CU women students react to 'Girl Culture' exhibition at museum

By Linda Myers

"Lauren Greenfield: Girl Culture," an international photography exhibition on view at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art through May 16, is stirring up strong reactions among students, particularly women students.

Molly Ayzikovich, left, and Jess Brandt, both '04, discuss a photograph in the Johnson Museum's Girl Culture exhibition by Lauren Greenfield. The exhibition runs through May 16. Ayzikovich is a student of Professor Joan Jacobs Brumberg, who made the show a point of discussion in her course on female adolescent development. Nicola Kountoupes/University Photography

The images on display are startling in what they reveal about the power of popular culture to shape girls' identity and sense of self. Shown are overweight girls at weight-loss camp, a troubled adolescent girl being weighed at an eating disorder camp, her face turned away from the scale, 4-year-olds vamping while playing dress-up and college women during spring break running topless through a gauntlet of ogling onlookers. Running themes are our society's obsession with body image, sexual exhibitionism and the resulting unhappy struggle for physical perfection among young women.

"Despite advances in women's rights over the past 50 years, growing up female in the United States is much harder today than it has ever been," says Joan Jacobs Brumberg, professor of history, human development and gender studies and a Weiss presidential fellow at Cornell.

"Girl culture today is driven largely by commercial forces outside the family and local community," Brumberg wrote in the introduction to the book Girl Culture (Chronicle Books, 2002). "Peers seem to supplant parents as a source of authority; anxiety has replaced innocence." The book documents the exhibition and includes revealing commentary by the photographs' subjects.

Brumberg, whose The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls inspired Greenfield's photography series, was instrumental in bringing the exhibition and the photographer to campus. This March, Greenfield spoke to an overflow crowd at the museum that included some students in Brumberg's History of Female Adolescence course. The students also did critiques in which they related themes in the show to course readings and their own experience of being female adolescents.

Molly Ayzikovich, a senior biology and society major in Human Ecology who is enrolled in the class and attended the talk, composed a paper on the exhibition in which she wrote: "The portrait style of most of the photographs forces the viewer to look into the girls' eyes, to feel the deep sadness most of them exude. In a sense, the photographer's representation is exaggerated. She chooses to depict the extremes, the anorexic and the obese, the showgirl and the crazy exhibitionist, but illustrating the ends of the spectrum emphasizes the fact that this range exists." Ayzikovich called the exhibition "perceptive" and noted that "although it doesn't represent all girls, it displays many aspects of girl culture that play a huge role in the modern-day experience of growing up female."

Jessica Brandt, a senior psychology major in Arts and Sciences who also attended Greenfield's talk, is a roommate of Ayzikovich's and revisited the exhibition with her this April. She picked as the most disturbing image a photograph of three newly slim girls at the end of the summer at weight-loss camp. "They look so deflated of energy and joy, so upset and forlorn, when supposedly they've reached the goal," she said.

Brandt and Ayzikovich also spent time discussing a photograph of four girls from the "in" clique at a Midwestern junior high school posing in party dresses and perfectly coiffed hair prior to the season's big party. Both women saw a strong social hierarchy in operation in the photograph, with each of the girls tensely competing for attention and popularity. "The one on the right is eyeing the other girls' attributes, finding out what she needs to imitate," said Ayzikovich. Brandt noted that the girls were elbowing each other out of the way, whereas in one of the weight-loss camp photos taken at the beginning of the summer the grouping of girls reflected a sense of camaraderie.

Has growing up in a culture that rewards women who are thin, beautiful and provocative, rather than strong, intelligent and accomplished, affected their own lives? Brandt described herself as "resilient" but noted, "the pressures are there for anyone who has a TV."

Her favorite photograph in the exhibition, an uncharacteristically upbeat one of a threesome of 12-year-old softball players blowing bubble gum bubbles, reminded her of her own positive, sports-oriented adolescence and her experience as a counselor of young girls at a summer camp in New Hampshire for many years. The exhibition reinforced her commitment to helping her campers grow up to be strong, caring individuals who can stand up to the more harmful values of popular culture. While the photographs may exaggerate what it's like to grow up in today's girl culture, Brandt said, on balance the images reflect how tough it can be for some. "It's really something to live through and come out the other side in one piece," she said.

"These haunting images should leave us feeling but also pondering, the problems and concerns that are transforming girlhood and diluting some of its sweetness," wrote Brumberg. In addition they warn of "what's likely to come in the decades ahead."

More than 200 people have attended talks by artists and scholars related to the exhibition, and more are expected at an upcoming "Girls' Night In!" event.