PERFORMING FEMININITIES - LISTENING TO WHITE WORKING-CLASS GIRLS IN RURAL MAINE

In this article I explore the ways in which sixth, seventh, and eighth grade White girls from poor and working-class families in rural Maine understand, express, and react to dominant cultural definitions of fe mininity. Using a qualitative method, The Listening Guide, to interpre t data gathered over the course of a year from weekly videotaped focus group conversations and individual interviews, I identify and undersc ore the contradictory nature of what constitutes appropriately feminin e discourse and behavior for these girls-discourse and behavior that i s radically different from the dominant White middle-class cultural id eal and that offers these girls a wide range of physical and verbal ex pression not usually considered under the rubric of conventional femin inity. I then examine the girls' ambivalent relationship with middle-c lass propriety! as well as their anger their longing, and, in some cas es, their resistance to dominant cultural ideologies of femininity. Al though such resistance may serve them well in their local community it puts them at odds with the expectations of their teachers and other a dults invested in the conventional feminine ideal and thus underscores their displacement in school and society. The Listener's Guide, I con tend, provides a way to elucidate the struggles these working-class gi rls experience as they negotiate and contest contradictory voices and visions of appropriately feminine behavior and constructions of self v ying for their attention and allegiance.