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C H A P T E R 1 I n t r o d u c t i o n Well! What are you? said the Pigeon. I can see you’re trying to invent something! I—I’m a little girl, said Alice, rather doubtfully, as she remembered the number of changes she had gone through, that day. A likely story indeed! said the Pigeon. —Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland T o open this discussion on inventions of girls and girlhood, I invite you to the Blue Room. For in many ways, both my own entry into thinking about the discursive and social practises of femininity and the origins of the About Us, By Us video project that will orient our explorations of these practices can be traced to the Blue Room, otherwise known as the school staff room, and a meeting that took place there. The meeting in the Blue Room was convened to discuss a program funding proposal and the problem that precipitated its submission to the Toronto Board of Education’s Youth Alienation Program. Joining us in the Blue Room are about fifteen other people: the school principal and vice-principle, two or three teachers, a parent who was also involved in the community group W.A.V.E. (Working Against Violence Everywhere), a few other W.A.V.E. members, two school board staff, and a staff member from the community recreation center. My presence at the meeting is due to the securing of only partial project funding from the board, which did not cover the request for hiring a program facilitator. Thus, in exchange for the opportunity to do some research, I volunteered. The school is located in Toronto’s west end and its population reflects the area’s largely immigrant, refugee, and working-class residents. There are approximately five hundred students in grades Junior-Kindergarten through eight, with two hundred in grades five to eight. The ethnic makeup of the community is in constant flux but, at the time the program proposal was written, 40 percent of students had Portuguese backgrounds, 30 percent were Asian and Southeast Asian, 15 percent 1 were Anglo-Saxon, and the reminder were from Latin America, the Caribbean, and Eastern Europe. The proposal we are discussing had been written in April 1991 by the school’s former vice-principal who had, by the time of the meeting, moved on to another school. The teachers present at the meeting had, however, also been involved in the proposal’s development. While it does not lay out a specific plan for a video project, (I would initiate that some time later) the document does identify a number of areas of general concern, clustering around the themes of physical and psychological safety and participation in the school and larger community. The proposal anticipates that a project designed to address these areas of concern will benefit the entire school population, however; girls in grades five through eight are singled out as being in particular need of such a program. As one of the teachers involved explained, the project emerged out of a “concern expressed by teachers originally, who were concerned about the young women in this school population. . . . [W]hen they reached a certain age, they seemed to be silenced by the school environment. Because of the ethnicity of certain kids in the school, there was a parental thing which silenced them as young women as well” (teacher interview, July 1995). For these teachers and the former vice-principal, who were “tremendously committed to the whole area of antiracist work and equity” (teacher interview, June 1995), the proposed programme was seen as a means to build on other school initiatives these individuals had organized under the exigence of the school board. For example, the school’s grade seven and eight students had been among the participants of the board’s citywide antiracist camp and there had also been one or two gender workshops within the school for some of its students. There was also an active student group facilitated by a teacher called M.C.Stars (Multicultural Students Against Racism and Sexism), which planned events for the annual March 21 International Anti-Racism Day, as well as events for holidays such as Chinese New Year. WHAT IS THE “PROBLEM” WITH THESE GIRLS? SCHOOL DISCOURSES OF TEENAGE FEMININITY The proposal is impressive in its stated goals and procedures for achieving them. It addresses empowerment, building a strong and safe school community, and...

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