Supergirl scorned : lessons about young femininity in an Australian television satire

In this paper I explore the popular Australian television character of Ja’mie King – a teenage private school girl created and performed by male comedian Chris Lilley. I conceptualise Lilley’s satire as a public pedagogy of young femininity. My reading of his satire responds to recent feminist scholarship around young femininities and ‘girl power’, which explores representations of young femininity in popular culture in Western nations. Drawing primarily on the 2005 television mockumentary We can be heroes, I explore how King can be read in terms of exaggerated ‘girl power’ subjectivity. I examine the relationships, fashioned through the character of King, between ‘sexuality’ and global citizenship activity. I consider the extent to which King’s character teaches that young women can ‘have it all’. I explore the extent to which her character teaches that they can be ‘beautiful’ and ‘brainy’, ‘self-determined’ and ‘sexy’ at the same time.

Young mothers’ lived experiences prior to becoming pregnant in rural Victoria : a phenomenological study

Objective: To explore the lived experiences and social context prior to becoming pregnant, of women who became mothers during adolescence in rural Victoria.
Design: Qualitative interpretive phenomenological study using semistructured interviews.
Setting: Rural community in North East Victoria, Australia.
Participants: Four rural women who gave birth to a child between the ages of 15 and 19.
Results: Five themes emerged from the data as being essential to the participants’ experiences prior to pregnancy. These included feeling isolated; life change: transition into adulthood; support and understanding in sexual relationships; feeling dissatisfied; and overcoming adversity. Participants’ provided practical recommendations to improve life for young people in rural areas through reflecting on their own experiences.
Conclusion: These findings highlight the complex nature of rural young women’s experiences leading up to pregnancy and suggest that early motherhood might be largely reflective of the social environment in which one lives prior to pregnancy. Providing somewhere safe to go, organised and appropriate social activities and increasing access to health services were identified as being pertinent to improving experiences for rural young people prior to pregnancy. Health professionals should consider the importance of supporting young women through non-judgemental, approachable and accessible services.

'Without fists' : age-mixing and its influence on safety and criminal contamination in women's prisons

Prisons are often considered to be places where violence and intimidation prevail, and where young prisoners are at risk of victimisation from adult prisoners. For this reason, youth in custody are housed separately from adult offenders in most Western jurisdictions. In New Zealand, for a variety of reasons, a separate facility for young women in custody is not provided as it is for young men. Therefore, researchers were able to conduct a study to investigate the experience of age-mixing from the point of view of young women in custody. Dominant notions of what constitutes contamination and who perpetrates violence in the custodial setting have been challenged as a result of analysis of this data. In fact, young women who were age-mixed in custody asserted that age-mixing has the effect of decreasing the degree and impact of the prevailing violent culture.

Calcaneal ultrasound reference ranges for Australian men and women : the Geelong Osteoporosis Study

Summary Heel ultrasound is a more portable modality for assessing fracture risk than dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry and does not use ionising radiation. Fracture risk assessment requires appropriate reference data to enable comparisons. This study reports the first heel ultrasound reference ranges for the Australian population.

Introduction This study aimed to develop calcaneal (heel) ultrasound reference ranges for the Australian adult population using a population-based random sample.

Methods Men and women aged ≥20 years were randomly selected from the Barwon Statistical Division in 2001–2006 and 1993–1997, respectively, using the electoral roll. Broadband ultrasound attenuation (BUA), speed of sound (SOS) and stiffness index (SI) were measured at the heel using a Lunar Achilles Ultrasonometer. Gender-specific means and standard deviations for BUA, SOS and SI were calculated for the entire sample (men 20–93 years, n = 1,104; women 20–92 years, n = 914) and for participants aged 20–29 years (men, n = 157; women, n = 151). Associations between ultrasound measures and age were examined using linear regression.

Results For men, mean ± standard deviation BUA, SOS and SI were 118.7 ± 15.8 dB/MHz, 1,577.0 ± 43.7 m/s and 100.5 ± 20.7, respectively; values for women were consistently lower (111.0 ± 16.4 dB/MHz, P < 0.001; 1,571.0 ± 39.0 m/s, P = 0.001; and 93.7 ± 20.3, P < 0.001, respectively). BUA was higher in young men compared with young women (124.5 ± 14.4 vs 121.0 ± 15.1 dB/MHz), but SOS (1,590.1 ± 43.1 vs 1,592.5 ± 35.0 m/s) and SI (108.0 ± 19.9 vs 106.3 ± 17.7) were not. The relationships between age and each ultrasound measure were linear and negative across the age range in men; associations were also negative in women but non-linear.

Conclusion These data provide reference standards to facilitate the assessment of fracture risk in an Australian population using heel ultrasound.

Monsters: monstrous identities in young adult romance

Monstrous identities in fantasy for young adults often function as metaphors for cultural tensions about romantic and sexual relations between young people, and about how the young interact with the generation that precedes them. This essay considers four monster figures prevalent in Young Adult (YA) fantasy: the vampire, the werewolf, the monstrous mother, and the monstrous father and analyses their manifestation in YA romances by Robin McKinley, Stephenie Meyer, L. K. Smith and Maggie Stiefvater. It considers what these representations tell us about cultural anxieties over the sexuality of young women, and how they are positioned as reading subjects.

Young people, pleasure, and the normalization of pornography: sexual health and well-being in a time of proliferation?

It has been argued that pornography is the most prominent sex educator for young people today (Flood, M. (2010). Young men using pornography. In E. Boyle (Ed.), Everyday Pornography (pp. 164–178). Oxford: Routledge). Research indicates that first exposure to pornography can be as young as 11 years of age. There is evidence that exposure to pornography is shaping young people’s sexual expectations and practices (H€aggstro ̈ m-Nordin et al. 2005). Many young people are learning what sex looks like from what they – or their partner or peers – observe in pornography. Significantly,pornography is normalizing sex acts that most women do not enjoy and may experience as degrading, painful, or violating. This raises serious implications for young people’s capacity to develop a sexuality that incorporates mutual pleasure, respect, and negotiation of free and full consent.While the results are complex and nuanced, research into the effects of pornography consumption provides reliable evidence that exposure to pornography increases aggressive attitudes and behavior towards women for some viewers (Malamuth et al. Annual Review of Sex Research 11, 26–91, 2000). Pornography consumption also has been found to be associated with sexual health risk taking and can impact negatively on body image and sense of self (Dean, L. (2007). Young Men, Pornography and Sexual Health Promotion, MA Research, Brighton University, Brighton, in possession of the author), and as such is a serious health and well-being issue, particularly for young women.This chapter explores preservice teachers’ reactions to pornography education using two examples from teaching of an elective Teaching Sexuality in the Middle Years, in 2011. These examples explore the complex emotions such teaching can generate and the challenges faced by preservice teachers when they are encouraged to confront the gendered and violent consequences of the normalization of pornography in a coeducational setting.

Negotiating motherhood: the struggles of teenage mothers

Aims. This article presents the results of an ethnographic study exploring how teenagers negotiated motherhood. The main aims of the study were to explore how the young women negotiated motherhood and how they constructed their own identities and relationships through teenage parenting.

Background. Approximately 10% of all births occur to teenage mothers worldwide. This phenomenon is of concern because teenage mothers are reported to be disadvantaged financially, educationally, and cognitively in both the short and long term. Many teenage mothers find strength and fulfillment in their motherhood role but this does not come without cost to themselves or their children, as many teenagers are considered unsuitable to be parents and do not have adequate support.

Design. This interpretive study incorporated ethnographic practices and was guided by feminist principles. After ethical approval from the university, data was collected over a 12-month period from five homeless Australian sole-supporting teenage mothers. Methods used included observation, interviews, field notes, journalling, and discussions with key informants.

Findings. The five participants described stories of disrupted lives, unhappiness in childhood, turmoil during adolescence and a need to find love and connection in their lives. Analysis of the data revealed four major themes; transforming lives and opportunities for change, accommodating the challenges, tolerating the abandonment of supports and living publicly examined lives.

Conclusions. It was concluded that becoming a sole-supporting mother during the teenage years was a difficult struggle for the young women, because of their youth, their lack of preparation for motherhood and their reliance on welfare supports. In addition, they experienced negative public attitudes directed towards them wherever they went, and this included their visits to community child health centres. Recommendations are made for nurses to take a different approach when working with teenage mothers to help ameliorate the negative impact of poor parenting.

Adolescent parenthood : a costly mistake or a search for love?

Family life is changing worldwide and an increasing number of women are choosing single parenthood. Adolescents who become pregnant and early childbearers do not always become pregnant unintentionally; some actively plan pregnancy while others are ambivalent mainly about the timing. This paper reports on a study using an ethnographic approach that explored the mothering experiences of five sole-supporting Australian teenage mothers who had a child over six months of age. It focuses on the story of one of them, a young woman who gave birth at 16 and set up home for herself and her son. Early childbearing is often a response to adverse social conditions such as poverty or homelessness and is not uncommonly chosen by teenage girls from socially deprived backgrounds. Educational and employment opportunities may be limited, whilst motherhood may provide a purpose in life when few other options are possible. Young women who make this choice need comprehensive services to support them in the parenting role, including appropriate health care, welfare and housing benefits, and support in dealing with parenting, a role which they may greatly desire but are not automatically well prepared for.

'Aussies' and 'wogs' and the `group in-between': year 10 students' constructions of cross-cultural friendships

This paper reports on an aspect of a small, empirical study that explored how cross-category friendships were constructed among an ethnically diverse cohort of Year 10 students in an Australian school. The students, who self-identified as having friendships across gender and ethnic boundaries, were interviewed in focus groups. Young men and young women, in speaking of their cross-cultural friendships, generally stressed commonalities among rather than differences between groups of friends. Nevertheless, students identified two predominant peer groups and used the terms 'aussie' and 'wog' to name them. Some of the male students appeared to be more keen than many of the females to mark themselves out as belonging to one or the other of these groups. This paper will discuss how these terms are utilised among these students to construct particular identities. On one level, this naming signified differences of choice, with reference to styles of music, clothing, jewellery, hair and entertainment. Is this an attempt to reclaim and rework previously racist descriptors into more egalitarian terms by young people? The meanings and sense that students make of such traditionally racist terms and how their use reflects and challenges wider cultural discourses of difference are discussed. How 'sameness' is constituted around shared experiences rather than common cultural backgrounds is also considered.

Midwifery: a profession in transition

This paper presents the findings of a pilot study carried out in one regional center in Queensland, Australia. The study aimed to develop a snapshot image of teenage mothers. Of the thirty mothers who participated; just over half (16/30; 53%) reported using contraceptives, less than a third (8/30; 27%) used condoms to protect themselves from STDs and the majority (23/30; 77%) said their pregnancy was unplanned. Despite this, 16 (53%) attended prenatal classes, 16 (53%) breast-fed their infants and 27 (90%) were satisfied with motherhood. On average the fathers were almost four years older than the mother were (range 17 to 29 years), most fathers (23/30; 77%) were not teenagers themselves and only 11 (37%) were resident fathers following the birth of the baby. Exploratory analysis suggests that the fathers were significantly older than the teenage mothers were (t=−6.73, df 29, p=0.0001). Although these preliminary results are similar to those reported in the American literature further research is needed to confirm if the findings presented are representative of teenage mothers in Australia. While we await the results of future studies, practitioners are encouraged to continue to educate young women about appropriate and safer sexual practices.

Income differences in food consumption in the 1995 Australian national nutrition survey

Objective: To assess the relationships between an index of per capita income and the intake of a variety of individual foods as well as groups of food for men and women in different age groups. Design: Cross-sectional national survey of free-living men and women. Subjects: A sample of 5053 males and 5701 females aged 18 y and over who completed the Australian National Nutrition Survey 1995. Methods: Information about the frequency of consumption of 88 food items was obtained. On the basis of scores on the Food Frequency Questionnaire, regular and irregular consumers of single foods were identified. The relationships between regularity of consumption of individual foods and per capita income were analysed via contingency tables. Food variety scores were derived by assigning individual foods to conventional food group taxonomies, and then summing up the dichotomised intake scores for individual foods within each food group. Two-way ANOVA (income age group) were performed on the food variety scores for males and females, respectively. Results: Per capita income was extensively related to the reported consumption of individual foods and to total and food group variety indices. Generally, both men and women in low income households had less varied diets than those in higher-income households. However, several traditional foods were consumed less often by young high-income respondents, especially young women. Conclusions: Major income differentials in food variety occur in Australia but they are moderated by age and gender. Younger high-income women, in particular, appear to have rejected a number of traditional foods, possibly on the basis of health beliefs. The findings also suggest that data aggregation has marked effects on income and food consumption relationships.

Challenging notions of gendered game play: teenagers playing `The Sims`

This paper challenges notions of gendered game playing practice implicit in much research into young women's involvement with the computer gaming culture. It draws on a study of Australian teenagers playing The Sims Deluxe as part of an English curriculum unit and insights from feminist media studies to explore relationships between gender and game playing practices. Departing from a reliance on predetermined notions of “gender”, “domestic space”, and “successful game play”, it conceptualizes The Sims as a game in which the boundaries between gender and domestic space are disturbed. It argues that observing students' constructions of gender and domestic space through the act of game play itself provides a more productive insight into the gendered dimensions of game play for educators wishing to work computer games such as The Sims into curriculum development.

Pretty good for a girl: gender, identity and computer games

Young people’s participation in online digital culture is one of the most efficient means by which they become proficient in the management of Information and Communications Technologies and the new literacies emerging there. This paper reports on a small project investigating the
gendered dimensions of teenagers’ engagement in and out of school with stand-alone and multiplayer computer games. The study explored the game playing practices of a group of students in an English curriculum unit and the social and game playing practices of a group of young women of South East Asian backgrounds in a LAN café who had formed their own Counterstrike clan. It found that expertise is not just a matter of specific skills, strategies and familiarity, but is more broadly located within the complex dynamics of in- and out-of-school discourses and contexts that need to be factored in to the construction of gender-equitable pedagogy and curriculum.