ABSTRACT
The following reflections emerged in the context of teaching women’s studies students, who, encountering themselves surrounded by midwestern America, were also experiencing themselves as contested terrain. Here I am attempting, not to argue or to lay out facts, but to engage in some practical rhetoric aimed at an understanding and perhaps a sort of exorcism of what I have called The Girl. The Girl is a paradigm, what used to be called a picture of human nature. But she is now nourished by a very modern kitchen: the heavy investments of corporate capitalism. Surprisingly, The Girl is not gender-specific. In a way, any of us may see ourselves through her. She takes many forms in 1987, only some of which will be named here. But I think we shall recognize her, since being recognized is particularly her forte. Let’s take a look at her.
