Girl Culture

From: Ayisha

When I first took this picture I hadn’t planned it or made the young girl in the picture ( my niece) pose in any specific way, the picture just happened so naturally. As I took the picture my niece said “I don’t have Snapchat on it yet”, “it” referring to her first ever phone and “Snapchat” is referring to a widely used app that you wouldn’t normally think a four year old would know anything about. But, my niece knows about Snapchat and knows how to point the phone at an object and take a picture, even if that object is herself. What all of this goes to show is that the minds of children are easily molded and are essentially sponges, they reflect what they see, hear, and what they are taught to be.

Having acknowledged that children are extremely receptive to influences, good or bad, we can now analyze what exactly we are teaching our girls and boys and what kind of influence are we and our society having on them. Lucky for us many have done research about this idea of “The Two cultures of childhood” (Rudman and Glick 59). The Two cultures of childhood as Rudman and Glick explain it, are these sets of expectations, roles, and habits that are associated with either being a girl or being a boy. The reason why it’s called The two cultures of childhood is because young girls and boys learn these cultures at a very young age, and continue to learn them throughout their childhood (Rudman and Glick 59).


In the image that I took,  I attempted to portray the girl culture of childhood in many different aspects of my photo. As you can see In the picture, my niece is taking up the majority of the image and is in the center of the image. This portrays that young girls are often the center of attention and ridicule, they are forced to take center stage in many ways, and that can negatively affect their development as young girls. Another aspect of the photo is that there are Barbie dolls just behind the young girl in the picture, these Barbie dolls reflect the beauty standards that are pushed on our young girls, the societal ideology of what is considered “beautiful”, and what a “girl” toy looks like. As stated in “The two cultures of childhood” there are different traits and characteristics associated with male and female toys. A Barbie is a perfect example of some of those “girl toy” characteristics. For example, Barbie is a doll not an action figure, which would attract girls to this toy instead of boys. Another trait Barbie has is that she is the exact opposite of violent, she is sweet and kind and loves dressing up, all of the things that a girl should be (Rudman and Glick 60). The last thing in the picture that portrays the girl culture is the pose that the young girl is striking, she seems confident and fierce and almost like she’s posing like a movie star. She clearly did not learn this pose on her own, she has seen it in movies, shows, on the street. All of these aspects of the image are taught and learned, and my niece isn’t the only one who is taught these social roles and expectations, most young girls are taught the same thing too.


Works Cited:

Rudman, Laurie A., and Peter Glick. The Social Psychology of Gender: How Power and Intimacy Shape Gender Relations, The Guilford Press, 2015, pp. 59-63.​