Abstract

Abstract:

The tween girl music fan is often constructed as the antithesis of the normative critic; she is imagined to be naive, hysterical, or driven by repressed sexuality. This essay argues that girls employ unique forms of collaborative and embodied criticism, and that their engagement with popular music is one of the primary ways they translate their sensory perception of the world into social and political meaning. Using their aesthetic judgments about the musical voice as one example of this process shows how girls understand the politics of gender through sonic regimes and how music allows them to imagine an intimate public of girlhood.

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