Event and Ticketing Details
Dates & Times
Thursday 04 October
12:45 PM - 1:15 PM
Today’s consumer culture persistently uses girls as icons of sexual attractiveness in advertising, film and television. In the nineteenth century, print media did not dare positively associate girls with sex.
What does the dramatic change in the popular representation of young women mean for how girls are seen? And how does it affect how they see themselves?
We now afford girls the same educational opportunities as boys, yet our popular culture increasingly socialises girls to value themselves not only for their beauty but for their sexual desirability. Did girls fare better in the Victorian era?
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Sometimes there’s nothing better than a good rant. Every Thursday, the Wheeler Centre hosts an old-fashioned Speakers’ Corner in the middle of the city, where writers and thinkers can have their say on the topics that won’t let them sleep at night.
Featuring some of our most compelling voices across just about every sector of human endeavour you can imagine, the themes dominating Lunchbox/Soapbox are proudly idiosyncratic. BYO lunch. Ideas provided.
Featuring
Michelle Smith
Dr Michelle Smith is an ARC postdoctoral fellow in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne, where she researches nineteenth-century girls’ literature and culture. She is also a regular media commentator on gender in popular culture, especially in relation to childhood.
Michelle has published articles in the Age on the Lingerie Football League, child beauty pageants, Lego for girls and sexuality in Sesame Street. She has been interviewed on local and national radio, as well as on ABC News Breakfast, on topics from the royal wedding to fairy tales.
Michelle has authored numerous scholarly articles on gender in print culture in the nineteenth century and her book Empire in British Girls’ Literature and Culture: Imperial Girls, 1880–1915 (Palgrave) was published in 2011. She is currently working on a collaborative project that compares girls’ books and magazines from 1840–1940 in Australia, New Zealand and Canada.