Constructing girlhood: abject labour in magazine offices

Upcoming publication in the Gender, Work and Organization journal by Hunter, C and Kivinen, K.: 'Constructing girlhood: abject labour in magazine offices'


Girls’ magazines act as important texts through which meanings of childhood, girlhood and
womanhood are mediated and constructed. However, previous research has focused on either
the conditions of work practices or cultural production of the magazine as a product. Separately
in each context women or girls have been described as abject. The paper will argue that employees
working on girls’ magazines experienced a simultaneous double abjection: in the gendered
working practices and as an outcome of the construction of girlhood they produced. Two
studies of all female teams producing teenage and pre-teen magazines were used, including interviews
and observations. Our approach engaged with the difficulty of examining abjectivity
in working practices, as present but marginalized, silenced and othered. As a result of scrutinizing
the gendered embodiment in these studies, the findings suggest there is a relation between
the working practices and gendered cultural production, forming a process of abjection. This process
was threefold: a marginalization of a particular gendered embodiment, the cracks or leaks
where abjectivity became apparent and the silencing of those leaks. This study will be of value
to scholars interested in gendered embodiment in workplaces, abjectivity and cultural production, noting the interrelation between these areas.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gwao.12141/epdf