In her chapter of Music Scenes, “ ‘Tween Scene’:
Resistance Within the Mainstream”, Melanie Lowe posits architects a thesis
around the meaning, more accurately the social construction of meaning,
involved with Tween Pop music and scene. She looked at here exclusively as it
is listened to by young teen girls and organizes an ethnographic research
opportunity to study the way these girls view the music themselves in relation
to its content and image. Lowe details her methodology quite thoroughly and is
careful to establish the influence of her role as an observer, and
conversational participant in a self-reflexive way.
Low
offers a well-constructed analysis of the feminist elements of these girls’
approach to the music. Through analyzing the way these girls talked about the
sexualized lyrics, and gaining insight into their values, Lowe realizes that
Tween Pop plays a unique role. Lowe writes that girls can “, explore their own
budding sexuality while protected from actually “meaning it” by the guise of
derision”. (94) This role is that it allows these girls to operates with a sort
of pre-emptive ironic reflexivity. Lowe provides examples of a feminist
consciousness genuinely felt by these girls and shows how they rectify this
allegiance with the hyper-sexualized discourse they feel the need to
participate in as exemplified by the prevalent use of “slut” and related epithets. Indeed Lowe’s success in the
article comes through the way, she is able to sense tease out these conflicting
lines of thought in the discussions she had.
As
food for thought, I would like to ask the class whether there exists an
equivalent space for boys. Is there a place wherein young males are able to
engage in self-defensive ironic behavior while simultaneously exploring what
they mock? Furthermore, is there a culture for youth at this age that does not
encourage young children to divide into their own genders?
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