Colliding feminisms: Britney Spears, "tweens," and the politics of reception

Video-games, cartoon violence, and "shoot-em-up" action movies provoke school shootings. Ever-shrinking supermodels and actors encourage eating disorders. Heavy metal music lures boys to Satanism and suicide. Hollywood teaches girls passivity and submission. Or so we learn on the nightly news.Scores of studies that seem to support an influence of media content on audience beliefs and behavior drive our ever-current "blame-the-media" political climate. These high-profile studies, many of them policy oriented, typically conclude that the social wellbeing of a particular group is endangered by the frequent depiction of violence, sex, sexism, racism, consumerism, and even light "PG" violence or sexual innuendo. Concerning body image and the health of women and girls, effects researchers tend to concentrate most intensely on the role that advertising, fashion magazines, and celebrities--actors and supermodels in particular--play in shaping female body perception. Feminist writing, particularly in the 1970s and early 1980s, often argues that images of women in subordinate, passive, or even nontechnologically savvy roles encourage societal adherence to patriarchal notions of femininity. The popular press itself, typically the perpetrator in media crimes, now frequently toes the line. The cover of the February 14, 2000 People Weekly, for example, reads: "Pop princess Britney Spears: Too sexy too soon? Little girls love her, but her image makes some moms nervous." The message is loud and clear: Mom, be nervous; be very, very nervous.