ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the ways in which one of Disney's most successful transmedia franchises to date employs the rhetoric of performance, stardom, and celebrity in conjunction with luminous aesthetics to attract girl consumer audiences and to represent girlhood. It discusses the relationship between luminosity and McRobbie's notion of a "postfeminist masquerade" of femininity. The chapter analyzes how luminosity operates in Hannah Montana, the Disney Channel series that proved the utility and profitability of network's shift toward greater integration of girls' pop music performance and celebrity within, between, and beyond its series. The shine and sparkle in Disney media simultaneously rely upon and enhance girls' visibility such that luminosity continues to be intricately linked with femininity and youth. Since the 1950s, Disney has produced a host of fairies to join Tinker Bell, as well as several animated princesses to join Cinderella, including Aurora, Ariel, Belle, Jasmine, Pocahontas, Mulan, Tiana, Rapunzel, and the recent additions of Disney/Pixar's Merida, and Disney Channel's Sofia.
