consumption

Not “berry nice”: Marketing Strawberry Shortcake to Girls in the ’80s

Journal / By

By Natalie Coulter “The girl is “understood” purely in market terms, not as a citizen with collective needs and desires, not a complex heterogenous category with diverse experiences of girlhood based on class, race, ethnicity, sexuality, ability, etc. But instead as a consumer, assumed to be a white, middle class, able bodied, heterosexual girl, whose …

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Selling the ferocious child: Riot Grrrl’s radicalisation of consumption

Journal / By

By Katherine Kruger “The revolution is about going to the playground with your best girlfriends. You are hanging upside down on the bars and all the blood is rushing to your head. It’s a euphoric feeling. The boys can see our underwear and we don’t really care.” Quote: Kathleen Hanna. ‘Bikini Kill: A Color and …

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Junk food, crisps and fizzy drinks: children and distinctions of taste

Exhibition / By

“Small wonder that now everyone eats the same junk food and watches the same junk programmes, in a culture where children’s tastes came so conspicuously to dominate.” Quote: Mary Warnock, The Observer, 20 March 1983. Photograph: Science Museum, 1999-278. In the 1980s, newspapers decided to put what children ate on the table. “The children’s economy …

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“Have they forgotten how to play?” Games, toys and children’s play

Exhibition / By

“Once upon a time, children pored over elaborate toy train sets, fortified camps in remote woods, played kiss-chase, tab and hopscotch in the streets and returned home in a heap to get stuck into Swallows and Amazons. In a single generation that age of innocence seems to have been entirely lost.” Clare Garner, The Independent, …

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Roller skates, playfulness, and boundaries of childhood

Exhibition / By

“We have evolved, it seems, into a generation of Peter Pans, perpetually stuck in adolescence. You see them in Hyde Park: thirty and fortysomethings on rollerblades and skateboards, hanging out in Glastonbury or discussing the merits of Oasis vs Blur at dinner parties” Quote: Dave Green, The Guardian, 25 November 1995. Photograph: Lakeland Motor Museum …

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“Those great social levellers” Children, fashion, and class

Exhibition / By

“Inhabitants of the new childhood look more like mini adults, but that is because new parents like to dress like children. See the family in the park in their brightly coloured jogging suits, anoraks, and those great social levellers, trainers.” Quote: Lesley Garner, Daily Telegraph, 4 November 1986. Image: V&A Museum, T.980:1, 2-1994. A major …

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