ABSTRACT
As has been argued so far in this book, the UK media and popular culture tends to depict the UK as a society that is ‘postfeminist’ and situates girls and ‘women’ as liberated and empowered in the wake of decades of gender equality legislation and educational and workplace gains. Chapter 2 explored how girls' success is positioned as there for the taking, an educational discourse about ‘can-do’ girls, where overly successful girls pose a risk to boys and masculinity. Chapter 3 looked at how concerns about femininity were also rife in constructions of overly aggressive at-risk and risky girls, in ways that were cut through with class and race meanings. This chapter explores another contradiction in relation to the ‘successful girl’ thesis; namely, if girls are so successful, that is they have escaped the oppressions of their ‘sexed’ body, why do we have a competing moral panic surrounding girls sexuality and ‘sexualisation’, particularly in the Anglophone, global North?
