Notes on Susan J. Douglas’ “Where the Girls Are”

This book discusses how mass media affected Baby Boomer women, everything from Disney fairytales as children to 60s Beatlemania, 70s television, and 80s advertisement. Douglas explains that she received contradictory, self-flagellating messages on how to view herself and the world in which she lived. She uses examples from a wide variety of public life to explore how women’s interests were often muted or pitted in opposition to one another (Veronica vs Betty and Jackie vs Marilyn), forcing either/or fallacies into personal decisions that, for young men, contained a myriad of options.

Douglas writes in the style of a public intellectual more so than a scholar of cultural studies, eschewing academic terms for pop culture allusions. Yet the work is well sourced and helpful because her personal experience is the starting point, not the ending. Also, the chapter titled “ERA as Catfight” reflects the catch-22 many women of the 70s who adopted feminist thought found themselves in, essentially having to choose between Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinhem. She delves deeper in a later chapter, “I’m Not a Feminist, but…” where the discourse around women’s expectations of the world they live in must be tempered with a dismissal of negative connotations and exaggerated stereotypes that have latched on to the fight for gender equality. Despite its 1994 publish date, the content is still relevant and the concepts could likely be found in the (social) media messages of today.