When Loud Means Real: Tween Girls and the Voices of Rock Authenticity

Published In

Voicing Girlhood in Popular Music: Performance, Authority, Authenticity

ISBN

9781315689593

Document Type

Book Chapter

Publication Date

6-2016

Abstract

Hannah, an 8-year-old from New York City and participant in the Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls notes a contrast between rock and pop that communicates her ideas about authenticity of self and expression in music. Her ability to make this differentiation and to articulate her own preferences belies conventional ideas about tween girls as uncritical consumers with no unique aesthetic discernment, a stereotype we found repeatedly challenged in our conversations with girls.2 One of the fifty or so girls we interviewed over three years for our larger project about tween girls and music, Hannah’s description of rock as an “actual thing” versus pop that “float[s] around like a spirit” (and is consequently less real) depends on a familiar dichotomy between rock and pop, figuring rock as an authentic and more valuable expression of self over the perceived fakery of pop. Hannah goes a step further by identifying rock and roll as a thing that can be part of her “soul” and “part of you,” connecting it to the embodied self in important but not very distinct ways.

Rights

© 2016 Routledge

Description

© 2016 Routledge

DOI

10.4324/9781315689593

Persistent Identifier

https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/33300

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