ABSTRACT
Previous studies suggest that working-class white high school females elaborate at the level of their own identity, a private/public dichotomy that emphasizes the centrality of the private and marginalizes the public. During adolescence, home/family life assumes a central position for girls, and wage labor a secondary position. As numerous studies conducted in the 1970s and 1980s have shown, working-class girls elaborate what Angela McRobbie calls an “ideology of romance,” constructing a gender identity that serves, ultimately, to encourage women’s second-class status in both the home and the workplace. Studies by Linda Valli (1986) and Angela McRobbie (1978), in particular, have been important in terms of our understanding of the ways in which these processes work upon and through the identity of young women.1
