Blake Rathie SSR 3- 'Modern Girl Around the World'

Secondary Source Report 3 on Modern Girl Around the World Research Group

By Blake Rathie

Complete citation:

Barlow, Tani E., & Yue Dong, Madeline, & Poiger, Uta G., & Rammurthy, Priti, & Thomas, Lynn M., & Weinbaum, Alys Eve. (2005). Modern Girl Around the World Research Group:, ‘The Modern Girl around the World: A Research Agenda and Preliminary Findings.’Gender & History, vol. 17 (no. 2), pp. 245-294. ISSN 0953–5233

 

Key Words:

Global, modern girl, modernity, post-war, femininity, cosmopolitan, emancipation.

 

Brief Overview:

In brief, this 50-page group research article analyses the global emergence of the ‘Modern Girl’ in the first half of the 20^th century. From Beijing, Tokyo, Berlin, New York, etc. the Modern Girl made their fashionable appearance. They were identified by their explicit eroticism and labelled a variety of names such as flappers, garconnes, moga, modeng xiaojie, schoolgirls, kallege ladki, vamps and neue Frauen.

 

 

Summary of Key Points:

-Modern Girl disregarded the roles of dutiful daughter, wife, and mother.

-Identified by provocative fashions and pursuit of romantic love.

-Contemporary social scientists argue whether they sought sexual, economic, or political emancipation.

-The Modern Girl was possibly a product of clever advertising campaigns in the rising commodity culture

-Tracing the Modern Girl’s various colonial and national incarnations

 

 

Important Quotations:

“what made the Modern Girl distinctive was her continual incorporation of elements drawn from elsewhere. She occupied the liminal space conjoining the indigenous and the imperial, the national and the international.”

 

“Our research on the Modern Girl sheds light on two general problematics: globalisation and gendered modernity.”

 

“nuanced analysis of how global commodity and cultural flows have shaped modern femininity in divergent contexts.”

 

“our ongoing work examines how the Modern Girl became a global phenomenon through economic structures and cultural flows that stretched far beyond the bounds of any one national regime”

 

Usefulness to Group Topic or Individual Project:

This would be helpful towards my group topic of ‘cultural differences’ and my individual project, as I am writing an individual project on the gendered distinctions between men’s and women’s magazines in the past and present, and research which covers not only the ‘Modern Girl,’ but also examines changing feminity in a post-war world, not purely in a western/American perspective is extremely helpful with the added insight it offers.