ABSTRACT

This chapter aims to demonstrate how representations of girlhood in Disney Channel series simultaneously reify and disrupt idealizing discourses of white girlhood. It asks how Disney Channel's representations of nonwhite or not-quite-white girlhoods have engaged with or resisted postfeminist constructions of idealized—and luminous—girlhood since the network's shift toward girl-centered, talent-driven original programming in the early 2000s. Projansky finds that US media culture either ignores, marginalizes, or envisions with disdain nonnormative girls—those Harris might call "at-risk" girls —girls of color, queer girls, poor and working-class girls, girls who are large, differently abled, and/or who make "bad" choices. Gendered and classed racial formations in the United States have helped to structure these girl-driven narratives and girls' visibility and spectacularization in popular media culture in general. Raven-Symoné, Miley Cyrus, and Selena Gomez have been viewed as representatives of variously nonwhite or marginally white cultures, both on-screen while working for Disney Channel and off-screen while promoting their careers as performers and celebrities.