ABSTRACT
My contribution to this volume is fueled by the experiences and emotions I encountered when I went back to secondary school to conduct doctoral research on the construction and spatiality of young women’s friendship groups (aged fourteen/fifteen) at school. The field research was conducted at a secondary school in the north of England. “Hilltop” is an oversubscribed mixed comprehensive1 school with 1048 pupils enrolled during the academic year 1999-2000. Unlike many schools in the United Kingdom, pupils attend “Hilltop” from all over the city. Therefore “Hilltop,” and my research participants, reflect the socioeconomic and ethnic diversity of a large British city. My research used a number of in-depth qualitative research techniques: multilocational participant observation (classrooms; personal, social, and health education classroom; hang-out areas within and outside school); in-depth friendship group interviews; and selfdirected photography. The thesis argues that even within a relatively progressive educational establishment such as “Hilltop,” young women’s discourses and practices of friendship engender normative performances of masculinity and femininity which fail to challenge the school as a site of
“compulsory heterosexuality” and leave limited room for the expression of “alternative” performances of femininity.
