Artykuły w czasopismach na temat „Friendship dolls”

Abstract This study of the Friendship Doll Mission of 1926-1927 shows how, in the United States, the Japanese doll was part of the inescapable image of a kimono-clad little Japanese girl, and functioned to further existing anti-Japanese implications of that image. It further shows how an American popular-culture mission to improve relations with Japan by having American children exchange dolls with Japanese children, created an official, Japanese government response that presented the United States with Japanese dolls that were objects of Fine Art. Despite the different views of the Doll Mission in Japan and the US, an interchange resulted that, now nearly a century later, continues. The article uses Japanese dolls to demonstrate how genuine cultural exchange can occur even when the methods, approaches, and the very intent of those involved in it differ, in order to highlight the importance of considering both perspectives to understand phenomena such as Japonisme.

Previous research indicates that imagining contact with someone who is an immigrant can reduce prejudice and promote positive friendship intentions. Much less is known about the optimal ways of effecting imagined contact. The reported research used an experimental design, where the status of a target-child toy puppet (immigrant versus refugee versus control) and the type of imagined contact (2D or 3D figures) was changed. Children aged 4–10 years, were tested for their responses towards immigrants and refugees, before and after a three-minute interactive play session with 2D or 3D toy puppet figures. Children were asked to show in the session how they would ‘have a really good time’ with the target-child toy puppet. Measures of children’s direct contact with immigrants were also taken. The results suggest that 3D figures have a similar positive impact as 2-D figures on friendship intentions following imagined play. It was in the 2D experimental conditions only that children’s friendship intentions were more positive with greater anxiety reduction.

Muchos han sido los momentos de encuentro entre Japón y España, así como los objetos testigo de estas relaciones que este 2018 cumplen 150 años. Entre tales objetos, se encuentran las muñecas tradicionales niponas que fueron exportadas a España ya desde los períodos Meiji (1868-1912) y Taishō (1912-1926) y que hoy forman parte de los fondos de distintas colecciones públicas y privadas de nuestro país. Dejando aparte su coleccionismo, es objetivo de este articulo esbozar la historia de la presencia de estas de piezas en nuestro país a través de las noticias que nos brindan las revista ilustradas y la prensa española a lo largo estos 150 años de relaciones, tratando aspectos como intercambios, notas de prensa acerca de la historia y procedencia de estas piezas y textos que aluden a exposiciones; ya que las fuentes mencionadas nos informan de que las muñecas niponas han sido recurrentes en muestras desde mediados del siglo XIX hasta la actualidad, así como objeto de interés y estudio por parte de artículos y reportajes. Por otro lado, y en relación con esta presencia, incluimos también algunos intercambios, la mayoría de ellos pertenecientes a una vertiente diplomática, aunque citaremos otros ejemplos anecdóticos e igualmente interesantes. Como piedra angular, definimos el caso de las Friendship Dolls y el intercambio que tuvo lugar entre Japón y Estados Unidos para hablar de casos mucho más cercanos que van desde la boda del príncipe Chichibu hasta el hermanamiento de Pamplona con Yamaguchi, todo ello con estas piezas presentes.

From ancient times until the nineteenth century, loyalty, trust, understanding, forbearance, and empathy were only some of the merits one expected to find as the foundation of true friendship in Western culture. For instance, Aristotle insists that friendship must be “reciprocal” and “must involve a wish for the good of the loved one as an end in itself”. Any friendship based on personal gains, whether tangible or not, would have been dismissed as false friendship. The transition from the relatively simple life of Aristotle’s time and the following centuries to the complex modern age has produced a dramatic change in the Western culture, a change that evidently encompassed the concept of friendship. Whereas the Industrial Revolution initiated a gradual change, shifting the world’s economy from an agricultural to an industrial one, the transition from friendships of ‘excellence’ to friendships of ‘utility’ and ‘pleasure’ was rather more accelerated, in the sense that what was viewed as superficial relationships became, over a short period of time, dominant in modern Western culture and recognized as manifestations of friendship. This study explores this cultural change as depicted in two modern dramas— The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov and A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen.

In 1986, the Harvard Educational Review published Vivian Gussin Paley's article "On Listening to What the Children Say," which detailed the beginnings of her career as a teacher and author. The article described Paley's methods of tape-recording and analyzing her students' daily engagement in the "the three Fs: fantasy, fairness, and friendship." Her careful analysis provided insight into how children understand the world through storytelling and imaginative play. Now, more than twenty years later, Paley's new essay, "Goldilocks and Her Sister: An Anecdotal Guide to the Doll Corner," revisits similar themes while reaching beyond the classroom into more public and private spaces (the post office or a living room) to show how children's imaginative play strengthens relationships and creates opportunities for social and cognitive development. We have included both essays in this issue in order to highlight the ways in which children, regardless of context, can be engaged in the world of imagination as a form of both pedagogy and play. These companion articles extend our understanding of children's storytelling, imaginative play, and intimacy as means of promoting learning both inside and outside of classroom settings.

AimsTo compare the neurodevelopmental profiles of Albanian street children to those predicted by the Coventry grid.BackgroundA street children's centre had requested help to meet children's emotional needs. No program exists for children experiencing ongoing complex trauma. With input from widely-experienced consultant psychiatrist and consultant psychologist, a very low-intensity program of coping skills was piloted. Extensive anonymised notes were taken as part of the piloting.The Coventry grid is a clinical tool comparing patterns of difficulties typically seen in autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) versus attachment difficulties. It's based on clinical experience and invites ongoing feedback.Method12 Children aged 5–12 years completed the two-week program. The notes were examined for their relevance to areas of the Coventry Grid.ResultThe children showed both traits typical of ASD and of attachment problems. Identifying emotions was impossible for the youngest group (5–7 years); while the older groups could say whether someone was likely to feel “good” or “bad” but struggled to differentiate further.Fantasy and symbolic play were hard for the younger children. If asked to imagine a situation, they replied “but that's not happening”. One child constantly hugged a stuffed doll, but couldn't use it for play. Both younger groups found it hard to imagine a safe-place, though they could say what they wanted in it (chocolate and a working lightbulb). The oldest group all chose a real place related to the centre.Generalising was difficult for all the children. The older children could say whether a story character was a good friend, but not apply this to real life. The youngest children were told a story about a dangerous stranger. Afterwards, the children said they would still go away with strangers as only the man in the story had said he wanted to harm children.The younger children were diffusely attached, but the boys’ eye contact, gesturing, and language were normal in all age groups. All children formed friendships easily, played in a group and were intensely loyal to siblings. They didn't show restricted interests, distress at changes to routine or sensory difficulties. They showed good awareness of the widely divergent social rules at the centre and at home.ConclusionThe children showed a mix of traits usually associated with attachment difficulties and those usually associated with ASD. They may be different from UK clinic samples as they continued to experience severe trauma.

Play offers children the opportunity to try out new ways of relating to the physical and social world. Through a range of encounters they can develop their imagination and skills, without incurring the material consequences of similar activities enacted ‘for real’. It is an essential and often joyful part of child development, and glum is the adult who does not retain some playfulness. It is a laboratory where children can develop different strategies to cope with the practical tasks of daily living and integrate themselves into a social network. Aberrant patterns of play may indicate a variety of difficulties and disorders in development, and may often provide important clues as to the problem. For example, a gross lack of imagination and rigid stereotyped play are found in children with autism; violent play with underdeveloped elaboration of emotional states is characteristic of children with conduct problems; repeated re-enactment of a single disturbing scene may be seen in children with post-traumatic stress disorder; and a disturbed pattern of emotional relationships is often exhibited in the doll play of children with attachment problems. As well as providing clues to the nature of a child's difficulties, play often offers an opportunity to engage with the child, and can provide a main avenue for therapeutic work, particularly with younger children who are not adept at talking about emotions and relationships.In this and subsequent issues, we shall be publishing a number of commissioned reviews exploring children's play from a number of perspectives. Anthony Pellegrini and Peter Smith start us off with a review of the development of play and its forms and functions. As well as covering the structure of play including fantasy and pretend elements, the authors go on to consider its benefits for the child, and include a rather novel approach of attempting a cost-benefit analysis. Then Peter Blatchford reviews the state of play in schools. Here the importance of a time for the child to develop peer relationships and friendships away from the watchful gaze of adults is stressed, not only from a theoretical viewpoint, but from the practical standpoint of how much supervision should be given in the playground. In future numbers of the Review, we will publish an anthropological perspective by Allison James, a child psychotherapist's view by Anne Alvarez and Asha Phillips, and a review of the importance of drama in play and therapy by Peter Slade. At all times we would welcome your reactions, agreements, and disagreements, plus comments on what you think has been left out. Please do write to the Review office.

Laughter in the midst of tragedy can be one of life’s most disturbing, cathartic and enlightening experiences, a maxim experienced in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, one of the most painful periods of Irish history. Northern Irish playwrights were acutely aware of this when dealing with violence in their plays and so, however grim the events they depicted, the comic element was very much present. After the Good Friday Agreement, along with the change in the political situation in Northern Ireland, there was a generational change in the theatre. What seems to characterise this new wave is the ironic distance taken towards the sectarian divide and the consequences of the conflict on Northern Irish society, which is revealed above all in their use of humour. Lisa McGee, one of the most important representatives of the new generation thanks to the popularity of her television series Derry Girls, had already shown her maturity in her 2006 play Girls and Dolls, performed by Tinderbox the same year. McGee mixes the tragic and the comic to present the terrible consequences of childhood trauma alongside the violence of the late Troubles, while raising questions about guilt, the meaning of friendship and the subtle ways in which violence affects us. This article aims to analyse the different uses of humour employed by McGee to deal with tragic episodes and their theatrical effect, drawing on the existing research on humour in literature and McGee’s own observations given in an interview with the author on 3 March 2023.

Introduction Toys and games are important elements of child growth and development. When children play, they have fun. They also learn to perform and contest ideas making up their culture. The potential professional affiliations and skills offer an illustration of the roles that children learn about in the early years of their lives. Therefore, toys may serve as a site to research professional aspirations. In light of this, a question emerges: what do toys teach about professions and professionalism? As a feminist communication researcher, I study toys primarily intended for girls – the dolls in the American Girl collection. Even though the doll sets demand an excessively high price, this brand has a cultural significance for the girls and women growing up in the United States because of the historical and contemporary connections found in deeply researched stories and intricately designed accessories (Solly). The American Girl brand started in 1986. Mattel, the American toy conglomerate, has owned the American Girl brand since 1998 and describes the brand as helping "generations of girls find courage, build confidence, and spread kindness" ("American Girl"). The original American Girl dolls represented historical figures: for example, Melody Ellison from the era of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and Kit Kittredge from the time of the Great Depression in 1934. In addition to historical personalities, the American Girl depicts contemporary girls, including the Girl of the Year line introduced annually. These dolls portray modern girls who have special talents or hobbies and who navigate their lives and experience adventures through the prism of their talents. For example, Joss Kendrick’s passion is surfing, Gabriela McBride loves dancing and poetry, and Grace Thomas is interested in baking. As a rule, the talents of the Girls of the Year align with professional work and can inspire future generations to choose specific professions or develop professional qualities. To narrow the subject, this essay examines the professional aspirations presented in the stories and media associated with the American Girl doll, Luciana Vega, released in 2018. Luciana is an aspiring 10-year-old astronaut and scientist who dreams to be the first person to walk on Mars. Luciana is unique because she is the first doll among contemporary characters to exclusively engage in science, technology, engineering, and math, or STEM (Strickland). This doll marks an attempt to address the high barrier for women and underrepresented groups to enter and remain in science, technology, engineering, and math fields. The former NASA chief scientist Ellen Stofan reflects on the importance of Luciana, saying that "a lot of girls are sometimes intimidated by STEM careers" and that characters like Luciana can let "girls of color around the world know they can be astronauts" (Strickland). Therefore, Luciana Vega contributes to the discourse about professions for contemporary girls and women. The focus on professional aspirations represented in toys stems from the research about professionalism, which implies a set of assumptions that are taken for granted yet ambiguous, conflicted – and rarely questioned (Cheney and Ashcraft). The criticism of neoliberalism from the feminist perspective helps examine professionalism critically. Neoliberal feminism celebrates the achievements of individual women in the format of corporate and personal enterprises at the expense of confirming privileges based on race, class, and sexuality (Rottenberg). The essay argues that the lessons about professions and professionalism offered by the American Girl focus on establishing only a symbolic association with professional engagement. The emphasis on personal development through teamwork, leadership, and creativity promotes gendered professional capital that has limited resources to address potential imposter phenomenon and workplace harassment. Dolls and Professional Aspirations Scholars who study toys and playthings associate them with opportunities to display and obtain social rules and cultural values. Gender, race, and class norms are part of cultural production in toys (Foss; Rosner, Playing). As a product of culture, toys and texts associated with them represent professional futures and offer lessons about organisational life, professional identities, and work relations. Kuhn and Wolter report that young people tend to follow gender stereotypes in professional planning even in progressive locations, yet this connection between professional aspirations, career choices, and existing expectations is rather weak, suggesting that parental influence, regional or local specificities, educational programming, and other social factors, such as toys and games, may impact individual choices. The American Girl brand promotes an active lifestyle, teaching children to understand who they are and to bring positive changes to their communities. The company does not explicitly mention preparation for careers and professional education. The company emphasises holistic development for girls, where professionalism and career aspirations may serve as implied targets. Barbour, Rolison, and Jensen argue that “individuals construct professional selves that originate in the early socialisation phases of professional training and are further developed as they are immersed in the rules, language, skills, and work of the profession” (137). As such, playing with dolls and engaging with the issues suggested by the toy brand may have an impact on future generations as they explore potential professions and careers and learn what it means to be a professional. The academic research about the American Girl has not discussed professionalism yet. Scholars focus on exploring historic representations to argue that the company romanticises nostalgia to foster consumerism (Rosner, “The American Girl”) or presents a simplified and whitewashed version of history (Marcus; Valdivia). Marshall argues that the American Girl version of girlhood “reflects a gendered pedagogy of consumption rather than any lessons about empowerment or US history” (95). Scholars nevertheless have already noted the affiliations of the American Girl doll characters with neoliberalism. Neoliberalism refers to an approach to political economy that favours free market, economic growth, and capital accumulation. In feminist research, neoliberalism can be understood as “a sensibility or set of themes that privilege market-friendly notions of individualism, responsibility, and capitalization” (Thornton 273). The American Girl brand strives to empower girls, yet the empowerment offered by the brand is wrapped in a neoliberal frame of thinking, calling for girl power, self-determination, and femininity without changing the system that supports gender and other forms of discrimination and inequality (Rybas and Rybas; Zaslow). The criticism of neoliberal feminism provides a framework to examine professional belonging projected for future iterations of work, professions, and talents. Reading Professions in the American Girl Texts If Luciana Vega’s character offers lessons about professions and professionalism for the fans who play with the doll and engage with her story, it is important to explore these texts. The texts associated with the American Girl brand range from books that have traditionally defined the brand to mobile apps, short videos, feature or animated movies, and social media snippets that have appeared in recent years. The books create narratives about the characters, while multimedia texts offer alternative formats for the narratives as well as promote activities and engagements inspired by the characters. These texts offer rich data to examine the implications of the character for professionalism and being a professional. Further analysis draws from the content created for the 2018 Doll of the Year: the book Luciana by Erin Teagan and videos on the official American Girl YouTube channel and collected into a playlist. Material objects and discursive constructions of practices associated with work produce professional identification and belonging. Being a professional relies on demonstrating special skills and knowledge in work contexts and maintaining professional identities (Caza and Creary; Caza, Vough, and Puranik). As with other professionals, the character experiences contradictions and dilemmas embedded in the tasks (Ahuja). She evokes professional skills and grows her professional potential through the problems and struggles that she deals with. Based on how the character and spokespersons address situations associated with work and how they communicate about their experiences, the analysis identifies lessons about professions and professionalism. Lessons about Professions and Professionalism First, the discussion of lessons about professionalism focusses on the material markers of being a scientist. How do the professionally defined objects, places, and activities signify Luciana’s belonging to the STEM sphere? At the Space Camp, the kids wear space and science clothes, and Luciana receives an official Space Camp flight suit upon check-in. The camp participants move from their habitats, with bunk beds for six campers, to the habitat common area, with screens streaming news from the international space station, and to the mission floor, with spacecrafts, greenhouses, and training equipment. Luciana finds her sense of belonging to the Space Camp through items signifying connections to space explorations. She wears a dress of “the colors of the nighttime sky—blue, red, purple, orange” (Teagan 4) and the star-shaped necklace. She also packs her “favorite pajamas from the planetarium” (Teagan 11) and “a pillow with the solar-system pillowcase” (Teagan 2). The items make her feel comfortable upon her arrival at the camp. The STEM-style objects can stimulate desires to purchase the toys and outfits, such as the lunar habitat, space suit, galaxy-patterned dress for the doll, or science kit, available from the American Girl brand. In addition to the merchandise and branded items, the projects completed by the camp participants are indicative of their professional belonging: The campers perform soil experiments and design robots. The narrative refers to specialised terms (types of rocks and rockets), equipment (goggles, beakers), and scientific routines (wearing safety goggles, labelling samples) to create a world focussed on science. These details show Luciana’s familiarity with the camp space and speak to her abilities needed to complete the activities. The videos posted on YouTube provide additional illustration to the narrative. The spokespersons in the promotional videos as well as guests and hosts in the TV studio during the reveal wear blue overalls and walk through the NASA Centre (“A Day in the Life of Luciana”; “Meet American Girl’s 2018”). These descriptions and demonstrations create excitement about space exploration and make the STEM fields seem attractive and available. However, the price tag of almost $1,500 in 2023 (“Space Camp”) for camp participation keeps the dream of flying to Mars a distant reality for families. The financial barrier, obviously, does not appear in the texts promoted by the American Doll brand. Such silence indicates that each family needs to decide for themselves to what extent they can participate in the world of STEM, and such considerations reinforce class-based stratifications. Further, the discussion focusses on the ways of thinking associated with professionalism. Adams argues that professionalism offers epistemologies that define "what is sayable, what is knowable, what is included, and what is excluded" (332). In other words, professionalism implies a system knowledge necessary for success in the neoliberal economy (Adams; Cheney and Ashcraft). What skills and epistemologies emerge in the texts associated with Luciana Vega? The set-up of Luciana’s story establishes her responsibility for the success. She participates in a week-long space camp without her parents and friends. Even though she has an opportunity to develop her interests and meet new friends, the narrative suggests that Luciana must push back her longing for her family and her worries about the adoption of her new sister to emphasise the camp projects and her dream to be an astronaut. The discourse about work and life balance is significant for the neoliberal feminist analysis because those who are successful can do it all (Rottberg; Thornton). Luciana takes responsibility for adapting to the camp environment and controlling her own development. Luciana’s competitive record illustrates her drive. She obtains an acceptance to join the camp after two rejections, and this achievement communicates her resilience and perseverance necessary for a neoliberal subject (Rottberg). Teamwork, leadership, and creativity are core skills expected from workers in the contemporary economy. Creativity defines neoliberal femininity as it aligns with passion, energy, and stamina (Rottberg; Thornton). Creativity is Luciana’s quality. Alex, one of the trainers, confirms her reputation by saying, "we need creative future astronauts just like you" (Teagan 6). Luciana’s ideas, however, may cause mistakes, as it happens during the building of a rover because she ignores the expectations about the rover’s weight. As the narrative develops, the team needs Luciana’s ideas, especially in designing a robot from junk parts, and the team acknowledges Luciana’s contributions. They note that Luciana has pretty good ideas and that making mistakes is normal. Ella, one of the teammates, concludes that "it’s the person who thinks a little differently from the rest who has the greatest chance of making a difference in this world" (Teagan 133). Even though Luciana’s creativity leads to various results, it is essential for her success as a professional. In addition to creativity, Luciana develops her teamwork and leadership skills. These qualities are required for the success of the camp mission and future professional endeavours. Alex, the camp trainer, says that "for an astronaut team is everything" (Teagan 118). To compete in the robotics challenge, Luciana becomes the captain of one of the teams, and she encourages her team to work in a cohesive and productive manner. The team chooses the name Red Rover by brainstorming and voting, yet the team fails to collaborate in the rover-building challenge because Luciana does not rely on the knowledge of her teammates. Red Rovers get disqualified from the competition, but Luciana leads her team in continuing their experiment, building a successful robot, and even helping the team whose project the girls have damaged. As a result, the team members develop a strong friendship bond and receive an award for building a unique robot. Luciana’s leadership is meaningful for professional aspirations in the neoliberal style because it juxtaposes her character against the other participants of the camp, which promotes the emphasis on taking responsibility for mistakes. Creativity, teamwork, and leadership permeate the simple activities inspired by the 2018 Doll of the Year: making star-shaped cookies, creating a purple hair streak, and organising a space-themed party (AG Life). The short episodes follow the style of videoblogs or reality TV shows created by and for teens and tweens. The five hosts are girls of Luciana’s age who perform activities and share knowledge in an easy-going manner imitating a conversation. Faber and Coulter critique girls’ digital production as an embodiment of neoliberal ideologies built on playful authenticity and the affective glamourisation of entrepreneurial logics. Making star-shaped cookies, creating a purple hair streak, and organising a space-themed party represent science and space exploration only by association, similar to the pyjamas from the planetarium or the star-shaped necklace. Together with the claims for expertise in the STEM sphere and the emerging skills required for success in professional spheres, Luciana experiences difficulties, such as the imposter phenomenon and work harassment. Imposters exhibit doubt in their achievements, think of their success as fraud, and diminish their success (Parkman). In the story, Luciana completes a difficult docking manoeuvre with her team successfully, yet she concludes that the task has been “barely” (Teagan 151) completed. She compares herself to other kids: “my belly was starting to turn. I hadn’t expected there to be so many genius kids here. Did they all want to be astronauts like I did?” (Teagan 29). Luciana doubts her leadership abilities and questions her creativity, suggesting that her existing skills are not enough. In one of the episodes, she almost gives up her captain role, hinting at a potential burn-out situation. She particularly struggles to build connections with Ella, one of her team members, yet she develops a relationship with her after a few trials. These experiences illustrate the challenging process of finding self and connecting with others in a professional context. The creators of Luciana Vega attempt to send a positive message to future experts in the field by welcoming diverse individuals. Luciana states that “astronauts come with hair in all shades and sizes and colors” (Teagan 32). However, the positive message is muffled because it serves as a reaction to a comment by another camp participant, James, who shares that he never saw astronauts with purple hair. The focus on the signature purple hair streak as a sign of diversity exemplifies a simplistic approach to intersectionality and diversity, a common criticism of the American Girl dolls (Marcus; Valdivia; Zaslow). In addition, the exchange about the purple streak in the girl’s hair highlights gender dynamics in the contemporary workplace, pointing at the possibility of workplace harassment. James adds that “it’s the like mom law” (Teagan 32), thus offending Luciana. In organisational contexts, harassers make offensive jokes and engage in insults, making the workplace environment hostile (Griffin), and Luciana encounters this experience. James clashes with Luciana and her team members throughout the narrative. What is important here is not only the professional rivalry that emerges in the narrative and is normalised in competitions, but the reactions that Luciana practices. She ignores the hurtful comments made by James during the spacewalk simulation exercise, yet she shares her resources to help him complete the task. Luciana’s team supports James’s team in the robot design task and transfers sponsorship to the boys’ team. Even though the story line introduces diversity to the workforce, it falls short of addressing instances of potential workplace harassment with force. Luciana seems not yet equipped to address the hostility exhibited by the fellow camp participant. She prioritises teamwork and camp mission at the expense of her own well-being. These emphases contributing to the gendered professional capital (Rottberg) essential for neoliberal progress. Conclusion The lessons about professions and professionalism offered by the American Girl are complex, if not contradictory. The presence of Luciana Vega in the competitively selected camp is promising, yet the STEM field remains difficult to access. The character experiences the imposter phenomenon even if she has extensive knowledge of science. Science-themed clothes, books, and accessories as well as science-inspired activities may promote an interest in the field. Teamwork, leadership, and creativity establish markers of professionalism and provide resources for cultivating professional epistemology. The current generation of girls and the future generations of women receive exposure to difficulties in developing leadership and teamwork skills and potential work harassment but may learn to address them through self-improvement or individual development. These lessons emphasise empowerment in the neoliberal frame of reference typical of the American Girl dolls. References “A Day in the Life of Luciana at Space Camp | Luciana Vega: Girl of the Year 2018.” American Girl. 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Greta Gerwig’s 2023 film Barbie presents Barbieland as a matriarchal society, and arguably as an asexual utopia where the various iterations of Barbie, Ken, and other Mattel dolls live in harmony. The movie critiques the system of compulsory sexuality that pushes a rejected Ken into his takeover of Barbieland. Further complicating this asexual reading of the Barbie is the history of the Mattel dolls as unsexed, a criticism that has been laid at the feet of many asexual individuals whose lack of sexual desire often renders them as inhuman. While the blossoming field of asexuality studies has sought to counter the misconception of asexual people as somehow unsexed and inhuman, robust depictions of asexuality are still rare onscreen. While Barbie never explicitly claims an asexual identity, she also never shows any sexual desire, not even for Ken. I propose that an asexual critical lens, a practice of reading texts for traces of asexuality, can be used to read Barbie and to critique our society’s preoccupation with compulsory sexuality. But first, what is asexuality? Julia Sondra Decker defines asexuality as “the experience of not being sexually attracted to others … [and] not valuing sex or sexual attraction enough to pursue it” (3). To further broaden and complicate the definition of asexuality, CJ DeLuzio Chasin, for instance, suggests that for some, asexuality is seen “as primarily being about a disidentification with sexuality (that is, a strong sense of being not sexual or nonsexual as opposed to being sexual)”, while for others, “asexuality is primarily about a positive identification … that is, a strong sense of being asexual/ace as opposed to non-asexual” (407). These additional conceptualisations revolve around either distancing oneself from sexuality or embracing asexuality as an identity, or even a combination of both. The variety of definitions of asexuality are arguably an integral part of its complexity. Defining asexuality has been a primary concern for asexual activists, many of whom point to the creation of the Asexuality Visibility and Education Network (AVEN) as the beginning of the understanding of asexuality as a contemporary identity category that falls under the queer umbrella. Research into asexuality is relatively new, with the bulk of scholarship occurring within the past fifteen years. During this time, asexuality studies has emerged as a thriving academic field of study, largely informed by feminist and queer theory. In the introduction of their edited volume Asexualities: Feminist and Queer Perspectives, Karli June Cerankowski and Megan Milks explicitly describe asexuality as queer, stating that it explores “new possibilities in intimacy, desire, and kinship structures” (3). Even further than exploring alternative possibilities outside of normative sexual structures, asexuality scholars also go so far as to interrogate the assumption that all people experience sexual attraction. While this assumption of sexual desire has been described by multiple asexuality scholars, the best-known and most-cited definition comes from Kristina Gupta, who uses the term “compulsory sexuality”, drawing from Adrienne Rich’s concept of compulsory heterosexuality, which describes the process in which heterosexuality is constructed as a political institution that disempowers women (632). Gupta defines compulsory sexuality as “the social norms and practices that both marginalize various forms of non-sexuality, such as a lack of sexual desire or behaviour, and compel people to experience themselves as desiring subjects, take up sexual identities, and engage in sexual activity” (132). In other words, compulsory sexuality hinges on the assumption that everyone experiences some form of sexual desire, so therefore participation in this system of compulsory sexuality is mandatory. Because of this, asexuality is often considered an invisible orientation, with representations of asexuality being rather scarce and the voices of asexual individuals, up until very recently, going largely unheard. As Sherronda K. Brown states, “asexuality … would be more recognizable if it were not so strongly regarded as an impossible or wrong way to exist” (37). The evidence of compulsory sexuality is pervasive, as seen in market-driven media advertising using sex to sell commodities and in pop culture depictions of romance and sexuality that render asexuality as virtually non-existent. Gupta cites recent scholarship on the role of sexuality in contemporary capitalism, stating “the capitalist marketplace attempts to incite sexual desires in order to sell products that promise to fulfill those desires” (138). Sexual desire here becomes something that can be manufactured and sold, through products such as the overtly sexualised Barbie doll, for instance. Another aspect of compulsory sexuality is the proliferation of sexuality not just in advertising, but also in popular culture. The vast majority of film, literature, music, theatre, etc. are love stories, with sex playing a major role. There are very few representations of overt asexuality in contemporary popular culture, though this has expanded in more recent years. Ela Przybylo and Danielle Cooper created a methodology to include asexual representation and interpretation through what they call “asexual resonances” where asexuality may be hidden, invisible, ignored, or not overtly identified. Instead of trying to find a clear or “correct” example of asexual representation, Przybylo and Cooper allow for a “queer broadening of what can ‘count’ as asexuality” (298). In other words, Przybylo and Cooper provide a potential for an asexual interpretative lens to read for asexuality in pop culture where it may not be overtly named as an identity. Similar to this asexual interpretive lens is that of Stacy Wolf, who in A Problem like Maria: Gender and Sexuality in the American Musical attempts to interpret straight characters in American musicals as lesbians (4). In other words, Wolf asks: what if these characters could be read as lesbian? This same what if could be used to ask how we could read characters as asexual. So, where Stacy Wolf uses “lesbian”, I wish to use the same methodology for reading characters as “asexual”. It is with this lens that I seek to read Barbie as asexual, or at least containing strong asexual resonances. In using an asexual lens, we can read Barbie as an asexual icon, but we can also view how the Barbie movie critiques the system of compulsory sexuality and sets up Barbieland as an asexual utopia. Several critics have already read Barbie as an example of asexual representation, with numerous social media posts, podcasts, and YouTube videos breaking down their asexual interpretations. Articles from 2023, such as Kelly Pau’s Salon article “Barbie Has Become an Asexual Icon and We Should All Learn from Her” and Scarlett Harris’s “Barbie Might Just Be Asexual – and the Movie Proves It” are just two examples of how Barbie has been recognised by people in the asexual community. For instance, in a Vogue interview from before the film’s premiere, Barbie actress Margot Robbie herself seems to make the case for an asexual interpretation of Barbie. She is quoted as saying “okay, she’s a doll. She doesn’t have organs. If she doesn’t have organs, she doesn’t have reproductive organs. If she doesn’t have reproductive organs, would she even feel sexual desire? No, I don’t think she could”. Because she is a doll, as Robbie notes, she cannot feel sexual desire. Barbie, first of all, is a fantasy, with Mary F. Rogers stating in her book Barbie Culture that “her femininity is fantastic” (14). She is an overly idealised feminine doll; nothing more than a fantasy. Robbie, in the same Vogue interview, further states, “she is sexualized. But she should never be sexy. People can project sex onto her”. In other words, Barbie can be anything. We are the ones who project sex and sexiness onto her, but the doll itself (or herself) is not automatically sexy. Viewed in this way, an asexual existence is the default, or the norm for Barbie. Compulsory sexuality is thus unknown in Barbieland. Gerwig’s film begins with Barbie as a monolith, this figure of fantastic femininity and womanhood, that allows little girls to put down their baby dolls and tacitly refuse motherhood, and thus compulsory sexuality. Soon, we switch to Barbieland, a fantastical utopian vision of the world of the Barbie doll, where the laws of physics are suspended as we follow the dolls in their daily routine, again free from compulsory sexuality. Utopia is often defined as a no place, one that does not exist except in our imaginations. José Esteban Muñoz describes utopia as offering “a critique of the present, of what is, by casting a picture of what can and perhaps will be” (35). There is a potential in queerness to imagine what could exist. Muñoz further depicts queer utopias as enacting a future vision by looking to “queer relational formations” (28), which I would argue would include asexual relational formations through nonsexual intimacy. Barbieland is such an asexual utopia. Every night is girls’ night, where the Barbies just still enjoy life to the fullest through their dance parties. There is no sense of the dolls having romantic relationships or sex, especially considering that they all lack genitals. Their relationship, among all of the dolls, seems to be one of friendship and fun, not sex or sexual desire. Living a full life in Barbieland with nonsexual intimacy among friends is imagined as the everyday and ideal. Barbie, who is so often viewed as an unattainable sexual fantasy, is instead allowed to just be in Barbieland. She is the centre of Barbieland, where the Barbies are all in charge. Barbie is also not romantically or sexually interested in Ken. Instead, they have a friendship, where Ken seems to want to pursue Barbie, he even sees himself through Barbie, but she remains mostly interested in her own life, her accomplishments, and dancing with the other Barbies. Now of course, this utopian vision is flawed. As Muñoz states, utopian vision is often viewed as “naively romantic” (27). So too is the vision of Barbieland. The Barbies themselves are naïve about the “real world” and live in an almost childlike innocence. The characters are still dolls, after all, not fully realised humans. It is when real human feelings begin to seep into Barbie through the human that used to play with her that things begin to change for the worse for Barbie. She starts to experience “flaws”, such as flat feet and cellulite, and must travel to the real world to “fix” it. Barbie’s innocence highlights one of the most common misunderstandings of asexuality: that asexual people are often infantilised and considered immature or repressed. Megan Milks discusses this very tendency, and how asexual identifying people are read as “not-yet-human but also not-yet-liberated” (107). Barbie is viewed in this very way, especially considering that she is not human; she is a toy with literally no genitals. She is not quite human, but I would not argue that she is not liberated. Barbieland, for her, is a liberating society. Her entrance into human society is where she suddenly becomes immature. However, there is a legitimate critique suggesting that a society of genitalless dolls is an asexual utopia. However, this is a fantasy land, not real life. Asexuality, in real people, does not mean unsexed or desexualised, lacking in sex organs, or somehow not fully human. Barbieland could be viewed as an asexual utopia; however, this utopian vision is neither perfect nor unproblematic. The infantilisation and objectification of Barbie starts to set in once she has to enter the “real world”. She is an innocent fish out of water, trying to figure out her way into a world that sexualises her, which she does not yet recognise. Sarah Ahmed, in The Cultural Politics of Emotion, explains discomfort as belonging to a set of queer feelings. She states that “discomfort is not simply a choice or decision … but an effect of bodies inhabiting spaces that do not take or ‘extend’ their shape” (152). Barbie does not belong in the “real world” where she immediately feels preyed upon from being sexualised. Barbie thus confronts the world of compulsory sexuality, which so often looks like compulsory heterosexuality (especially for women). As Ken enters the real world, he discovers the patriarchy, and becomes even more entrenched in the idea that as a man, he is owed affection from Barbie. Ken then becomes a symbol of toxic masculinity, which goes hand in hand with compulsory sexuality. Ela Przybylo, in Asexual Erotics: Intimate Readings of Compulsory Sexuality, contends that “compulsory sexuality is not only the celebration of sex or sexual desire but it is the uneven application of this celebration, the idea that white men deserve sex and that women owe them this sex” (138). Przybylo here is specifically discussing the “tyrannical celibacy” (138) of the contemporary incel movement (which often blends misogyny with white supremacy), but this depiction of compulsory sexuality can be applied to the behaviour of the Kens in Barbie as well. Ken believes that he is owed sexual access to Barbie (even if he doesn’t quite know what that means), which she will not give. As the Kens attempt to turn Barbieland into Kenland, they brainwash the Barbies into giving up their agency in order to get their attention. Eventually, the Kens begin to demonstrate toxic masculinity, expecting subservience from the Barbies and even fighting amongst themselves for the Barbies’ affections, which the Barbies later use to their advantage to save the day. The nonsexual intimacy that Barbie offers Ken is at first considered unthinkable, but it is recognised in the end when the Barbies defeat the Kens. The Barbies thus do not give in to compulsory sexuality, and the Kens agree. The nonsexual relationships are restored, with another Ken exclaiming, “I miss my friend Barbie” as they have a hug together, demonstrating that in the end they are all able to exist alongside one another as friends, not in a sexual way and not in a way where one has more power over the other. While Ken might believe that Barbie’s rejection makes him somewhat less of a man, Barbie feels otherwise. For her, she is not interested in Ken because that is not her story. In the end, Barbie wants her own story, and helps Ken find his as well, apart from being in a romantic relationship. Barbie and Ken reconcile at the end, but they do not get together. Barbie remains alone, and arguably, asexual. Her story is not a romance. The very end of the movie sees Barbie choosing to forego her flawed asexual utopia and come to the real world, after being allowed to view and feel the joys and pains of womanhood. She is allowed to go from being a desexualised object to a fully realised woman. However, just because she gains genitals does not mean that she is no longer asexual. Asexuality is also not the state of having no sex organs; asexual people are not plants or dolls, as it were. Instead, perhaps we should take an imaginative leap off the screen, to ask about her potential future as an asexual woman. What if she still ends up alone? Happy and alone? Not an unsexed object, but an asexual subject. Still beautiful and whole, and able to just be? Our current moment within which asexuality is newly legible is the moment in which we as moviegoers are watching and interpreting this film. An asexual lens works as an interpretative possibility for twenty-first century audiences who are newly enunciating asexuality as its own sexual orientation. With Barbie, asexuality can find a place among contemporary audiences. While Barbie began as a doll, her character became more than that. The Barbies themselves also became fully realised characters, still living their perhaps oversimplified lives in their imperfect utopia. Barbie chooses to enter the real world, but her asexuality still remains. She does not choose to enter into a relationship with anyone. Instead, she chooses body autonomy. References Aguirre, Abby. “Barbiemania! Margot Robbie Opens Up about the Movie Everyone’s Waiting For.” Vogue, 24 May 2023. 10 April 2024 <https://www.vogue.com/article/margot-robbie-barbie-summer-cover-2023-interview>. Ahmed, Sarah. Cultural Politics of Emotion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2014. AVEN: The Asexuality Visibility and Education Network. 2001-2024. <https://www.asexuality.org/>. Barbie. Dir. Greta Gerwig. Warner Brothers Pictures, 2023. Brown, Sherronda J. Refusing Compulsory Sexuality: A Black Asexual Lens on Our Sex-Obsessed Culture. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 2022. Chasin, CJ DeLuzio. “Reconsidering Asexuality and Its Radical Potential.” Feminist Studies 39.2 (2013): 405-426. <https://doi.org/10.1353/fem.2013.0054>. Decker, Julie Sondra. The Invisible Orientation: An Introduction to Asexuality. New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2015. Gupta, Kristina. “Compulsory Sexuality: Evaluating an Emerging Concept.” Signs 41.1 (2015): 131-154. 2 Feb. 2024 <https://doi.org/10.1086/681774>. Harris, Scarlett. “Barbie Might Just Be Asexual – and the Movie Proves It.” SheKnows, 26 July 2023. 24 Mar. 2024 <https://www.sheknows.com/entertainment/articles/2816809/is-barbie-asexual/>. Milks, Megan. “Stunted Growth: Asexual Politics and the Rhetorics of Sexual Liberation.” Asexualities: Feminist and Queer Perspectives. Eds. Karli June Cerankwoski and Megan Milks. New York: Routledge, 2014. 100-118. Milks, Megan, and Karli June Cerankowski. “Introduction: Why Asexuality? Why Now?” Asexualities: Feminist and Queer Perspectives. Eds. Karli June Cerankwoski and Megan Milks. New York: Routledge, 2014. 1-14. Muñoz, José Esteban. Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity. New York: New York UP, 2009. Pau, Kelly. “Barbie Has Become an Asexual Icon, and We Should All Learn from Her.” Salon, 1 Aug. 2023. 24 Mar. 2024 <https://www.salon.com/2023/08/01/barbie-asexual-icon/>. Przybylo, Ela, and Danielle Cooper. “Asexual Resonances: Tracing a Queerly Asexual Archive.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 20.3 (2014): 297-318. <https://doi.org/10.1215/10642684-2422683>. Przybylo, Ela. Asexual Erotics: Intimate Readings of Compulsory Sexuality. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 2019. Rich, Adrienne. “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence.” Signs 5.4 (1980): 631-660. Rogers, Mary F. Barbie Culture. London: Sage, 1999. Wolf, Stacy. A Problem like Maria: Gender and Sexuality in the American Musical. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 2002.

RESUMOA vivência em estabelecimentos fechados leva à mortificação do sujeito, dada a perda da autonomia, a degradação etc. A partir dessa realidade, as autoras realizaram atividade de extensão em unidade de internação de adolescentes do sexo feminino, em Recife, no ano de 2014-2015 que visava trabalhar a subjetividade das mesmas. A proposta foi realizar vivências com temas como amor, beleza, amizade, futuro... para em seguida confeccionar Fanzines. A atividade grupal, com manejo de corte e colagem, a confiança entre os “do mundão” e as internas e a saída da unidade para expor e vender o trabalho em atividade específica de aproximação da Universidade com a comunidade – SIUCS – atingiu o objetivo de “empoderá-las” e “sair mentalmente” da casa de internação, pois afinal são meninas, e o Estado negligencia essa realidade. O que as adolescentes, no ócio em vivem, na profanação de suas crenças e de seu próprio eu, a que são sujeitadas, apenas desejavam era estojo de maquiagem, bonecas, motos... desejavam, sobretudo brincar. O projeto Fanzine foi uma pequena possibilidade de fazer com que as adolescentes pensassem não só na dicotomia prisão x “mundão”, mas também no que elas desejam, nas pessoas que são, nos sonhos que vivem latentes em seu interior e no futuro que têm pela frente.PALAVRAS-CHAVEMedida socioeducativa de internação; Mortificação; Extensão universitária; Empoderamento juvenil. ABSTRACTLife in prison transforms subjectivities, leading them to mortification, due to lack of autonomy, degration etc. From this reality, the authors performed an university extension program in a female juvenile detention facility in Recife in 2014-2015 which aimed to work their subjectivity. The proposal was to make experiences with themes such as love, beaty, friendship, future... to, after on, make original fanzines. The group activity, with cutting and gluing handling, the confidence between inmates and people from “the world” and the exit of the detention facility to expose and to sell the work in specific activity of approach between the University and the community - SIUCS - reached the objective of "empower them" and "mentally leave" the detention facility, because after all they are girls, and the State neglects this reality. What adolescents, in idleness in life, in the profanation of their beliefs and of their own self, to which they are subjected, only wished for was a makeup kit, dolls, motorcycles... they wanted, especially, to play. The Fanzine project was a small possibility of making teenagers reflect not only about the prison x worldview dichotomy, but also about what they want, about the person they are, about the dreams that lie dormant in their interior and about the future that lies ahead.KEYWORDSJuvenile detention facility; Mortification; University extension program; Juvenile empowerment.

Man-Woman relationships revolving around the themes of romance and friendship, possessiveness and jealousy, understandings and misunderstandings have fascinated writers across the globe from time immemorial. The notions of patriarchy have profoundly influenced the writers in the portrayal of their characters. Nevertheless, there are writers who preferred to choose the paths untrodden. Henrik Johan Ibsen, the Norwegian playwright of the late nineteenth century, could successfully create a powerful character in Nora Helmer, the female protagonist in his play, “A Doll’s House”. Nora is a woman who is denied of any self-fulfilment in a male-dominated marriage. The play created great sensation due to its unconventional ending. Transcending across the borders and boundaries of age and of nation, the storyline remains unchanging even in the present century. Sudha Murty, the new millennium writer in India presents an equally strong character, Shrimati Deshpande in her novel “Gently Falls the Bakula”. Shrimati becomes disillusioned and dissatisfied with her supercilious husband and hence emerges out to arrive at an appropriate decision. Both Nora and Shrimati shatter the patriarchal hegemony and raise a voice of protest against male dominance.

As the use of social networks becomes increasingly commonplace, scholars have observed that associated requirements arise relating to how one’s digital self is practised, worked on, and disseminated (Cover; Miller; Papacharissi). Since the earliest forms of online interaction, scholars have tracked the importance of the question of “realness” in identity and social groupings (Burkhalter; Donath; O’Brien). More recently, as people become more connected, connect-able and subject to peer (as well as corporate and government surveillance) (van Zoonen), digital media cultures have increasingly demanded the performance of authenticity as part of the work of belonging online (Banet-Weiser; Keller). Drawing on Banet-Weiser’s and Keller’s work in particular, “authenticity” is defined here as the quality of being considered consistently “true to oneself” in a way which is socially legitimated. I suggest, online, that this demand for authenticity is manifested through two poles of authenticity: authentic individuality and authentic belonging. In this paper, I discuss the interplay between authentic individuality and authentic belonging in (postfeminist) digital cultures, by using the case study of a set of meme blogs narrating youthful femininity on blogging social network Tumblr. This meme set, based on Tumblr blog “WhatShouldWeCallMe” (WSWCM), sets out a self-representative affective account of quotidian feminine experiences. In a set of six blogs of this meme set, including the “founder”, I consider the production of authenticities where the simultaneous importance of connection and imitative differentiation is foregrounded, tracking the way authenticity is practised in the founder and follower meme blogs. I contend that the WSWCM founder claims authentic individuality, producing itself through claims to originality, and pre-existing “best girlfriendship”. I then suggest that the follower meme blogs foreground authentic digital belonging, by exhibiting certain affective cultural literacies that demonstrate insider status in this intimate digital feminine public (Berlant). I surmise these strategies are used to manage the demands of tension between proving one’s true and individual self and the need to be recognised as belonging through commonality. The Authentic Self Brand and the Authentic Insider I suggest that one expression of authentic individuality can be found in the increasingly prevalent practice of self-branding in digital cultures on social network sites (Banet-Weiser). In what Banet-Weiser calls “the authentic self-brand”, one sets up a simultaneous relationship to oneself, and a relationship between oneself and one’s audience. This double relationship is one of “innovation, production, and consumption [of the self], charged with ideally producing a unique, ‘authentic’ self” (73) for others. The self-social relationship offered by the authentic self-brand dovetails with what scholars identify as a postfeminist media landscape in the West (Gill; McRobbie; Negra). Postfeminist narratives promote highly commercial paradigms of self-surveillance, self-regulation and self-improvement, particularly for young women (Gill, McRobbie), whereby one’s body, social practices and relationships are evaluated as part of the marketability of one’s self-brand (Banet-Weiser, Winch). In this marketised recasting of social relationships, one must treat oneself as a product to be invested in, and remain vigilantly aware of how one is perceived by an audience of potential “buyers”. Notably, postfeminism relies on the idea of a deep, inhering individuality to justify the injunction to marketise oneself (Gill). Following this logic, gendered practices which may improve one’s feminine “self-brand” such as attention to beauty practices and body shape, must be cast as for “oneself” and part of one’s “true desires”. This occurs in a landscape where it is widely presumed that feminism has done its work, and women are now “free” to perform femininity however they wish (Gill). In postfeminist digital cultures, proving one’s acts are done for one’s true self, not for others becomes crucial in demonstrating one’s feminine authenticity (Dobson, Individuality; Performative), even as one is aware of the social value of one’s profile or digital brand (Banet-Weiser, Ringrose and Barajas). Drawing on this body of work, I suggest that authentic individuality, performed through imperviousness to social influence, is the way in which these contradictions of the postfeminist self-brand are justified. At the same time, digital cultures can also be argued to offer “remix” spaces (Lessig) where the borrowing, imitation and adaptation of existing cultural artefacts demonstrates personally felt connections to wider social meanings. One common manifestation of this is the Internet “meme”, a unit of culture which relies on imitative adaptation and differentiation in its circulation (Shifman), which I discuss further in this article. Shifman illustrates the meme as a mode of interpretive connection with the example of YouTube meme “Leave Britney Alone”, which began with the founder meme video by actor Chris Crocker making an emotional plea that society leave singer Britney Spears in peace. Memes signal dominant social understandings of the original cultural unit: Shifman notes that with the “Leave Britney Alone” meme, the follower memes tended to mock Crocker’s perceived effeminacy, sexuality and excessiveness in their re-enactments of Crocker’s founder video. Authenticity in these forms of digital production might be argued to signify more about desires for legitimate or authentic belonging within digital publics as insiders, rather than proving a fundamental individuality. WhatShouldWeCallMe and Tumblr Remix Culture Tumblr is a relatively under-researched but rapidly growing blogging social network, documented at the end of 2014 as the social platform with the most growth in user numbers (Lunden). Tumblr is known as a promising hub of burgeoning visual youth cultures (Third and Hart), possibly due to its norms of anonymity and significant pop culture content of posts. Images are a dominant form of communication on the site, and most content on Tumblr is public. Notably, 70% of Tumblr traffic occurs internally through the repurposing and reblogging of posts in the “dashboard” area (the equivalent being the “newsfeed’ for Facebook), rather than from external sources (Walker). Tumblr users are able to follow each other, and like and reblog each other’s posts. However, direct comments on posts are not an available feature, unlike most “first wave” (Miller and Fink) blogging sites; if a user wishes to comment on a post, they can only do so when reblogging the post, which is then featured on their own blog. According to Tumblr founder David Karp, this feature discourages overly negative comments and flame wars because “if you’re going to be a jerk, you’re looking like a jerk in your own space” (Walker). These structures set up Tumblr as an ideal site for the production of memes as part of its remix culture, whilst still adhering to certain connective features of other social networks. To provide some context, the founder WSWCM blog boasted 50,000 new Tumblr followers in the month following its creation in 2012, with independent traffic reports logging the number of page views as one to two million per day (Casserly). Each post on the founder WSWCM is on average liked and reblogged by hundreds of other Tumblr users, but its significance, which I consider here, lies in the way that it has been taken up in a prolific variety of follower meme blogs. Interestingly, unlike “Leave Britney Alone”, the form of imitative differentiation here is keyed at speaking at a more self-representative level, rather than making a comment on or satirising the founder, suggesting a level of personal connection. Like “Leave Britney Alone”, the WSWCM meme set can be understood as a founder-based meme (Shifman), with one originating, successful meme text which then inspires many follower memes, which are usually less successful. The follower memes I consider here adapt the GIF-reaction format which is used to narrate everyday experiences of youthful femininity. Blog posts are produced by matching a GIF image to situations such as “when my boyfriend forgets to DVR the Voice” or “when I hear my frenemy got dumped by her boyfriend”. GIFs are moving photo files excerpting about three seconds of movement from popular culture ranging from film, television and YouTube videos. It must be stressed that the term “follower” does not necessarily connote a lack of originality. The imitation of the follower blogs is strategic: a deliberate, slight differentiation, which operates to set them apart, but still locates them within a youthful feminine public. The emergence of the WSWCM follower blogs is a dynamic one which, I suggest, has catalysed the founder to intensify its claims to legitimacy through authentic originality even as its funny and creative followers throw its uniqueness into question. The Founder Meme Blog: Best Friendship as Authenticity Practice One key way that the WSWCM founder makes claims to authenticity is through a “best girlfriendship”, which is also explicitly articulated as the driving force for the maintenance of the blog, rather than Tumblr followers or outside audiences. Whilst ads are hosted on the founder blog, it is explained that these are almost ancillary—“to pay the bills” of purchasing material to create the GIFs, pay for the site design, web-hosting fees, and other costs. The almost romantic figure of the female “best friend” features significantly, fitting with Winch’s claim that the female best friend becomes a new “soul mate”, beyond one’s (heterosexual) partner in postfeminist girlfriend culture. In this way, we see how certain social relationships become recognisable as authentic. The founder bloggers state in their FAQs: We are two best friends who met in college and now live on opposite coasts (of the United States). We used to send each other funny .gifs as a way of staying in touch, and decided to start a tumblr that both of us could check during the day. We thought we were just posting inside jokes, but are thrilled that other people find them as funny as we do. We never really intended for anyone else to see it. Whilst now, with potentially hundreds of thousands of followers, it is difficult to maintain that the blog is maintained solely as a means of keeping in contact, this long distance girlfriendship can be drawn on to establish the authenticity and social capital for the blog. The best friend is a productive space through which one can express one’s true, individual desires, free of others’ wishes and outside constraints. Many moments expressed in the original blog centre on (very funny) moments that are only shared with the best friend where one can really be “oneself”, such as “when my best friend and I stay in” (for a night in), or “when my best friend and I are DGAF in public” (“don’t give a fuck”). In the blog, the very exclusivity of the female best friend compared to other ambivalent relations with “other girls” and “guys”, can also be understood as a mechanism for carving out a space of feminine individuality. I suggest that this best girlfriendship should be understood as a permutation of the authentic self-brand, practised to achieve a form of authentic individuality. In Winch’s conception, postfeminist girlfriendship is about strategy rather than solidarity; girlfriendship becomes an “investment in the individual” as it is “essential in enabling feminine normativity” (2). This may be reflected in the way best friendship is mobilised as a brand for WSWCM. At its inception, WSWCM only used the “Minimalist” theme for its layout, a free theme offered by Tumblr, which is still visible in the formats of some of the meme blogs. Fig. 1A: “Screenshot of Minimalist Theme in follower blog.” Twodumbgirls.tumblr.com, 16 Feb. 2015.Fig. 1B: “Screenshot of Minimalist Theme in follower blog.” Whatshouldwecollegeme.tumblr.com, 16 Feb. 2015. However, in early 2014 the bloggers changed to a different header to distinguish their site. I suggest this can be understood as a response to establish originality and authenticity through a best friendship brand, in opposition to the other meme blogs, which had also adopted the founder theme. The WSWCM header features cartoonish depictions of the two bloggers, one in New York with the silhouette of skyscrapers behind her, and one on a beach with an open laptop, the blog visible on her screen. Fig. 2: “WhatShouldWeCallMe Header.” Whatshouldwecallme.tumblr.com, 17 Feb. 2015. This header clearly alludes to the fact that the bloggers are separated, in different places, but links them by depicting them as virtually identical. Somewhat similar to “Bratz” dolls, they are both represented with oversized heads, tiny bodies, long hair, and large eyes, with the only differences being that one is blonde with pale skin and blue eyes, the other brunette with tanned skin and green eyes. I suggest that what is striking about this cartoonish image is the way it fits into a commercial genre of representation of “girlfriends”. Further, whilst girlfriends are often positioned as differing, their differences are often positioned as complementary, to strengthen a united co-brand (Winch). The differences here are noticeably nominal, skin-deep—the slight variation in hair, eye and skin colour hint at “‘tantalising differences within a normative paradigm” (Winch 46). I am not suggesting here that the best friendship of the bloggers is artificial or purely commercial, but rather, that this production of digital best friendship coincides with strategies to achieve authentic individuality recognisable in postfeminist digital cultures. The best friend is thus crucial to the performance of authenticity in the original blog. It is important to note, however, that these practices exceed postfeminist self-branding in certain ways. Given that WSWCM has indeed inspired follower memes keyed in a self-representative register, this suggests possibilities of broader connection and a sense of intimacy through recognisability of shared femininity. From one form of insider practice—the WSWCM best girlfriendship—to another, other Tumblr bloggers through follower meme texts have also signalled their insider status, as young women able to narrate forms of feminine experience held out as representative and legitimate. The Follower Meme Blogs: Connective Differentiation In contrast to the founder’s production of authenticity through claims to originality, and through a relationship, which is held out as distinct from the desires to gain Internet followers, authenticity is practised differently in the follower memes. Authentic individuality is decentred; rather, the follower blogs appear to foreground the importance of authentic belonging. This becomes clear in the followers’ imitation of the founder in their positioning as similar, but slightly different. For example, in the blog WhatShouldBetchesCallMe, the blogging subject still narrates quotidian feminine trials and tribulations, but is much more knowingly confident and sassy; in WhatShouldWeCollegeMe, the blog focuses more on the experience of being at university than the founder meme. Shifman foregrounds the process of repackaging and imitation in the adaptation of memes; I suggest that what also must be considered in this meme set is connective differentiation, which repositions this repackaging as simultaneously a form of distancing and connection. Here, the connective differentiation of the follower blogs is a way of citing one’s knowledge and understanding of youthful feminine experience. By creating a self-representative, knowingly derivative but different follower blog in this meme set, this subsequent variation demonstrates one’s legitimate belonging in the feminine public sphere of WSWCM readership. I suggest Berlant’s conceptualisation of intimate publics is useful here in explaining how slight variations on an original theme play out in a culture in which authenticity is held up as essential. Berlant argues that women’s culture in the West, centrally shaped by relations to commodities, creates expectations of both normativity and commonality whereby the market claims to offer texts and objects which are true to women’s “particular core interests and desires” (5). This provides a “generic-but-unique” femininity (6) through which women can expect to be recognisable in this public. Arguably, what the memes opt into—through being recognised as derivative—is a form of recognition in an intimate feminine public. Thus, the follower memes adhere to these rules of recognisability in order to be seen. Recognition as belonging in this intimate public through social knowledge becomes more useful for the follower memes, which cannot rely on the status of originality of the founder meme. What this practice of discerning, connective differentiation may signal is a configuration of authenticity which manages the tension in demands of digital culture— signalling one’s individuality yet demonstrating one’s social embeddedness. As O’Brien (1998) notes in relation to early online social interaction, if one wants to be recognised and recognisable, one must draw on established social, cultural codes. Notably, many of the situations which are put forward in blog posts of the follower memes are not necessarily easily distinguishable in genre or content from the blog posts of the founder memes. Though the founder meme text places particular emphasis on best friendship, other forms of youthful, feminine (middle class) experience are recycled and re-adapted for circulation. Many of the situations which are put forward in the meme set, while creatively assembled, are ultimately generic so that they can be circulated on Tumblr to connect with others. Consequently, posts abound about social rituals of excessive drinking, struggling through university, and inadequacies in flirting technique. However, I note that these generic posts are still specific at the same time, requiring a highly discerning ability to capture and narrativise affective moments from diverse, miscellaneous pop culture material. The well-chosen GIF articulating one’s despondency as a single girl demonstrates a level of cultural and affective awareness of the semiotic intelligibility of the GIF, and the recognisable trials and tribulations of youthful feminine experience. Fig. 3: “When I’m depressed and have too much to drink.” 2ndhand-embarrassment.tumblr.com, 11 Feb. 2015. Thus, showing one’s specific knowledge of shared experience demonstrates an affective authenticity of connection and belonging. This authenticity works to prove one’s digital authority to micro-broadcast one’s life in a youthful feminine public, through showing one’s knowledge of the recognisable pitfalls, idiosyncrasies and experiences of being a young woman. I emphasise that it is this situated knowingness that comes through in the meme set in general, particularly in the follower memes. Given the generic nature of the content of posts across the meme set, the importance of “true” emotion is decentred—rather, what is vital is knowing which affective situations have the capacity to connect and be recognisable. Whilst the revelation of inner emotional truths have otherwise been considered key in the practice of authenticity in celebrity culture (Biressi and Nunn; Hesmondalgh and Baker), I propose that in the context in which this meme set is situated, this is not necessarily the most useful form of social currency. In these remix digital cultures, I suggest the interpretive premise of the digital audience is not that these products of remix literally speak to one’s experiences. Rather, remix cultures provide a means of demonstrating insider knowledge, which connects other insiders—a form of authentic belonging. Conclusion This paper has traced differing practices of feminine authenticity visible in the intersection of social network and remix cultures on Tumblr by examining the WSWCM meme set. I have suggested that the founder meme employs particular strategies of maintaining authentic individuality, such as resorting to the performance of an exclusive, “original” best girlfriendship brand. In contrast, the follower memes perform cultural and affective knowingness of youthful femininity, to assert their digital insider status—and right to belong. This meme set presents some productive questions through which to think through authenticity in digital cultures. Could striving for authentic belonging constitute one strategy of responding to a media-saturated culture, where authentic individuality is constantly elevated yet (perhaps) harder to achieve? These blogs demonstrate how the significance and practice of authenticity transforms in managing different configurations of social desires to belong, or be recognised as individual and original in (postfeminist) digital cultures. References Banet-Weiser, Sarah. Authentic TM. New York, NY: New York UP, 2012. Beer, David, and Roger Burrows. “Popular Culture, Digital Archives and the New Social Life of Data.” Theory, Culture & Society 30.4 (2013): 47–71. Berlant, Lauren Gail. The Female Complaint. Durham: Duke UP, 2008. Burkhalter, Byron. "Reading Race Online: Discovering Racial Identity in Usenet Discussions." Communities in Cyberspace. Eds. Marc A. Smith and Peter Kollock. London: Routledge, 1999. 59–74. Casserly, Meghan. “#Whatshouldwecallme Revealed: The 24-Year Old Law Students behind the New Tumblr Darling.” Forbes 29 Mar 2012: n.p. 23 Dec. 2014 ‹http://www.forbes.com/sites/meghancasserly/2012/03/29/whatshouldwecallme-revealed-24-year-old-law-students-tumblr-darling/›. Cover, Rob. “Performing and Undoing Identity Online: Social Networking, Identity Theories and the Incompatibility of Online Profiles and Friendship Regimes.” Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 18.2 (2012): 177–93. Dobson, Amy Shields. “Performative Shamelessness on Young Women's Social Network Sites: Shielding the Self and Resisting Gender Melancholia.” Feminism & Psychology 24.1 (2013): 97–114. Dobson, Amy Shields. “'Individuality is Everything': 'Autonomous Femininity' in Myspace Mottos and Self–Descriptions.” Continuum 26.3 (2012): 371–83. Donath, Judith. "Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community." Communities in Cyberspace. Eds. Marc A. Smith and Peter Kollock. London: Routledge, 1999. 27–57. Fink, Marty, and Quinn Miller. “Trans Media Moments: Tumblr, 2011–2013.” Television & New Media 15.7 (2013): 611–26. Gill, Rosalind. Gender and the Media. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2007. Hesmondhalgh, David, and Sarah Baker. Creative Labour. London: Routledge, 2011. Keller, Jessalynn Marie. “Fiercely Real?: Tyra Banks and the Making of New Media Celebrity.” Feminist Media Studies 14.1 (2012): 147–64. Lessig, Lawrence. Remix. New York: Penguin P, 2008. Lunden, Ingrid. “Tumblr Overtakes Instagram as Fastest-Growing Social Platform, Snapchat Is the Fastest-Growing App.” TechCrunch 25 Nov. 2014: n.p. 23 Dec. 2014 ‹http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/25/tumblr-overtakes-instagram-as-fastest-growing-social-platform-snapchat-is-the-fastest-growing-app/›. McRobbie, Angela. The Aftermath of Feminism. London: SAGE Publications, 2009. Miller, Vincent. Understanding Digital Culture. London: SAGE Publications, 2011. Negra, Diane. What a Girl Wants? Fantasising the Reclamation of Self in Postfeminism. London: Routledge, 2009. Nunn, Heather, and Anita Biressi. “'A Trust Betrayed': Celebrity and the Work Of Emotion.” Celebrity Studies 1.1 (2010): 49–64. O’Brien, Jodi. "Writing in the Body: Gender (Re)production in Online Interaction." Communities in Cyberspace. Eds. Marc A. Smith and Peter Kollock. London: Routledge, 1999. 75–103. Papacharissi, Zizi. A Networked Self. New York: Routledge, 2011. Ringrose, Jessica, and Katarina Eriksson Barajas. “Gendered Risks and Opportunities? Exploring Teen Girls’ Digitized Sexual Identities in Postfeminist Media Contexts.” International Journal of Media & Cultural Politics 7.2 (2011): 121–38. Shifman, Limor. Memes in Digital Culture. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT P, 2014. Van Doorn, Niels, Sally Wyatt, and Liesbet van Zoonen. “A Body of Text.” Feminist Media Studies 8.4 (2008): 357–74. Van Zoonen, Liesbet. “From Identity to Identification: Fixating the Fragmented Self.” Media, Culture & Society 35.1 (2013): 44­–51. Walker, Rob. “Can Tumblr’s™ David Karp Embrace Ads without Selling Out?” New York Times 12 July 2012: n.p. 23 Dec. 2014 ‹http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/magazine/can-tumblrs-david-karp-embrace-ads-without-selling-out.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0›. Winch, Alison. Girlfriends and Postfeminist Sisterhood. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.

In 1988, historian Nadia Wheatley and indigenous artist Donna Rawlins published their award-winning picture book, My Place, a reinterpretation of Australian national identity and sovereignty prompted by the bicentennial of white settlement. Twenty years later, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) commissioned Penny Chapman’s multi-platform project based on this book. The 13 episodes of the television series begin in 2008, each telling the story of a child at a different point in history, and are accompanied by substantial interactive online content. Issues as diverse as religious difference and immigration, wartime conscription and trauma, and the experiences of Aboriginal Australians are canvassed. The program itself, which has a second series currently in production, introduces child audiences to—and implicates them in—a rich ideological fabric of deeply politicised issues that directly engage with vexed questions of Australian nationhood. The series offers a subversive view of Australian history and society, and it is the child—whether protagonist on the screen or the viewer/user of the content—who is left to discover, negotiate and move beyond often problematic societal norms. As one of the public broadcaster’s keystone projects, My Place signifies important developments in ABC’s construction of multicultural child citizenship. The digitisation of Australian television has facilitated a wave of multi-channel and new media innovation. Though the development of a multi-channel ecology has occurred significantly later in Australia than in the US or Europe, in part due to genre restrictions on broadcasters, all major Australian networks now have at least one additional free-to-air channel, make some of their content available online, and utilise various forms of social media to engage their audiences. The ABC has been in the vanguard of new media innovation, leveraging the industry dominance of ABC Online and its cross-platform radio networks for the repurposing of news, together with the additional funding for digital renewal, new Australian content, and a digital children’s channel in the 2006 and 2009 federal budgets. In line with “market failure” models of broadcasting (Born, Debrett), the ABC was once the most important producer-broadcaster for child viewers. With the recent allocation for the establishment of ABC3, it is now the catalyst for a significant revitalisation of the Australian children’s television industry. The ABC Charter requires it to broadcast programs that “contribute to a sense of national identity” and that “reflect the cultural diversity of the Australian community” (ABC Documents). Through its digital children’s channel (ABC3) and its multi-platform content, child viewers are not only exposed to a much more diverse range of local content, but also politicised by an intricate network of online texts connected to the TV programs. The representation of diasporic communities through and within multi-platformed spaces forms a crucial part of the way(s) in which collective identities are now being negotiated in children’s texts. An analysis of one of the ABC’s My Place “projects” and its associated multi-platformed content reveals an intricate relationship between postcolonial concerns and the construction of child citizenship. Multicultural Places, Multi-Platformed Spaces: New Media Innovation at the ABC The 2007 restructure at the ABC has transformed commissioning practices along the lines noted by James Bennett and Niki Strange of the BBC—a shift of focus from “programs” to multi-platform “projects,” with the latter consisting of a complex network of textual production. These “second shift media practices” (Caldwell) involve the tactical management of “user flows structured into and across the textual terrain that serve to promote a multifaceted and prolonged experience of the project” (Bennett and Strange 115). ABC Managing Director Mark Scott’s polemic deployment of the “digital commons” trope (Murdock, From) differs from that of his opposite number at the BBC, Mark Thompson, in its emphasis on the glocalised openness of the Australian “town square”—at once distinct from, and an integral part of, larger conversations. As announced at the beginning of the ABC’s 2009 annual report, the ABC is redefining the town square as a world of greater opportunities: a world where Australians can engage with one another and explore the ideas and events that are shaping our communities, our nation and beyond … where people can come to speak and be heard, to listen and learn from each other. (ABC ii)The broad emphasis on engagement characterises ABC3’s positioning of children in multi-platformed projects. As the Executive Producer of the ABC’s Children’s Television Multi-platform division comments, “participation is very much the mantra of the new channel” (Glen). The concept of “participation” is integral to what has been described elsewhere as “rehearsals in citizenship” (Northam). Writing of contemporary youth, David Buckingham notes that “‘political thinking’ is not merely an intellectual or developmental achievement, but an interpersonal process which is part of the construction of a collective, social identity” (179). Recent domestically produced children’s programs and their associated multimedia applications have significant potential to contribute to this interpersonal, “participatory” process. Through multi-platform experiences, children are (apparently) invited to construct narratives of their own. Dan Harries coined the term “viewser” to highlight the tension between watching and interacting, and the increased sense of agency on the part of audiences (171–82). Various online texts hosted by the ABC offer engagement with extra content relating to programs, with themed websites serving as “branches” of the overarching ABC3 metasite. The main site—strongly branded as the place for its targeted demographic—combines conventional television guide/program details with “Watch Now!,” a customised iView application within ABC3’s own themed interface; youth-oriented news; online gaming; and avenues for viewsers to create digital art and video, or interact with the community of “Club3” and associated message boards. The profiles created by members of Club3 are moderated and proscribe any personal information, resulting in an (understandably) restricted form of “networked publics” (boyd 124–5). Viewser profiles comprise only a username (which, the website stresses, should not be one’s real name) and an “avatar” (a customisable animated face). As in other social media sites, comments posted are accompanied by the viewser’s “name” and “face,” reinforcing the notion of individuality within the common group. The tool allows users to choose from various skin colours, emphasising the multicultural nature of the ABC3 community. Other customisable elements, including the ability to choose between dozens of pre-designed ABC3 assets and feeds, stress the audience’s “ownership” of the site. The Help instructions for the Club3 site stress the notion of “participation” directly: “Here at ABC3, we don’t want to tell you what your site should look like! We think that you should be able to choose for yourself.” Multi-platformed texts also provide viewsers with opportunities to interact with many of the characters (human actors and animated) from the television texts and share further aspects of their lives and fictional worlds. One example, linked to the representation of diasporic communities, is the Abatti Pizza Game, in which the player must “save the day” by battling obstacles to fulfil a pizza order. The game’s prefacing directions makes clear the ethnicity of the Abatti family, who are also visually distinctive. The dialogue also registers cultural markers: “Poor Nona, whatsa she gonna do? Now it’s up to you to help Johnny and his friends make four pizzas.” The game was acquired from the Canadian-animated franchise, Angela Anaconda; nonetheless, the Abatti family, the pizza store they operate and the dilemma they face translates easily to the Australian context. Dramatisations of diasporic contributions to national youth identities in postcolonial or settler societies—the UK (My Life as a Popat, CITV) and Canada (How to Be Indie)—also contribute to the diversity of ABC3’s television offerings and the positioning of its multi-platform community. The negotiation of diasporic and postcolonial politics is even clearer in the public broadcaster’s commitment to My Place. The project’s multifaceted construction of “places,” the ethical positioning of the child both as an individual and a member of (multicultural) communities, and the significant acknowledgement of ongoing conflict and discrimination, articulate a cultural commons that is more open-ended and challenging than the Eurocentric metaphor, the “town square,” suggests. Diversity, Discrimination and Diasporas: Positioning the Viewser of My Place Throughout the first series of My Place, the experiences of children within different diasporic communities are the focal point of five of the initial six episodes, the plots of which revolve around children with Lebanese, Vietnamese, Greek, and Irish backgrounds. This article focuses on an early episode of the series, “1988,” which explicitly confronts the cultural frictions between dominant Anglocentric Australian and diasporic communities. “1988” centres on the reaction of young Lily to the arrival of her cousin, Phuong, from Vietnam. Lily is a member of a diasporic community, but one who strongly identifies as “an Australian,” allowing a nuanced exploration of the ideological conflicts surrounding the issue of so-called “boat people.” The protagonist’s voice-over narration at the beginning of the episode foregrounds her desire to win Australia’s first Olympic gold medal in gymnastics, thus mobilising nationally identified hierarchies of value. Tensions between diasporic and settler cultures are frequently depicted. One potentially reactionary sequence portrays the recurring character of Michaelis complaining about having to use chopsticks in the Vietnamese restaurant; however, this comment is contextualised several episodes later, when a much younger Michaelis, as protagonist of the episode “1958,” is himself discriminated against, due to his Greek background. The political irony of “1988” pivots on Lily’s assumption that her cousin “won’t know Australian.” There is a patronising tone in her warning to Phuong not to speak Vietnamese for fear of schoolyard bullying: “The kids at school give you heaps if you talk funny. But it’s okay, I can talk for you!” This encourages child viewers to distance themselves from this fictional parallel to the frequent absence of representation of asylum seekers in contemporary debates. Lily’s assumptions and attitudes are treated with a degree of scepticism, particularly when she assures her friends that the silent Phuong will “get normal soon,” before objectifying her cousin for classroom “show and tell.” A close-up camera shot settles on Phuong’s unease while the children around her gossip about her status as a “boat person,” further encouraging the audience to empathise with the bullied character. However, Phuong turns the tables on those around her when she reveals she can competently speak English, is able to perform gymnastics and other feats beyond Lily’s ability, and even invents a story of being attacked by “pirates” in order to silence her gossiping peers. By the end of the narrative, Lily has redeemed herself and shares a close friendship with Phuong. My Place’s structured child “participation” plays a key role in developing the postcolonial perspective required by this episode and the project more broadly. Indeed, despite the record project budget, a second series was commissioned, at least partly on the basis of the overwhelmingly positive reception of viewsers on the ABC website forums (Buckland). The intricate My Place website, accessible through the ABC3 metasite, generates transmedia intertextuality interlocking with, and extending the diegesis of, the televised texts. A hyperlinked timeline leads to collections of personal artefacts “owned” by each protagonist, such as journals, toys, and clothing. Clicking on a gold medal marked “History” in Lily’s collection activates scrolling text describing the political acceptance of the phrase “multiculturalism” and the “Family Reunion” policy, which assisted the arrival of 100,000 Vietnamese immigrants. The viewser is reminded that some people were “not very welcoming” of diasporic groups via an explicit reference to Mrs Benson’s discriminatory attitudes in the series. Viewsers can “visit” virtual representations of the program’s sets. In the bedroom, kitchen, living room and/or backyard of each protagonist can be discovered familiar and additional details of the characters’ lives. The artefacts that can be “played” with in the multimedia applications often imply the enthusiastic (and apparently desirable) adoption of “Australianness” by immigrant children. Lily’s toys (her doll, hair accessories, roller skates, and glass marbles) invoke various aspects of western children’s culture, while her “journal entry” about Phuong states that she is “new to Australia but with her sense of humour she has fitted in really well.” At the same time, the interactive elements within Lily’s kitchen, including a bowl of rice and other Asian food ingredients, emphasise cultural continuity. The description of incense in another room of Lily’s house as a “common link” that is “used in many different cultures and religions for similar purposes” clearly normalises a glocalised world-view. Artefacts inside the restaurant operated by Lily’s mother link to information ranging from the ingredients and (flexible) instructions for how to make rice paper rolls (“Lily and Phuong used these fillings but you can use whatever you like!”) to a brief interactive puzzle game requiring the arrangement of several peppers in order from least hot to most hot. A selectable picture frame downloads a text box labelled “Images of Home.” Combined with a slideshow of static, hand-drawn images of traditional Vietnamese life, the text can be read as symbolic of the multiplicity of My Place’s target audience(s): “These images would have reminded the family of their homeland and also given restaurant customers a sense of Vietnamese culture.” The social-developmental, postcolonial agenda of My Place is registered in both “conventional” ancillary texts, such as the series’ “making of” publication (Wheatley), and the elaborate pedagogical website for teachers developed by the ACTF and Educational Services Australia (http://www.myplace.edu.au/). The politicising function of the latter is encoded in the various summaries of each decade’s historical, political, social, cultural, and technological highlights, often associated with the plot of the relevant episode. The page titled “Multiculturalism” reports on the positive amendments to the Commonwealth’s Migration Act 1958 and provides links to photographs of Vietnamese migrants in 1982, exemplifying the values of equality and cultural diversity through Lily and Phuong’s story. The detailed “Teaching Activities” documents available for each episode serve a similar purpose, providing, for example, the suggestion that teachers “ask students to discuss the importance to a new immigrant of retaining links to family, culture and tradition.” The empathetic positioning of Phuong’s situation is further mirrored in the interactive map available for teacher use that enables children to navigate a boat from Vietnam to the Australian coast, encouraging a perspective that is rarely put forward in Australia’s mass media. This is not to suggest that the My Place project is entirely unproblematic. In her postcolonial analysis of Aboriginal children’s literature, Clare Bradford argues that “it’s all too possible for ‘similarities’ to erase difference and the political significances of [a] text” (188). Lily’s schoolteacher’s lesson in the episode “reminds us that boat people have been coming to Australia for a very long time.” However, the implied connection between convicts and asylum seekers triggered by Phuong’s (mis)understanding awkwardly appropriates a mythologised Australian history. Similarly in the “1998” episode, the Muslim character Mohammad’s use of Ramadan for personal strength in order to emulate the iconic Australian cricketer Shane Warne threatens to subsume the “difference” of the diasporic community. Nonetheless, alongside the similarities between individuals and the various ethnic groups that make up the My Place community, important distinctions remain. Each episode begins and/or ends with the child protagonist(s) playing on or around the central motif of the series—a large fig tree—with the characters declaring that the tree is “my place.” While emphasising the importance of individuality in the project’s construction of child citizens, the cumulative effect of these “my place” sentiments, felt over time by characters from different socio-economic, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds, builds a multifaceted conception of Australian identity that consists of numerous (and complementary) “branches.” The project’s multi-platformed content further emphasises this, with the website containing an image of the prominent (literal and figurative) “Community Tree,” through which the viewser can interact with the generations of characters and families from the series (http://www.abc.net.au/abc3/myplace/). The significant role of the ABC’s My Place project showcases the ABC’s remit as a public broadcaster in the digital era. As Tim Brooke-Hunt, the Executive Head of Children’s Content, explains, if the ABC didn’t do it, no other broadcaster was going to come near it. ... I don’t expect My Place to be a humungous commercial or ratings success, but I firmly believe ... that it will be something that will exist for many years and will have a very special place. Conclusion The reversion to iconic aspects of mainstream Anglo-Australian culture is perhaps unsurprising—and certainly telling—when reflecting on the network of local, national, and global forces impacting on the development of a cultural commons. 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IntroductionAlt, or alternative, accounts are secondary profiles people use in addition to a main account on a social media platform. They are a kind of automediation, a way of representing the self, that deliberately displays a different identity facet, and addresses a different audience, to what someone considers to be their main account. The term “alt” seems to have originated from videogame culture and been incorporated into understandings of social media accounts. A wiki page about alternate accounts on virtual world Second Life calls an alt “an account used by a resident for something other than their usual activity or to do things in privacy” (n.p.).Studying alts gives an insight into practices of managing and contextualising identities on networked platforms that are visible, persistent, editable, associable (Treem and Leonardi), spreadable, searchable (boyd), shareable (Papacharissi "Without"), and personalised (Schmidt). When these features of social media are understood as limitations that lead to context collapse (Marwick and boyd 122; Wesch 23), performative incoherence (Papacharissi Affective 99), and the risk of overexposure, people respond by developing alternative ways to use platforms.Plenty of scholarship on social media identities claims the self is fragmented, multifaceted, and contextual (Marwick 355; Schmidt 369). But the scholarship on multiple account use on single platforms is still emerging. Joanne Orlando writes for The Conversation that teens increasingly have more than one account on Instagram: “finstas” are “fake” or secondary accounts used to post especially candid photos to a smaller audience, thus they are deployed strategically to avoid the social pressure of looking polished and attractive. These accounts are referred to as “fake” because they are often pseudonymous, but the practice of compartmentalising audiences makes the promise that the photos posted are more authentic, spontaneous, and intimate. Kylie Cardell, Kate Douglas, and Emma Maguire (162) argue that while secondary accounts promise a less constructed version of life, speaking back to the dominant genre of aesthetically pleasing Instagram photos, all social media posts are constructed within the context of platform norms and imagined audiences (Litt & Hargittai 1). Still, secondary accounts are important for revealing these norms (Cardell, Douglas & Maguire 163). The secondary account is particularly prevalent on Twitter, a platform that often brings together multiple audiences into a public profile. In 2015, author Emily Reynolds claimed that Twitter alts were “an appealingly safe space compared to main Twitter where abuse, arguments and insincerity are rife” (n.p.).This paper draws on a survey of Twitter users with alts to argue that the strategic use of pseudonyms, profile photos without faces, locked accounts, and smaller audiences are ways to overcome some of the built-in limitations of social media automediality.Identity Is Multiple Chris Poole, founder of anonymous bulletin board 4chan, believes identity is a fluid concept, and designed his platform as a space in which people could connect over interests, not profiles. Positioning 4chan against real-name platforms, he argues:Your identity is prismatic […] we’re all multifaceted people. Google and Facebook would have you believe that you’re a mirror, that there is one reflection that you have, there is one idea of self. But in fact we’re more like diamonds. You can look at people from any angle and see something totally different, but they’re still the same. (n.p.)Claiming that identities are contextual performances stems from longstanding sociological and philosophical work on identity from theorists like Erving Goffman, who in the 1950s proposed a dramaturgical framework of the self to consider interactions as fundamentally social and performative rather than reflecting one core, essential inner self.Social media profiles allow people to use the language of the platform to represent themselves (Marwick 362), meaning identity performances are framed by platform architecture and features, formal and informal rules, and social ties (Schmidt 369). Social media profiles shape how people can engage in how they represent themselves, argue Shelly Farnham and Elizabeth Churchill, who claim that the assumption that a single, unified online identity is sufficient is a problematic trend in platform design. They argue that when facets of their lives are incompatible, people segment those lives into separate areas in order to maintain social norms and boundaries.Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson consider identity multiplicities to be crucial to automediality, which is built on an aesthetic of bricolage and pastiche rather than understanding subjectivity to be the essence of the self. In her work on automediality and online girlhood, Maguire ("Home"; "Self-Branding" 74) argues that an automedial approach attends to how mediation shapes the way selves can be represented online, claiming that the self is brought into being through these mediation practices.This article understands alt accounts as a type of social media practice that Nick Couldry (52) identifies as presencing: sustaining a public presence with media. I investigate presencing through studying alts as a way to manage separate publics, and the tension between public and private, on Twitter by surveying users who have a main and an alt account. Although research into multiple account use is nascent, Alice Marwick lists maintaining multiple accounts as a tactic to mitigate context collapse, alongside other strategies such as using nicknames, only sharing posts when they are appropriate for multiple audiences, and keeping more personal interactions to private messenger and text message.Ben Light argues that while connection is privileged on social media, disconnective practices like editing out, deleting, unfriending, untagging, rejecting follower requests, and in this case, creating alt accounts, are crucial. Disconnecting from some aspects of the social media experience allows people to stay connected on a particular platform, by negotiating the dynamics that do not appeal to them. While the disconnective practice of presencing through an alt has not been studied in detail, research I discuss in the next section focuses on multi-account use to argue that people who have more than one account on a single platform are aware of their audiences, and want control over which people see which posts.Multi-Platform and Multi-Account UseA conference presentation by Frederic Stutzman and Woodrow Hartzog calls maintaining multiple profiles on a single platform a strategy for boundary regulation, through which access is selectively granted to specific people. Stutzman and Hartzog interviewed 20 people with multiple profiles to determine four main motives for this kind of boundary regulation: privacy, identity management, utility (using one profile for a distinct purpose, like managing a restaurant page), and propriety (conforming to social norms around appropriate disclosure).Writing about multiple profiles on Reddit, Alex Leavitt argues that temporary or “throwaway” accounts give people the chance to disclose sensitive or off-topic information. For example, some women use throwaways when posting to a bra sizing subreddit, so men don’t exploit their main account for sexual purposes. Throwaways are a boundary management technique Leavitt considers beneficial for Redditors, and urges platform designers to consider implementing alternatives to single accounts.Jessa Lingel and Adam Golub also call for platforms to allow for multiple accounts, suggesting Facebook should let users link their profiles at a metadata level and be able to switch between them. They argue that this would be especially beneficial for those who take on specific personas, such as drag queens. In their study of drag queens with more than one Facebook profile, Lingel and Golub suggest that drag queens need to maintain boundaries between fans and friends, but creating a separate business page for their identity as a performer was inadequate for the kind of nuanced personal communication they engaged in with their fans. Drag queens considered this kind of communication relationship maintenance, not self-branding. This demonstrates that drag queens on Facebook are attentive to their audience, which is a common feature of users posting to social media: they have an idea, no matter how accurate, of who they are posting to.Eden Litt and Eszter Hargittai (1) call this perception the imagined audience, which serves as a guide for how to present the self and what to post about when an audience is unknown or not physically present. People in their study would either claim they were posting to no-one in particular, or that they had an audience in mind, whether this was personal ties (close friends, family, specific individuals like a best friend), communal ties (people interested in cleaning tips, local art community, people in Portland), professional ties (colleagues, clients, my radio show audience), and phantasmal ties (people with whom someone has an imaginary relationship, like famous people, brands, animals, and the dead).Based on these studies of boundary regulation, throwaway accounts, separate Facebook pages for fans and friends, and imagined audiences on social media, I designed a short survey that would prompt respondents to reflect on their own practices of negotiating platform limitations through their alt account.Asking Twitter about AltsTo research alts, I asked my own Twitter followers to tell me about theirs. I’ve been tweeting from @emvdn since 2010, and I have roughly 5,500 followers, mostly Melbourne academics, writers, and professionals. This method of asking my own Twitter followers questions builds on a study by Alice Marwick and danah boyd, in which they investigated context collapse on social media by tweeting questions like “who do you tweet to?” and monitoring the replies.I sent out a tweet with a link to the survey on 31 January 2018, and left it open for responses until I submitted this draft article on 18 February 2018:I’m writing about alt (alternative/secondary) accounts on social media. If you have an alt account, on Twitter or elsewhere, could you tell me about it, in survey form? (van der Nagel)The tweet was retweeted 161 times, spreading the survey to other accounts and contexts, and I received a total of 326 responses to the survey. For a full list of survey questions, see Appendix. I asked people to choose one alt (if they had more than one), and answer questions about it, including what prompted them to start the account, how they named it, who the audience is for their main and their alt, and how similar they perceived their main and alt to be. I also asked whether they would like to remain anonymous or be quoted under a pseudonym, which I have followed in this article.Of course, by posting the Twitter survey to my own followers, I am necessarily asking a specific group of people whose alt practices might not be indicative of broader trends. Just like any research done on Twitter, this research attracted a particular group: the results of this survey give a snapshot of the followers of a 29 year old female Melbourne academic, and the wider networks it was retweeted into.Although I asked anyone with more than one account on the same platform to fill out the survey, I’ll be focusing on pseudonymous alts here. Not everyone is pseudonymous on their alt: 61 per cent of respondents said they use a pseudonym, and half (51 per cent) said theirs was locked, or unavailable to the public. Some people have an alt in order to distinguish themselves from their professional account, some are connecting with those who share a specific interest, and others deliberately created an alt to harass and troll others on Twitter. But I regard pseudonymous alts as especially important to this article, as they evidence particular understandings of social media.Asking how people named their alt gave me an insight into how they framed it: as another facet of their identity: “I chose something close, but not too close to my main twitter handle,” or directed towards one particular subject they use the alt for: “I wanted a personal account which would be about all sorts, and one just for women’s sport” (Danielle Warby). Some changed the name of their account often, to further hide the account away: “I have renamed it several times, usually referencing in jokes with friends.”Many alt usernames express that the account is an alternative to a main one: people often said their alt username was their main username with a prefix or suffix like “alt,” “locked,” “NSFW” (Not Safe For Work, adult content), “priv” (short for “private”), or “2”, so if their main account was @emvdn, their alt account might be @emvdn_alt. Some used a username or nickname from another part of their life, used a pop culture reference, or wanted a completely random username, so they used a username generator or simply mashed the keyboard to get a string of random characters. Others used their real name for their alt account: “It’s my name. The point wasn’t to hide, it was to separate/segment conversiations [sic]” (knitmeapony).When asked who their audience was for their main and their alt, most people spoke of a smaller, more intimate audience of close friends or trusted accounts. On Twitter, people with locked accounts must approve followers before they can see their tweets, so it’s likely they are thinking of a specific group. One person said their alt was “locked behind a trust-wall (like a paywall, but you need to pay with a life-long friendship).” A few people said their audience for their alt was just one person: themselves. While their main account was for friends, or just “anyone who wants to follow me” (Brisbane blogger), their alt would simply be for them alone, to privately post and reflect.Asking how similar the main and alt account was led people reflecting on how they used multiple accounts to manage their multifaceted identity. “My alt account is just me unfiltered,” said one anonymous respondent, and another called their accounts “two sides of the same coin. Both me, just public and private versions.” One respondent said, “I would communicate differently in the boardroom from the bedroom. And I guess my alt is more like a private bedroom party, so it doesn’t matter if my bra comes off.”Many people signalled their awareness or experience of harassment when asked about benefits or drawbacks of alt accounts: people started theirs to avoid being harassed, bullied, piled-on, or judged. While an alt account gave people a private, safe channel in which to reach close friends and share intimate parts of their life, they also spoke about difficulties with maintaining more than one account, and potential awkwardness if someone requested to follow them that they did not want to connect with.It seemed that asking about benefits and drawbacks of alts led to articulations of labour—keeping accounts separate, and deciding on who to allow into this private space—but fears about social media more generally also surfaced. Although creating an alt meant people were consciously taking steps to compartmentalise their identity, this did not make them feel completely impervious to harassment, context collapse, and overexposure. “Some dingus will screencap and create drama,” was one potential drawback of having an alt: just because confessions and intimate or sexual photos were shared privately doesn’t mean they will stay private. People were keen to acknowledge that alts involved ongoing labour and platform negotiations.Multiple Identity Facets; Multiple AccountsWhen I released the survey, I was expecting most people to discuss their alt, locked, private account, which existed in contrast to their main, unlocked, professional one. Some people did just that, like Sarah:I worked in the media and needed a place to put my thoughts ABOUT my job/the media that I didn’t want my boss reading – not necessarily negative, just private thoughts I wanted to write somewhere.Wanting to maintain a public presence while still having an intimate space for personal self-disclosure was a common theme, which showed an awareness of imagined audiences, and a desire to disconnect from certain audiences, particularly colleagues and family members. Some didn’t necessarily want an intimate alt, but a targeted one: there were accounts for dog photos, weight loss journeys, fandoms, pregnancies, fetishes, a positive academic advice account using a Barbie doll called @barbie_phd, and one for cataloguing laundromats around London. It also seemed alts were contagious: people regularly admitted they began theirs because a friend had one. “Friends were using alts and it looked like a cool world;” “my friends seemed to be having a good time with it, and I wanted to try something they were interested in;” “wanted to be part of the ‘little twitter’ community.”Fluidities I wasn’t expecting also emerged. One respondent considered both of their accounts to be primary:it’s not clear for me which of my accounts is the “alt”. i had my non-professional one first, but i don’t consider either of them secondary, though the professional one is much more active.Along with those that changed the name of their alt often, L said they “initially kept private to only me to rant, record very private thoughts etc., have since extended it to 3 followers.” Platforms encourage continuous, active, engaged participation with ever-expanding networks of followers and friends. As José van Dijck (12) argues, platforms privilege connections, even as they stress human connectedness and downplay the automated connectivity from which they profit. Twitter’s homepage urges people to “follow your interests. Hear what people are talking about. Join the conversation. See what’s happening in the world right now,” and encourages people to keep adding more connections by featuring a recommendation panel that displays suggestions next to the main feed for “who to follow”, and links to import contacts from Gmail and other address books. In this instance, L’s three followers is an act of resistance, a disconnective practice that only links L with the very specific people they want to be an audience for their private thoughts, not to the extended networks of people L knows.ConclusionThis article has provided further evidence that on social media platforms, people don’t just have one account with their real name that faithfully expresses their one true identity. Even among those with alts, practices vary immensely, with some people using their alt as a quieter, more private space, and others creating a public identity and stream of posts catering to a niche audience.When users understand social media’s visibility, persistence, editability, association, spreadability, searchability, shareability, and personalisation as limitations, they seek ways to compartmentalise their identity facets so they can have access to the conversations, contexts, and audiences they want.There is scope for future research in this area on how alts are created, perceived, and managed, and how they relate to the broader social media landscape and its emphasis on real names, expanding networks, and increasingly sophisticated connections between people, platforms, and data. 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Appendix: List of Survey QuestionsDemographic informationAll the questions in this survey are optional, so feel free to skip any if you’re not comfortable sharing.How old are you?What is your gender identity?What is your main occupation?What is your city and country of residence?Which social media platforms do you use? Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Instagram, Snapchat, LinkedIn, Tumblr, YouTube, Tencent QQ, WeChat, KakaoTalk, Renren, other?Which social media platforms do you have an alt account on? Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Instagram, Snapchat, Google+, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Tumblr, YouTube, Tencent QQ, WeChat, KakaoTalk, Renren, other?Your alt accountThis section asks you to pick one of your alt accounts - for example, your locked account on Twitter separate from your main account, a throwaway on Reddit, or a close-friends-only Facebook account - and tell me about it.Which platform is your alt account on?Is your alt locked (unavailable to the public)? Yes/NoWhat prompted you to start your alt account?Do you use a pseudonym on your alt? Yes/NoDo you use a photo of yourself as the profile image? Yes/NoDo you share photos of yourself on your alt? Yes/NoCan you tell me about how you named your alt?Which account do you use more often? My main/my alt/I use them about the sameWhich has a bigger audience? My main/my alt/They’re about the sameWho is the audience for your main account? Who is the audience for your alt account? What topics would you post about on your alt that you’d never post about on your main? How similar do you think your main and alt accounts are? What are the benefits of having an alt?What are the drawbacks of having an alt? Thank you!If I quote you in my research project, what name/pseudonym would you like me to use? My name/pseudonym is___________ OR I would like to remain anonymous and be assigned a participant number