Sex, postfeminist popular culture and the pre-teen girl

In recent years, the proliferation of sexual content in popular culture accessed by pre-teen girls has drawn widespread debate and concern. Largely absent from the discussion thus far have been the perspectives of girls themselves. Cognisant of the knowledge gap, in this article we investigate pre-teen girls' accounts of sexual content in a widely used popular culture form: a girls' magazine. Their accounts are viewed through the lens of recent theorization of postfeminist sexuality discourse in popular culture. Our analyses of girls' (11-14) focus group discussions identified the Australasian magazine Girlfriend as a postfeminist sexuality resource about diverse sexual practices, boys and safe sex. Girls variously located themselves within its postfeminist sexuality discourses as sexually sophisticated and knowledgeable and on occasion outside of it as sceptical critics. We suggest that while postfeminist popular culture may open up possibilities to be sexually savvy girls, the 'price' may be intensification of (hetero)sexual self-surveillance and responsibility.