The figure of the girl has long been prized for its mutability, for the assumed instability and (manipu)lability of the not-yet-woman. The plasticity of girlish identity has met its match in the plastic world of digital art and cinema. A richly satisfying interdisciplinary study showing girlish transformation, variability, openness, shareability, and multiplicity to be essential qualities of the digital image, Girlhood and the Plastic Image investigates the promise of youthful adaptability while exposing the girlphilia and girlphobia at the heart of discourses of mediation.
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Endorsements:
“A timely and provocative contribution to both girls studies and media studies. Girlhood and the Plastic Image takes the powerful modern image of the adolescent girl as a new entry point for discussing the relations between gender, identity, and new media. In the process, this book troubles hierarchies at the heart of new media studies and questions some of girls studies’ central identity claims.” --Catherine Driscoll, associate professor of gender & cultural studies, University of Sydney "Heather Warren-Crow eloquently demonstrates that girlhood is central to discourse about digital media. This provocative and original book illuminates the many ways in which our understanding of digital images is shaped by notions of age and gender. Girlhood and the Plastic Image is an important contribution to both girlhood studies and the study of digital media.” --Kristen Hatch, assistant professor of film & media studies, University of California, Irvine |
Review:
"Warren-Crow (Texas Tech Univ.) offers a unique analysis of images of girlhood and the plasticity of digital media. Her critique begins by expanding and explaining Lev Manovich’s five principles of new media, as outlined in his benchmark The Language of New Media (2001). Warren-Crow's focus is on the fourth principle of new media, "variability." The variability of digital images is the principle that contends all new media objects are “not something fixed once and for all, but something that can exist in multiple, potentially infinite versions" (Manovich, Language, p. 36). For Warren-Crow, variability is then analogous to plasticity. Plasticity is briefly defined as the ability to mold, shift, and change form, something most readers will be familiar with from pop culture, and in particular in regard to images of female bodies being morphed and changed in Photoshop for all forms of advertisements, music videos, online profiles, etc. The author’s conflation of plasticity and variability allows her to propose a double articulation of the ways in which female identity and "girlhood" are subject to an intensified form of mutability and instability in the new media age. The book is suggested for anyone interested in merging conversations of feminism, visual culture, and new media studies. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above."
--C. Kane, Brown University, Choice
"Warren-Crow (Texas Tech Univ.) offers a unique analysis of images of girlhood and the plasticity of digital media. Her critique begins by expanding and explaining Lev Manovich’s five principles of new media, as outlined in his benchmark The Language of New Media (2001). Warren-Crow's focus is on the fourth principle of new media, "variability." The variability of digital images is the principle that contends all new media objects are “not something fixed once and for all, but something that can exist in multiple, potentially infinite versions" (Manovich, Language, p. 36). For Warren-Crow, variability is then analogous to plasticity. Plasticity is briefly defined as the ability to mold, shift, and change form, something most readers will be familiar with from pop culture, and in particular in regard to images of female bodies being morphed and changed in Photoshop for all forms of advertisements, music videos, online profiles, etc. The author’s conflation of plasticity and variability allows her to propose a double articulation of the ways in which female identity and "girlhood" are subject to an intensified form of mutability and instability in the new media age. The book is suggested for anyone interested in merging conversations of feminism, visual culture, and new media studies. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above."
--C. Kane, Brown University, Choice