ABSTRACT
This chapter understands that authenticity is something which celebrity culture claims to be a real, achievable quality of the self and something which is highly valued, particularly in the construction of young female celebrity. It aims to interrogate and conceptualise what authenticity means and how it is constructed within the discourse of young female celebrity. The phenomenal emergence and expansion of tween popular culture, to which Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus' earlier celebrity persona belong, occurs at a moment in which, at the turn of the new millennium, anxieties around girlhood and in particular sexualisation of girls circulate in popular discourses. The Hannah Montana multimedia world actively drew upon Miley Cyrus' off-screen persona within the narrative in its formulation of the real and authentic, which in the case was located within the family and one's roots – and in particular, the Southern identity and family values, and a Tennessean country music familial heritage.
