The politics and culture of a girl's bedroom

A girl's bedroom is not just a room to be slept in, but rather a girl's world. 

It is where a girl rots and cries and dances silently. It is where she discovers new hobbies that she is too shy to tell anyone about. It is the place that fosters all of her dreams and aspirations; nowhere else seems to be able to hold such information idly, nowhere else except a girl's bedroom. 

A video from Midnight Ramblers for Dazed Magazine

Everything about a girl's bedroom is political. The way her wall is covered with posters and pictures, tied with red and pink ribbons and other hanging objects that normally would belong in the trash says so much not only about her political stances and the social state, and culture of the time. The posters, although mostly of literary characters, quotes, movie posters, feminist figures, and female artists, need to be discussed so that at other times they are of a male figure. This is what McRobbie and Garber argue for, giving girl's bedrooms a heterosexual orientation, that these are solely to serve as a way for a girl to relieve their sexual desires, "..few opportunities to stare at the boy and to get to know what they look like." (Kearney).

Mia Thermopolis's Room in Juno (2007)

Feminist writer Sue Wise counteracted this heterocentric argument, explaining that the Elvis Presley pictures on her walls are more of a way to shoo her loneliness away. "He was a private, special friend who was always there, no matter what, and I didn't have to share him with anybody" (Kearney). 

The concept of a girl's bedroom as this sacred place is not a new invention. Sociologists Angela McRobbie and Jenny Garber wrote in their essay "Girls and Subcultures" that differing from boy culture spent on the streets, girls settle for the domestic spaces that are their rooms, spending time "experimenting with make-up, listening to records, reading the mags, sizing up the boyfriends, chatting, [and] jiving." (Kearney).

But why did girls stay in their bedrooms for such a long time in history? It was inferred that especially during the Second World War, girls were to stay at home more than their male counterparts and engaged in chores, and marriage (The Bedroom Culture - Tumblr) Furthermore, parents generally discourage their daughters from going outside at night to hang out with friends or parties due to the fear of their safety on the streets (The Bedroom Culture - Tumblr). Therefore the bedrooms have not only become a place they more frequently find themselves in but turn into a protection blanket that shelters them from the danger of the outside world. However, this notion becomes wobbly when social classes, races, and ethnicity are taken into account as "how parents' control of domestic spaces normalizes their uninvited entry into and supervision of their daughter's bedrooms" (Kearney). Kearney also mentioned how McRobbie and Garber's essay does not weigh the possibility of sexual abuse in their own bedrooms, by sensing the problem idea that girls are completely safe and sound in their bedrooms, and are only sexually vulnerable in public areas, which is completely false. Hence, this illustrates how McRobbie and Garber's essay was lost when it came to exploring the culture of the girl's bedroom of the working class as they did not consider the danger of stereotypes in low-income neighborhoods and spaces that are predominately neighborhoods of people of color. Many scholars think of the girl space as a consumerist hole where all girls do is consume media, like a maniac (Kearney ). They only consume and take but never seem to spew back out anything. Through this, many conclude that a girl's bedroom is an unproductive space that does not push cultural production, which according to the Oxford Reference is "The social processes involved in the generation and circulation of cultural forms, practices, values, and shared understandings". So cultural productions materialized in the form of songs, literature, art, etc. Mary Kearney, Film, Television, and Gender Studies at Uni. Of Notre Dame believe otherwise. She believes that it is the lack of attention from the researchers and scholars that they did not pick up the poems on the girl's wall as their own, or the guitar in their room as an instrument to serve their musical interests, which could potentially manifest itself into songs. This lack of attention, according to Kearney, stems from the belief that cultural production is not reserved for the youth, but rather for adults, and if the youth does not produce, their sole role is to consume. 

Lady Bird Room in Lady Bird (2017)

In these confined spaces, girls started to create their own world, with pajama parties and sleepovers acting as social events right in the hub of their bedroom. Records blasting through the walls act as music concerts, where girls even put on an identity cloak, transforming themselves into world star musicians, the hairbrush as a mic, plushies as Grammys, and blanket as red carpet outfits. Girls also found a way to interact with other girls in their bedrooms as well, through magazines, zines, and blogs. This changed when platforms such as MySpace, Facebook, Instagram and most recently TikTok emerged, and girls were able to bring their "underground" society to the virtual communities, harnessing more girls from parts of the globe that otherwise would not been reached. Overall, girls were able to make a new world for themselves, where they are shielded with comfort but are still able to express their rage, anger, and obsessiveness to the whole wide world. 

Sources:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17482790701339126

https://www.academia.edu/1491457/Productive_Spaces_Girls_Bedrooms_as_Sites_of_Cultural_Production

https://www.tumblr.com/thecsmbedroomculture/110892140263/the-bedroom-culture-a-feminism-perspective?redirect_to=%2Fthecsmbedroomculture%2F110892140263%2Fthe-bedroom-culture-a-feminism-perspective&source=blog_view_login_wall

https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095652897