Beyond girl power: girl resistance, counterpublics, and the right to the city

Abstract

Girlhood‟s political potential does not lie in the power of individual girls, however magnificent, but in acknowledging the commonalities and multiplicities of all girls‟ experiences. Rejecting the individualistic “girl power” paradigm opens up new, sometimes contradictory narrations and representations of contemporary girlhood. This non-heroic approach to girlhood reveals not only the intricate workings of exclusion mechanisms, but also the various inclusive tactics and resistance strategies at work. Engaging with the concepts of counterpublics, the gendered right to the city, and feminist theory more broadly, I look closely at selected examples of girl resistance from popular culture to demonstrate how girls‟ interventions in urban places usually coded as masculine can subvert cultural, gender, racial, and class codes, reappropriate narrations about themselves, and execute their right to the city. Even if some of the gestures and tactics I discuss in the paper may seem too mild to have any political power, I propose that it is exactly such unassuming forms of resistance that promise real change and deserve our urgent attention.