Representations of Girlhood Through Zine Creation

Currently, girls’ media representations within mainstream media sources are dominated by the idea of the girl as a consumer rather than a media producer. This understanding of the girl as a media consumer rather than an active agent in her own representation leads to a limited understanding of contemporary girls and girlhood. Rather than allowing space for girls to have complex identities, mainstream representations of girlhood often only allow for a binary understanding of girlhood identity. I attempt to work outside this discourse by examining how girls can use zining, which I argue should be qualified as an alternative form of life writing, to both challenge and conform to popular notions of girlhood. In this thesis I examine a single zine series as a life-writing text object utilizing three representational strategies to guide my analysis