ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses depictions of girls negotiating conflict in girl group music, a style that achieved popularity in the years immediately following the crisis of the Little Rock Nine, and alongside the emerging notion of adolescence as a fixed subject position. The most significant feature of Elizabeth Eckford's horrific experiences is the composure she maintained throughout her ordeal. The girl group genre was at the forefront of popular music during the early 1960s, an unprecedented instance of teenage girls occupying centre stage of mainstream commercial culture. Self-mutilation is often understood as an expression of rage against others directed against the self—the girl who cuts herself experiences rage, but believes that she can only feel anger towards herself, never towards others. Riot Grrrl songs celebrated girlhood and female strength, and angrily criticized violence against girls and women in the forms of incest, rape, and eating disorders brought on by unhealthy ideals of thinness and compliance.
