This dissertation investigates how preadolescent girls negotiate mediated girl power ideals during the developmentally important task of identity construction. Extending existing feminist cultural theory, this dissertation considers how cartoons about girl power superheroes—a recent television phenomenon—contribute to cultural discourse about "tween" girls' strength and empowerment, and thus to the social construction of girlhood. Its central findings are based upon twelve months of fieldwork with 37 preadolescent informants in the suburbs of a large east-coast U.S. city. Drawing upon feminist ethnography and media literacy research, this study explores how preadolescent girls read strength, girlhood, and femininity in girl power texts—and how girls relate these readings to the broader contexts of their everyday lives.

This study's starting point is the dialogue emerging from girl hero media texts. The dissertation considers two key precedents to girl power from the 1930s—Little Orphan Annie and Shirley Temple-and then offers a textual analysis of six recent, popular girl power texts: The Powerpuff Girls, Totally Spies, Kim Possible, My Life as a Teenage Robot, Atomic Betty, and W.I.T.C.H. Significantly, this analysis finds that girl power discourse is simultaneously progressive and regressive. Girl power discourse suggests that girls are strong and can do anything, but it also places limits on that strength and potential—implying they depend on a girl's successful negotiation of a normatively feminine behavior and appearance, which relies on the consumption of various commodities.

Therefore, although girl power proclaims that "girls rule," preadolescent girls who negotiate girl power and the wider popular culture environment often learn that only one identity is socially acceptable: the "girly girl," someone who achieves normative femininity through her "girly" behavior and appearance. Consequently, girls who have embraced "girls rule" empowerment rhetoric nevertheless aspire to meet often unattainable dominant beauty ideals, reporting dissatisfaction with themselves as they are. This dissertation concludes that the feminist potential of girl power is negated by its embrace of normative femininity, by competing messages from the broader media environment, and by girl power's commodification in the service of hegemonic corporate interests—which comes at the expense of girls' empowerment.