TAKING UP A POSITION - DISCOURSES OF FEMININITY AND ADOLESCENCE IN THE CONTEXT OF MAN GIRL RELATIONSHIPS

The relationship between mainstream femininity and resistance to it ha s been theorized in a number of ways. In one approach, mainstream femi ninity is identified as a patriarchal set of public texts that women a ccept, negotiate, or resist in practice. Another view sees mainstream femininity as a dominant cultural practice to which there are resistan t subcultural responses. Taking a poststructuralist view, this article offers an alternative to these models. The focus of the article is th e differing ways in which a set of interviewees validated their partic ipation in a type of relationship that is socially constructed as a de parture from mainstream femininity, namely, a voluntary sexual relatio nship between an adult man and an adolescent girl.