Beauty, Breasts, and Brains: An Exploration of Using the Adolescent Female Body as a Resistance Site
Term of Award
Fall 2010
Degree Name
Doctor of Education in Curriculum Studies (Ed.D.)
Document Type and Release Option
Dissertation (open access)
Copyright Statement / License for Reuse
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Department
Department of Curriculum, Foundations, and Reading
Committee Chair
Julie G. Maudlin
Committee Member 1
Bob Lake
Committee Member 2
Donald Livingston
Committee Member 3
John Weaver
Abstract
Adolescent girls are continuously barraged with messages regarding what it means to be a girl and the appropriate way in which to do so. Particularly within the South, there are strict boundaries for acceptable forms of femininity both within school and in the broader social context. However, within the walls of the classroom, these lived experiences of girls are often ignored. By ignoring the lived experiences of girls in schools, many girls are being marginalized, trivialized, and dismissed from the school environment. This dissertation examines the hidden curriculum as it applies to adolescent girls in schools today and offers a framework within which I can identify my own experiences as a marginalized female adolescent in the school environment and explores new ways in which educators can include the changing female adolescent body within the school. Through exploring my own autobiographical roots, this work is placed in context of a larger group of adolescent girls within the South struggling with identity development in schools today. Due to the limited access to power and voice girls are granted by their position within the school and society, they often use their bodies as a way to rebel against patriarchal and societal norms. I seek to offer conclusions in the form of a new way to think about curriculum as a bodied text so that curriculum workers, teachers, mothers, and girls themselves may create and find spaces for resistance and new and powerful discourse related to their bodies.
Recommended Citation
Beall, Hanna Andrews, "Beauty, Breasts, and Brains: An Exploration of Using the Adolescent Female Body as a Resistance Site" (2010). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 525.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/etd/525
Research Data and Supplementary Material
No
