Digital Girlhoods

Tween girls in America today are growing up on social
media, posting selfies and sharing ?stories.? In
Digital Girlhoods , Katherine Phelps emphasizes tween
girls? agency on social media vis-�-vis identity
formation, content creation, and community building. When a tween girl posts a video on YouTube asking the world, ?Am I
pretty or ugly??, she is also asking, ?Who am
I?? This content makes visible the pitfalls and potentials
of these tweens creating their own digital narratives?and
it asks us to take them seriously. Featuring in-depth interviews with a cross section of tween girls, Phelps allows them to give meanings to their relationships with social media and their peers in their own words. As tween girls embody and negotiate the many contradictions of American girlhoods through social media
participation (for example, the ?Pretty or Ugly?
YouTube trend), Phelps asks, how are tween girls living and
experiencing girlhoods in the digital age? The processes of
experiencing and enacting tweenhood and girlhood online are
explicitly gendered.
Digital Girlhoods thoughtfully considers what tween
girlhoods look and feel like in America today.