counterpoints: studies in criticality; vol. 522 | ISSN 1058-1634
Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017036564 | ISBN 978-1-4331-1348-2 (hardback: alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4331-1347-5 (paperback: alk. paper) | ISBN 978-1-4331-4476-9 (ebook pdf)
ISBN 978-1-4331-4477-6 (epub) | ISBN 978-1-4331-4478-3 (mobi)
Subjects: LCSH: Beauty contests—Social aspects—Southern States.
Girls—Southern States—Social conditions. | Women—Identity.
Social Classes—Southern States. | Femininity—Southern States.
Feminism—Southern States.
Classification: LCC HQ1220.U5 T486 2018 | DDC 791.6/60975—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017036564
DOI 10.3726/b11300
Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek.
Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the “Deutsche
Nationalbibliografie”; detailed bibliographic data are available
on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.
© 2018 Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., New York
29 Broadway, 18th floor, New York, NY 10006
All rights reserved.
Reprint or reproduction, even partially, in all forms such as microfilm,
xerography, microfiche, microcard, and offset strictly prohibited.
About the author
Elisabeth B. Thompson-Hardy received her Ed.D. in curriculum studies from Georgia Southern University in 2007. She has published with William Reynolds in Critical Studies of Southern Place: A Reader (Peter Lang, 2014) and has authored and co-authored articles on educational issues and cultural studies. Currently, she teaches English at North Augusta High School in South Carolina.
About the book
Girlhood, Beauty Pageants, and Power: Trailer Park Royalty explores the phenomenon of child beauty pageants in rural communities throughout the American South. In a bricolage of post-structural feminism, critical ethnographies, critical hermeneutics, and cultural studies lenses, this book analyzes how the performance of participants—most from a lower socio-economic bracket—and the power exercised by beauty pageant culture work to formulate girls’ identities. Girlhood, Beauty Pageants, and Power also examines how depictions in popular culture through film, videos, documentaries, and television shows add to the dialogue. Author Elisabeth B. Thompson-Hardy suggests rural pageant culture works to create girlhood identity and shapes the way participants view the world and themselves—through intricate cultural work in terms of gender and class. This book is intended for students and teachers who are interested in dissecting rural girlhood and development, Southern American beauty standards, and the effect of the media on girls’ identities.
Advance Praise for
Girlhood, Beauty Pageants, and Power
“Occasionally a book like Girlhood, Beauty Pageants, and Power: Trailer Park Royalty appears and opens complicated conversations that are intriguing. Conceptualizations of female identity and beauty pageants dwell in this text within the context of Southern place. The analysis swirls with a bricolage of critical traditions. Elisabeth B. Thompson-Hardy deftly negotiates the relationships among language, social institutions, beauty pageants, subjectivity, class, power, and place. This book is a major contribution to fields as diverse as cultural studies, gender studies, and place studies. It is a first-rate scholarly contribution. Read it.”
—William M. Reynolds, Associate Professor of Curriculum,
Foundations, & Reading, Georgia Southern University
This eBook can be cited
This edition of the eBook can be cited. To enable this we have marked the start and end of a page. In cases where a word straddles a page break, the marker is placed inside the word at exactly the same position as in the physical book. This means that occasionally a word might be bifurcated by this marker.
Dedication
The consummate gentleman and an unending fount of information, John Frederick Blumer III encouraged me to apply for the doctoral program in Curriculum Studies. Upon my acceptance, he was a faithful cheerleader and dogged encourager for me to complete my studies and write my dissertation. He almost lived to see it to its completion. On May 30, 2007, Daddy ended his courageous battle with metastatic hepatoma. My prospectus hearing was held the very next day. He witnessed the beginnings of my writing, only to watch from heaven as I stood before the committee and defended August, 13, 2007. With great love, undying gratitude, and the promise to continue to instill Daddy’s love of learning to all those within my realm of influence, I dedicate this work to him. I did it, Daddy! Spread the word in heaven!
In like fashion, I dedicate this work to my mother, the lady who made trips too many to count to keep my young sons while I wrote, most at the height of my father’s decline. You are the true example of a lady and a Godly woman. Your wisdom and your example provide me with a model of whom I desire to be. And your determination, love of learning, and demand for nothing less than the best have shaped←v | vi→ me into the learned, multi-faceted woman I now am. You are amazing, and I love you so.
Details
- Pages
- XVI, 178
- Publication Year
- 2018
- ISBN (PDF)
- 9781433144769
- ISBN (ePUB)
- 9781433144776
- ISBN (MOBI)
- 9781433144783
- ISBN (Softcover)
- 9781433113475
- ISBN (Hardcover)
- 9781433113482
- DOI
- 10.3726/b11300
- Language
- English
- Publication date
- 2018 (June)
- Published
- New York, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Oxford, Wien, 2018. XVI, 178 pp.
- Product Safety
- Peter Lang Group AG
