ABSTRACT
Girls’ participation in street culture has been problematized within discourses of “troubled” or “troublesome” girls. Such representations may be linked to or situated within a variety of other discourses and are related to reasons for girls being on the streets as well as their behaviors there. For example, homeless girls may be regarded as “troubled” and “at risk,” in need of welfare intervention and support; but particular homeless girls who resort to illicit means of survival may be criminalized (Alder 1993; Davis, Hatty, and Burke 1995), and thus reconstructed as “troublesome” or “risky.” In both cases, there may be additional or underpinning concerns about them being on the streets because they are girls. “Moral panics” (Cohen 1980) may surround the presence of youth on the streets because in groups, and particular kinds of groups, their appearance or behavior disrupts other dominant public or private interests. Concerning girls, moral panics may be as much about their transgressions of femininity as legal transgressions. Feminist subcultural studies have suggested that the mere presence of girls in street subcultures, including breakdancers, graffitists, and delinquent and “spectacular” groups and gangs, represents the contestation of behavioral norms for girls (McRobbie 1991; Campbell 1987; Carrington 1989, 1993).
