Journal articles: 'Physical fitness for women Teenage girls Teenage girls' – Grafiati (2024)

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In the Amsterdam Growth and Health Study, 103 girls and 97 boys were studied five times on a longitudinal basis over a period of 8 years, covering the teenage years from 12 to 17 until young adulthood at 22/23 years. Measured were anthropometric variables such as height, weight (BW), and body fat, and physiological variables such as maximal aerobic power (V̇O2max) and endurance performance (max slope). During the teenage period, V̇O2max/BW remains constant in boys and decreases in girls whereas endurance performance increases in boys and remains constant in girls. By young adulthood V̇O2max/BW and maximal slope have declined in both sexes, and in the case of females are even lower than at the beginning of their teens. Boys superiority in aerobic fitness and the decline in aerobic fitness in both sexes is mainly caused by the differences in the intensity of daily physical activity level.

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Abstract Context West Virginia (WV) is afflicted by high rates of teenage pregnancy and births, opioid usage during pregnancy, and Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome births. Current efforts are ineffective at reducing teenage pregnancy and opioid misuse. While pregnancy and opioid usage may appear to be separate issues, a number of associations suggest adolescent pregnancy, opioid use, and other health-related outcomes are part of a cluster of negative health conditions that should be addressed holistically. Objective To determine whether there is an association between teenage pregnancy and negative health outcomes, including opioid misuse, among WV adolescent girls. Methods This study was conducted from July 2018 to March 2019. We obtained the most recently-available aggregate data at the county level for each of the 55 WV counties from the WV Department of Health and Human Resources (WVDHHR) on July 30, 2018, and we analyzed it during the fall of 2018. Raw data regarding pregnancy-related outcomes included WV girls between the ages of 15 and 19, was acquired between 2014 and 2017 by county, and was provided by the WVDHHR as a mean taken across all four years. Raw data regarding opioid misuse outcomes and heart-health variables included WV girls and women of all ages, was collected between 2014 and 2017 by county, and was provided by the WVDHHR as a mean taken across all four years, unless stated otherwise. Pearson correlation analysis was utilized to examine the associations between the teenage pregnancy and birth rates, opioid misuse, pregnancy, and heart-health-related statistics, as well as environmental variables. Results Teenage pregnancy and birth rates were positively associated with fetal death rates (r=0.308, p<0.05 and r=0.261, p<0.10, respectively). The rate of fetal death among mothers aged 15–19 years was higher in counties with higher teenage pregnancy and birth rates. As the pregnancy and birth rates increased, the rate of abortion increased even more (r=0.434 and r=0.304 respectively, both p<0.05). Teenage pregnancy and birth rates were associated with opioid overdose death rates for all WV girls and women (Pearson correlations, r=0.444 and 0.418 respectively, both p<0.01). WV counties with higher pregnancy and birth rates among girls aged 15–19 years had a greater proportion of women dying from opioid overdose. Teenage pregnancy and birth rates were both positively correlated with obesity, physical inactivity, high cholesterol, and high blood pressure (all r>0.39, all p<0.05). Neither the high-school dropout rate nor the number of WVDHHR listed clinics were associated with teenage pregnancy or birth rates (p>0.10). Conclusion Reduction of unintended teenage pregnancy may be viewed as a nontraditional, holistic, method of ameliorating the opioid misuse crisis in the state of WV. This recommendation should be part of a multi-pronged approach to mitigating the opioid epidemic in WV and all of Appalachia.

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Most researchers interested in mate preference have focused on the desires of adult men and women. Few empirical investigations have been conducted on the preferences of adolescent boys and girls, despite the fact that this developmental period represents a time of awakening romantic and sexual interest. The authors asked 46 teenage boys and girls (average age = 15.09 years) to indicate their preferences for various characteristics in an ideal long-term romantic or short-term sexual partner (randomly assigned). Both sexes emphasized attributes related to physical appeal (e.g., attractive physical appearance, sexy appearance) and sexual drive (e.g., sexual passion, high sex drive, sexual responsiveness) when evaluating a casual sexual partner. Conversely, participants focused more upon intellect and other mentally appealing attributes (e.g., intelligence, humor) when considering a romantic partner. No sex differences were found, suggesting that teenage boys and girls share a similar conception of the “perfect” partner.

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The following study qualitatively explores how teen girls’ access to space and assets at a Haitian residential care facility changed 2 years after the implementation of a girls’ empowerment program called Fi Ki Fò (“strong girl” in Haitian Creole). Based on focus groups conducted with program participants ( n = 17) and program teachers ( n = 6), the study found that the Fi Ki Fò program increased access to physical spaces which has had implications for teenage girls’ individual and collective asset accumulation. The study also revealed that the addition of a program focused on women and girls, implemented later in the institutional life of the care facility, caused tensions with boys living on the property. The findings suggest that, while girls experienced clear benefits from the program, the lack of a supportive institutional structure and a gender transformative approach inhibited more fully realized empowerment.

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In the Amsterdam Growth And Health Longitudinal Study (AGAHLS), a group of approximately 650 12- to 14-year-old boys and girls was followed in their growth, and development of their health their lifestyle including diet, physical activity and smoking. One of the main interests was the change in their aerobic fitness. From 12 to 36 years of age in total, eight repeated measurements were performed to measure peak oxygen uptake (peak VO2). In this study the data of peak VO2 are revisited and extended: We made use of all collected data as a mixed longitudinal design including cross-sectionally measured subjects as well as longitudinally measured subjects. This led to the availability of 1,194 boys and 1356 girls. With generalized estimating equations (GEE) the longitudinal changes with chronological age and differences between boys and girls were analyzed. Teenage boys and girls increased their peak VO2 (ml/min) significantly (p < .001) until age 14 in girls and until age 17 in boys. However peak VO2 relative to bodyweight (peak VO2/BW) had significantly (p < .001) decreased over the whole age range from 12 to 36 in both sexes. Vigorous physical activity (VPA) also showed a decrease and was significantly (p < .001) related with lower peak VO2/BW (Beta = 0.001). This relation was stronger in boys than in girls. Because at the start of AGAHLS no fast responding metabolic instruments were available, future longitudinal studies about aerobic fitness should include also measurement of VO2 kinetics.

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The development and pilot stage of a Sport England programme called GirlSportTM is described. The programme consisted of a magazine and workshop addressing issues surrounding the loss of interest from sport and physical activity amongst adolescent girls. Although teenagers were a clear target market for the programme, it was also designed to be delivered to adult facilitators. Focus groups were undertaken with a select group of 14 & 15-year-old teenage girls and their responses fed into the production of a magazine. The magazine was developed into a supporting workshop. The resources were then utilised in a pilot phase during which the messages and content were evaluated and monitored to assess the effectiveness of the programme. The girls enjoyed an opportunity to reflect about their sport and welcomed the positive messages of women in physical activity. The adults were not surprised by the messages and felt that the content reinforced many of their previously held views. They considered the workshop to be a worthwhile experience and the magazine an interesting read. The comments highlighted in the evaluation are discussed in the context of the cult of femininity and the role of teenage magazines in the construction of successful health promotion messages.

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The growth of teenage girls optimally depends on the intake with good quality and quantity. Nutrition status is a state determined by the degree of physical demand for energy and nutrients derived from food and also depends on physical activity performed. The purpose of this study is to determine the relationship between physical activity and diet with nutritional status of young women in SMPN 16 Makassar. The method of research is a cross sectional study design with analytic approach. The subject is a student of class VIII counted 84 people. Nutritional status is obtained by weighing and body weight which is then calculated using z-score. The dietary habit is obtained through the Food Frequency Quesionary (FFQ) which is then processed by summing the score of each foodstuff and then compared with the average score of the total score of all subjects. Physical activity is obtained through recall of physical activity processed by using physical activity level formula. The data is presented by graphical and narratives form. The results showed that there was a significant correlation between physical activity and nutritional status of the subjects, indicated by subjects with normal nutritional status of 29 people (34.5%) and 14 people (16.7%) with mild physical activity. Teenagers with normal nutritional status and thin in general medium activity. This study also shows that there is a significant relationship between dietary habit with nutritional status of the subjects, indicated by subjects who have normal nutritional status and low diet is low as many as 22 people (26.2%). Teachers and parents should educate subjects to improve their physical activity, such as doing sport at home and school, and directing them to consume healthy and nutritious food as recommended by their youth.

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The field of gifted and talented studies has its origins in the intelligence quotient research of the late 19th and early 20th century. These psychological foundations remain a strong influence even though the field has since expanded to include other paradigms and greater diversity in conceptions of giftedness and talent. Some researchers argue that the field could benefit from greater interdisciplinary engagement, especially in studies of gifted and talented girls, which tend to include a focus on how gifted girls’ external environments influence their emotional worlds. This article proposes that concepts developed by critical sociologist Pierre Bourdieu are useful for expanding and deepening understandings of the internal and external worlds of gifted and talented girls. It offers evidence from a recent qualitative study with academically gifted and talented teenaged girls in New Zealand. The results highlighted the marginalised position of the gifted and talented identity and the privileging of identities that were based on dispositions versus innate ability. The study also identified a hierarchy of valued forms of capital within the teenage girl social landscape and a resulting theorisation of an empowered gifted and talented girl habitus. This article demonstrates how Bourdieu’s work is a constructive addition to the field.

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In Indonesia iron deficiency anemia in adolescent girls is still a major problem, due to the rapid growth of adolescents and an imbalance between nutritional intake and the activities of adolescents. Efforts to prevent and improve nutrition should be done immediately because it can cause impacts, among others, lower adolescent endurance so easily affected by disease, decreased ability and concentration of learning, decreased fitness and learning achievement. This study aims to determine the relationship between nutritional status and nutritional intake with the incidence of anemia in young women in SMU 98 Jakarta Year 2016. This research type is analytical with cross sectional approach. The sample of this research are students X, XII and XII. 200 students at SMU 98 Jakarta Timur in August 2017. Sampling is done by stratified random sampling and taken proportionally. Data collection with IMT examination, consumption with recall form and Hb level measurement with Hemocue tool. Data analysis using chi square test. The results obtained iron intake can reduce the chances of anemia in young women. Teenagers who get less iron intake, 7.1 times more risky to experience anemia than teenagers who get iron intake well after controlled by variable menstrual patterns, physical activity and breakfast habits. Recommendations for young women to increase iron intake and balanced diet.

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ObjectiveTo develop sex-specific and age-specific normative values for the nine Eurofit tests in European children and adolescents aged 9–17 years.MethodsA systematic review was undertaken to identify papers that explicitly reported descriptive results for at least one of nine Eurofit tests (measuring balance, muscular strength, muscular endurance, muscular power, flexibility, speed, speed-agility and cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF)) on children and adolescents. Data were included on apparently healthy (free from known disease/injury) children and adolescents aged 9–17 years. Following harmonisation for methodological variation where appropriate, pseudodata were generated using Monte Carlo simulation, with population-weighted sex-specific and age-specific normative centiles generated using the Lambda Mu Sigma (LMS) method. Sex-specific and age-specific differences were expressed as standardised differences in means, with the percentage of children and adolescents with healthy CRF estimated at the sex-age level.ResultsNorms were displayed as tabulated centiles and as smoothed centile curves for the nine Eurofit tests. The final dataset included 2 779 165 results on children and adolescents from 30 European countries, extracted from 98 studies. On average, 78% of boys (95% CI 72% to 85%) and 83% of girls (95% CI 71% to 96%) met the standards for healthy CRF, with the percentage meeting the standards decreasing with age. Boys performed substantially (standardised differences >0.2) better than girls on muscular strength, muscular power, muscular endurance, speed-agility and CRF tests, but worse on the flexibility test. Physical fitness generally improved at a faster rate in boys than in girls, especially during the teenage years.ConclusionThis study provides the largest and most geographically representative sex-specific and age-specific European normative values for children and adolescents, which have utility for health and fitness screening, profiling, monitoring and surveillance.

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Anemia is a condition in which the body lacks red blood cells. This condition can affect anyone; however, women are more vulnerable to experience it. The period of growth requires an adequate intake of iron for physical development, especially when experiencing puberty teenage girls experience menarche which increases the body’s intake of iron. One in three young women in Indonesia is prone to anemia. Unfortunately, although the results of the questionnaire stated that many people already knew the term, there were still many young women who only knew the symptoms. Therefore, young women who do not know the dangers and effects of anemia consider it trivial and do not prevent anemia. This can be ascertained through the program that has been held by the government. The results of the program stated that only 2% of young women who received blood tablets consume them. “Sekar” is a social campaign focused on the prevention of anemia. It is designed to communicate in a way that resonates with the needs and interest of teen girls. To do so, the campaign talks about achievement and the future. Visually, the campaign shows the potential of teen girls as a seed that will bloom, where anemia is a limit to productivity in achieving a bright future.

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The results of a retrospective analysis and a one‑stage study conducted among 352 teenage girls and 952 postmenopausal women demonstrate that pathology of the cardiovascular system (CVS) can be programmed in the antenatal period. Mass and growth indicators of the newborn are an important morphofunctional characteristic of a person and can be used not only to assess physical development throughout life, but also as a marker of risk of one or another somatic pathology. Timely identification of risk factors for adolescent health disorders and their adequate correction can significantly improve the results of cardiovascular prophylaxis. Equally important is the prevention of insufficient or excessive weight gain during fetal development, which can be achieved by prescribing vitamin‑mineral complexes to pregnant women.

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Abstract Background: Prevalence of PCOS is increasing among Indian women due to growing changes in environment and lifestyle and also due to awareness of symptoms and willingness to seek medical help. Six out of ten females diagnosed with PCOS are teenage girls. Studies have shown that the women with PCOS often suffer from psychiatric comorbidities including depression but the data regarding the prevalence of depression in adolescent Indian girls with PCOS are scarce. Aim: To find out the prevalence of depression and its associations among adolescent Indian girls with PCOS. Methods: This was a cross sectional, case-control study conducted in the Endocrinology department of a speciality hospital of North India. We evaluated 160 newly diagnosed adolescent PCOS girls aged between 13-19 years, diagnosed by Revised Rotterdam criteria. Control group included 80 healthy, age matched, non-PCOS girls. Detailed history, Anthropometric measurements and standard hormonal evaluation were done. Depression was assessed by administering Patient Health Questionnaire-Adolescents (PHQ-A), a self-administered questionnaire based on DSM IV criteria. PHQ-A score of &gt;10 was considered as the threshold for significant depression. Statistical evaluation was done with SPSS and P value of &lt;0.05 was significant. Results: Mean age of the patients was 16.3 +/- 3.2yrs. The frequencies of significant depression in PCOS and control groups were 36.5% and 11.9% respectively. PCOS adolescents having higher HOMA-IR value (p-0.03), higher hirsutism score (P-0.01) and higher BMI (p-&lt;0.01) had a higher risk of significant depression. Menstrual irregularity, acne, dyslipidaemia, serum testosterone, 17-OHP, prolactin and serum TSH levels had no significant correlation with depression. Discussion: PCOS commonly prevails during adolescence, a phase when girls are more concerned about their physiology and physical health. Negative body image and chronic stress can lead to disturbed mental health. Our study by using a simple and patient friendly clinical tool the PHQ-A has found higher prevalence of depression (almost 3 times) in Indian adolescent PCOS girls as compared to controls and it significantly corelates with insulin resistance, hirsutism and obesity. PCOS puts tremendous burden, on both physical as well as mental health, especially in adolescents, due to its effects on physical appearance, self-esteem, fertility and also due to other long term metabolic complications associated with it. PCOS is an urgent health problem that needs careful assessment and appropriate treatment of its all aspects. Timely recognition of mental health issues in these girls can help with early interventions including referral to mental health specialists (if needful) and add to the wellbeing of these young girls. Conclusion: The initial evaluation of PCOS in adolescent girls should also include the assessment of mental health disorders.

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Background: Polycystic ovaries with its symptom complexes (PCOS) constitute about 30% of the cases seen every day in patients coming for scan in our hospital. Since PCOS is associated with various long-term complications it is important to analyze is its incidence and its cause for the increase.Methods: The study included 600 women who came for USG for various complaints who had USG features of PCO. Their symptoms, marital and obstetric history was recorded their general appearance and BMI were also recorded and analysed. Their food pattern and physical activity was also elicited.Results: PCO was a finding in around 24% of unwed teenage girls. PCO affected both obese (21.4%) and non-obese (56.2%) women. The complaints for which they come were mainly menstrual disturbances and primary (28.8%) infertility and secondary (22.6%) infertility.Conclusions: Early identification of PCO is essential and its treatment will prevent various long-term complications of it in the future generation.

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ABSTRACTBackground: Dysmenorrhea is a painful sensation, cramping in the lower abdomen which is often accompanied by other symptoms, such as sweating, headache, nausea, diarrhea, and tremors, all of which occur before or during menstruation. Teenage girls who experience dysmenorrhea can interfere with social or physical activities because when they are in pain, sufferers tend to be silent and even don't want to interact with other people, they tend to be more emotional. Emotional embodiment part of what a woman feels, a reaction to a certain event or situation. Emotional status and dysmenorrhea in women is a conscious experience that influences bodily activities and is psychologically able to influence a woman's emotions. Objective: To identify emotional status and to analyze the relationship between emotional status and the degree of dysmenorrhea in young girls. Methods: Quantitative research, descriptive analytic research design with cross sectional research design with proportionate stratified random sampling technique, the sample of this study was 54 students of class X SMKN 12 Loa Buah Samarinda who experienced dysmenorrheaResults: Variable emotional status obtained positive emotional classification 33 (61, 1%) and negative emotions 21 (38.9%) respondents. Variable The degree of dysmenorrhea was classified as mild 35 (64.8%), moderate 12 (22.2%), severe 5 (9.3%) and unbearable 2 (3.7%). The test used Pearson Chi-square results obtained P value = 0.402, the significant level (α) is 0.05, then p> from α. This result means that Ho is accepted, there is no relationship between emotional status and the degree of dysmenorrhea in young girls at SMKN 12 loa buah samarinda. Conclusion: There is no relationship between emotional status and the degree of dysmenorrhea in adolescents at SMKN 12 Loa Buah Samarinda

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Abstract: Personal hygiene is an action to maintain the cleanliness and health of a person for his welfare, both physical and psychological. If someone is sick, usually the health problem is less attention. This happens because it considers the problem of cleanliness is a trivial problem, even though if it is not paid attention to can affect general health. This study aims to determine the factors associated with personal hygiene in young women at SMP Negeri 4 Majene. This study used an analytic survey design with a cross sectional study approach. This research was conducted at SMP Negeri 4 Majene, Majene Regency with a total sample of 47 young women. Sampling is done by total sampling method. The results showed sufficient personal hygiene behavior of 31 people (65.1%) and less by 16 people (34.9%). Chi-Square test results showed no relationship between the level of knowledge of young women with personal hygiene with Fisher Exact values ​​obtained p = 1.00 and there was no relationship between the level of confidence of young women with personal hygiene with continuity correction values ​​obtained p = 0.533. The conclusion of this study is that there is no relationship between the factors of knowledge and belief in personal hygiene of teenage girls at Majene Neg 4 Middle School.

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Adolescence is a transition from childhood to adulthood which includes biological, psychological and social changes. During menstruation there will be problems or complaints such as dysmenorrhea. Meanwhile, menstrual pain (dysmenorrhea) is a physical disorder that is very prominent in women who are experiencing menstruation in the form of pain in the stomach. This study aims to determine the effect of religious music on the intensity of menstrual pain in class X adolescents at the Daarul Muttaqien II Modern Islamic boarding school, Tangerang. The research design used was a quasy-experiment with a pre and post-test design without control (self-control). Collecting data using the NRS observation sheet and pain measurement that has been tested for validity and reliability. The sample consisted of 35 respondents who were taken by consecutive sampling technique. This study showed that 68.6% of respondents had mild pain, while 31.4% of respondents had no pain. The results of the Wilcoxon statistical test showed that there were significant differences in the level of knowledge before and after religious music therapy with a value of p = 0.001 (p <0.05). This research is expected to be developed in further research and can be used as a reference by increasing the number of samples and variables as a comparison.Keywords: Effect of Music Therapy, Menstrual Pain

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Overview: Iron is an essential nutrient, playing a central role in oxygen transport and cellular energy metabolism. The importance of ensuring adequate bioavailable dietary iron stems from the severe consequences associated with iron deficiency (ID) and anemia, including reduced immune function and resistance to infection, developmental delays and irreversible cognitive deficits in young children, impaired physical work performance, and adverse pregnancy outcomes. Specific populations: Poor dietary iron intake and ID exist in Canada, particularly in women of reproductive age. Data from the provincial nutrition surveys suggest that the prevalence of inadequate iron intakes (and low intakes of absorbable iron) among women under 50 years of age is over 10%, which may reflect poor iron status. Teenage girls are at risk for low iron stores because of the adolescent growth spurt and the onset of menstruation; those who are vegetarian are at even greater risk. Conclusions: The Canadian diet has changed so that grain products are now the main source of dietary iron for all age groups. The public must be educated to ensure the consumption of adequate quantities of bioavailable iron and enhancing factors such as vitamin C. Industry, government, and health professionals must work together to promote healthy eating patterns and the selection of appropriate foods.

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Purpose of research. The study aimed to develop a statistical model of an image of women’s weightlifting. Methods and organization of research. The first stage of the study involved interviewing 77 Moscow schoolgirls aged 12–14. The girls were asked to express their associations, thoughts, or value judgments related to women’s weightlifting. The obtained data were processed using qualitative and quantitative content analysis. The second stage of the study focused on selecting antonymic (opposite in meaning) pairs of statements characterizing women’s weightlifting. Thus, a set of 31 bipolar scales of the semantic differential was obtained. In the third stage of the study, the same 77 schoolgirls aged 12–14 were asked to evaluate their attitude to women’s weightlifting using the developed semantic differential scales. The obtained data underwent factor analysis with the rotation of reference axes according to the Varimax criterion. The result of factorization was a statistical model of the image of women’s weightlifting. Research result. The statistical (factor) model of the image of women’s weightlifting consists of seven components with groups of characteristics inherent in each of them: 1) aesthetic qualities, the popularity of the sport, its positive impact on the corporal and personal dimension of women; 2) gender appropriateness of the sport and its positive effect on health and social status of women; 3) accessibility (physical, financial) and safety of the sport; 4) the quality of the sports infrastructure, demand for this kind of sport among the youth; 5) influence on women’s social status; 6) positive impact on the moral and volitional powers of women going in for weightlifting; fashion for men’s sports; 7) public recognition of sporting success and achievements of national athletes. Conclusion. The results of the research can be used to develop a program for correcting the women’s weightlifting image and to formulate arguments for the successful positioning of women’s weightlifting among teenagers and young people. Keywords: women’s weightlifting, image, teenage girls, factor model of the women’s weightlifting image.

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Growth and development is a continuous process in the process of reaching adulthood, including the teenage stage. The problem that is often faced is physical change. Adolescent physical changes that appear are the increase in height and weight which affects the Body Mass Index (BMI). Height is one of the important things in adolescent growth and development. which is affected by genetic and environmental factors. The peak of growth in adolescents is different between boys and girls, so the pattern of height and BMI are also different. The purpose of this study was to determine differences in adolescent height based on age groups and BMI in Medical Faculty of UMM. This research is a comparative study by taking a sample of 100 medical students of UMM who have an age range of 17-20 years. The data to be taken is height measured using a MIC scale health scale ratio ratio. The measurement results have a numerical scale with units of centimeters (cm). Body mass index (BMI) is an index obtained from the division of body weight with height2. The measurement results are stated in kg / m2. All data obtained will be analyzed using the ANOVA comparative test. ANOVA test results generated p value in the two groups of students> 0.05 which concluded that the mean height of the student body based on age and BMI was not significantly different (not significant) statistically for both men and women. The conclusion from this study there were no differences in adolescent height based on age groups and BMI among medical students of UMM.

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Reproductive health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, which is not solely free of disease or disability, in all matters relating to the reproductive system, as well as its functions and processes. The fact is still found many teenage girls who wear tight jeans and do not know that the use of tight jeans can affect the reproductive health of one occurrence of whiteness (Fluor Albus). The purpose of this study is to determine the relationship of the knowledge level of young women about the use of tight jeans with Fluor Albus whiteness in High School Pembangunan Bukittinggi Year 2017. This research method using a descriptive correlation method with Cross-Sectional approach design, then data is processed by using the Chi-Square test. The population in this study were 118 respondents. The sample in this research is 55 respondents with Probability Sampling technique on 15 to 16 August 2017 in Bukittinggi Pembangunan High School. Univariate results obtained from 55 respondents there are more than half of 31 (56.4%) of respondents have high knowledge, more than half 29 (52,7%) of respondents did not occur whiteness. The result of statistical test obtained p-value = 0,000 (p <α) which means there is a relationship of knowledge with the incidence of whiteness (fluor albus) in High School Pembangunan Bukittinggi Year 2017. The conclusion of the relationship of knowledge with the incidence of leucorrhoea (fluor albus) in High School Pembangunan Bukittinggi Year 2017. It is expected that teenagers to pay more attention to reproductive health on female students. So as to prevent and detect early existence of reproduction organ problem.

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The main objective of global health is to reduce preventable death equally throughout the world. One important strategy is primary prevention through health promotion and early detection. Early diagnosis is defined as several methods to determine in patients the nature of a disease or disorder at its early stage of progression. In a referral health system, such as Indonesia, early diagnosis could be implemented both in primary care and secondary or tertiary referral hospital. Primary care centres screens fatal diseases, such as cancer and cardiovascular risk factors, mostly in asymptomatic patients with identified risk of having the diseases. Accordingly, the early detection programme has been designed for large population in a community setting. It is uncommon for hospitals in Indonesia applying primary prevention where most of the patients are referred with at least a couple of differential diagnoses. Subsequently, early diagnosis in hospital setting would be defined either as accelerating the diagnosis confirmation or detecting any uncommon findings on patients with atypical presentation. In some situation, early detection of life-threatening condition at hospital would prolong or even prevent death. Aside from accurate history taking and comprehensive physical examination, advance laboratory procedure and imaging might assist in early detection at hospital setting. This time, our issue presents case reports on the benefit of early detection in the management of rare disease, anaemia, and COVID-19 pandemic among patients without symptoms or with atypical presentation. In developed countries, most of known congenital diseases were screened prenatally or immediately after delivery. The most common practice in Indonesia is a regular prenatal ultrasound and through physical examination of the baby in their first week. However, this approach would still miss many rare diseases with delayed presentation such as Legg-Calve-Perthes Diseases (LCPD). Pradyana and Astuti1 discussed a paediatric case of LCPD highlighting the difficulty in diagnosis confirmation on a limp gait symptom. Serial imaging not only important in case follow-up, but also to detect newly existing abnormalities which verify the presence of LCPD. Iron deficiency anaemia (IDA) primarily affects women and children in Indonesia. Currently, school-based screening of haemoglobin in teenage girls could prevent the sequalae of IDA through iron supplementation. Early detection in anaemia would determine the presence of IDA before the declined haemoglobin. Recently, international investigators discovered novel biomarker to detect the presence of IDA in asymptomatic patients. Fenty described the potential of using reticulocyte haemoglobin equivalent (Ret-He) to characterize IDA amongst asymptomatic patients in hospital settings.2 This approach would be beneficial for screening purpose in high-risk population, both in community and hospital setting. During COVID-19 pandemic, early diagnosis is a necessity to reduce the infection rate with early quarantine. However, challenging situation might come in patients with atypical presentation, such as gastritis. Widiastana et al describe the later COVID positive result on patients with gastritis which nonresponsive to general treatment.2 The patients did not have any classical signs and symptoms of COVID-19, hence in the community, misdiagnosis of similar condition might exacerbate the rising infection cases.

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<p><em>Puberty is experienced in adolescence that causes physical and sexual maturity. Sexual hormones that have begun to work encourage adolescents to engage in sexual behavior. Women are referred to as the most disadvantaged if they have premarital sex without long-term commitment. And losing your virginity will affect your self-esteem such as feeling insecure, embarrassed, guilty, sinful, dirty, scared, worried, fear not accepted and humiliation and others will arise after having premarital sex. The purpose of this study is to get an overview and know how the self-esteem of teenage girls who have premarital sex. The research method used in this study is qualitative research with phenomenological approach and using interview and observation method to obtain research data. Respondents in this study were five teenage girls who had premarital sex. The results in this study showed that only one respondent fulfilled all aspects of self-esteem. Then, three respondents fulfilled the aspect of feeling of worth. Two respondents fulfilled the aspect of feeling of competence, and two respondents fulfilled the feelings of belonging. The existence of family factors that also affect the respondents to perform premarital sex behavior as well as the existence of environmental factors, personality factors and hormonal factors. Premarital sex performed by these five respondents can be a picture that premarital sex in teenagers is a natural thing to do with a partner as a form of peak of love by teenagers though not married. So that adolescents are expected to study sex education by attending seminars to find out the impacts if premarital sex.</em></p><p><em> </em></p><p><strong><em>Keywords: </em></strong><em>Self-esteem, Self-esteem in teenage girls, teenage girls, premarital sex</em></p>

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Sexual activity among teenagers has been increasing over the past decade, accompanied by younger age at first intercourse which is associated with inconsistent or nonuse of contraception. Problems become more complex because the onset of puberty is earlier than before and sociocultural and religious norm are less stringent, leading to greater opportunities to have pre-marital sex.1 Between 2011 and 2020, more than 140 million girls will become child brides, according to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).2 If current levels of child marriages hold, 39.000 girls daily will marry too young.1 "Complication of pregnancy and childbirth are the leading cause of death in young women aged 15 - 19. Young girls who marry later and delay pregnancy beyond their adolescence have more chance to stay healthy, get higher education, and build a better life.", says Flavia Bustreo, MD, the Assistant Director-General for Family, Women and Children’s. The prevalence of teenage pregnancy in industrialized differs in developing countries. In developed regions, teen parents tend to be unmarried, and adolescent pregnancy is seen as a social issue. By contrast, teenage parents in developing countries, such as in the WHO SEARO regions and in S.E. Asia countries, including Indonesia, are often married and their pregnancy maybe welcomed by family and society. However, in these societies, early pregnancy is usually accompanied by malnutrition and poor health care to cause medical problems.3 A report by Save the Children found that 13 million children are born to women under 20 worldwide each year, more than 90% of these births occur to women living in developing countries. The complications of pregnancy and childbirth are the leading causes of mortality among women between the age of 15 and 19.4 Resources about teenage pregnancy in Indonesia are scarce. The following data were derived from a keynote speech by the Minister of Health of the Republic of Indonesia, at the Annual Scientific Meeting of HOGSI, in Banjarmasin 2015: 38.5% and 18.4% of 22.136.584 teenage women with protein energy deficiency were pregnant and anemic, respectively. Furthermore, the pregnancy rate was 48 per 1000, the total life birth was approximately 4.809.304, and 40% of teenage mothers ended their education. Further reports have identified that premarital sex is uncommon in India, but early marriage often occurs, which means that the rate of adolescent pregnancy is high in that country. The rate of teenage pregnancy in rural regions are higher than in urbanized areas such as South Korea and Singapore. In these areas, marriage before age 20 is rare. Although the occurrence of sexual intercourse before marriage has risen, the rate of adolescent child bearing are low, approximately 4 to 8 per 1000. In Indonesia, the rate of early marriage and pregnancy has decreased sharply; however, it remains high compared to the rest of Asia. According to the World Health Organization, in several Asian countries including Bangladesh and Indonesia, maternal causes contributed a large proportion (26 - 37 %) of death among female adolescents.5 The Importance of Prevention Teenage pregnancy and childbearing bring substantial social and economic burden through immediate and long term impact on teenage parents and their children.6 Pregnancy and birth are significant contributors to high school drop outs rates among girls, only about 50% of teen mothers receive a high school diploma by 22 year of age, where as approximately 90% of woman who do not give birth, during adolescent graduate from high school. Adolescent pregnancy (i.e., in females 13 to 19 years of age) is associated with an increased risk of maternal complications during pregnancy and delivery as well as an increased risk to the fetus. Complications that are associated with adolescent pregnancy include preterm delivery, low birth weight, and infant mortality. The complications are usually are associated with behavioral, psychosocial, and economic factors. Therefore, psychosocial risk factors should be the main focus of care.7 In general, focus priorities should be given to young adolescents before the age of 15, in which relatively high proportion of young boys and girls already have sexual intercourse, and childbearing in some cases. Teenage pregnancy is one of the causes of the failure, making the goals United National Millenium Development Goals 4 and 5 failed to be accomplished. Adolescent pregnancy is a high risk, and has considerable impact in both physical and psychosocial aspects. Youth - friendly services with sensitive counseling, high quality obstetric and antenatal care, as well as a range of safe and affordable contraceptive methods should be available.

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: Adolescent girls and young women constitute a vulnerable population worldwide and an easy target to secondary impacts of a pandemic due to societal norms, existing age, gender-based inequalities, leading to a condition known as “second pandemic”. Due to local and national lockdowns to prevent coronavirus spread, educational institutions, workplaces, and health services have been shut down, making adolescent girls and women prone to sexual, physical exploitation, gender-based violence, educational, financial loss, lack of sexual and reproductive services. The present review briefs some of these secondary impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on adolescent girls and women, which, if taken care of, can prevent many long-term consequences. Methodology: The literature was searched from governmental, non-governmental sites and agencies like WHO, UN, UNICEF, Guttmacher Institute, International Labor Organization, and English peer-reviewed journals, using the USA National Library of Medicine (Pubmed) database, the regional portal of Virtual Health Library, and Scientific Electronic Library Online. The data from the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic till March 2021 about the impact of COVID-19 on women and children were searched and studied. The descriptors used were school drop-out children, adolescent girls, women suffering at home/work, unmet need for contraception, unwanted pregnancies, unsafe abortion, child marriages, and female genital mutilation. Results and Conclusion: COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a “hidden pandemic” against women and children. There is a skyrocketing rise in violence against women/girls, teenage pregnancies, school drop-outs, child marriages, abuse, and female genital mutilation. Hence, women and adolescent girls should be protected from the shadowing effects of the pandemic.

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Abstract Introduction Healthy Me (HM) interventional study was oriented on improvement of physical activity (PA) in 15-year old girls but also included component of eating habits, smoking prevention and personal competencies. Innovative elements of the project involved usage of fitness-band with continuous monitoring of PA and special dedicated smartphone apps. Purpose To assess the effectiveness of 1-year prophylactic intervention with the use of mobile technology in girls between 14 and 15 year of age, in relation to the level of their satisfaction with the program. Methods 1198 girls 14–15 years old from 48 randomly selected schools from all over Poland participated in the HM during 2017/2018 school year. Schools were randomized to full or partial intervention and control group, respectively 636, 277 and 285 girls. Questionnaire data from the beginning and the end of the HM regarding four factors (low PA, eating sweets, smoking and stress level) were analyzed. Mean changes (MC) calculated according to the definition given in table 1 were applied as outcome measure. Satisfaction with the program was assessed after 1 year of participation in the HM as low, average and high. General linear models with main effects were estimated and adjusted for initial level of each factor. Results At the beginning of the study 87% participants did not fulfill criteria for recommended PA, 9% smoked during last 30 days and 67% ate sweets more than ones per week. Mean stress level was 6.92±2.92 points. For the entire study group, the only significant change after 1 year intervention was lower frequency of eating sweets (p=0,007). However, the higher satisfaction with the study resulted in the significantly higher effectiveness of HM intervention (table 1). Mean changes in the analyzed factors Analyzed factor Range Mean change in entire group (SE) Mean change by level of satisfaction p1 p2 low (SE) average (SE) high (SE) Physical activity (MVPA) 0–7 days −0.076 (0.063) −0.396 (0.137) −0.147 (0.068) 0.261 (0.119) 0.001 0.068 Smoking-past 0 – never 0.039 (0.028) 0.270 (0.066) 0.034 (0.033) −0.004 (0.057) 0.002 0.067 6–30 days or more Eating sweets 0 – never −0.296 (0.045) −0.047 (0.101) −0.285 (0.050) −0.313 (0.086) 0.069 0.016 6 – every day more than once Stress Cohen scale 0–16 points 0.105 (0.090) 0.498 (0.211) 0.138 (0.105) −0.424 (0.183) 0.003 0.823 SE: standard error; MVPA: moderate to vigorous physical activity; p1: main effect of the level of satisfaction; p2: main effect of the intervention group. Conclusion Program that was dedicated for improvement of PA in teenage girls could also profitably influence other factors related to health behaviours and stress level in this group but intervention must be perceived by participants as rewarding. It seems, that attractiveness of interventional program design, increased by mobile technologies, is key for its effectiveness for teens. Acknowledgement/Funding National Health Program, Ministry of Health

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BackgroundMany teenagers are not meeting the recommended 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA) a day. In Wales, research shows that only 11% of girls and 20% of boys are doing enough despite the psychological and physical benefits of an active lifestyle. Research has shown that a teenager’s environment influences PA levels. Main AimThe ACTIVE Project explored how teenager’s (aged 13 – 14) environments impact their physical activity, fitness and motivation. MethodsData scientists from Swansea University carried out a cross-sectional analysis of baseline data from the ACTIVE randomised control trial. This included 270 teenagers from 7 secondary schools in Wales’ most deprived areas. Using QGIS 2.18 and open source data to create maps, teenager’s homes, schools and environmental factors such as public transport, active travel routes and natural resources (e.g. green and blue spaces) were geocoded. The distance matrix and distance to nearest hub algorithms were used to create a database which was exported for analysis. ResultsMultivariate regression analysis showed the school environment plays a pivotal role in physical activity. Public transport and natural resources needed to be closer to schools to positively impact activity. More affluent pupils were more motivated to be active and higher motivation was associated with closer active travel and natural resource to schools. Fitness was not impacted by environmental factors. Interestingly ACTIVE found that, as PA improves, sedentary time increases. ConclusionThe school environment plays a pivotal role in teenage physical activity and motivation. Namely, distance to natural resources, suggesting that access to green/blue space is important. There is some contradiction between increased MVPA and higher levels of sedentary behaviour. Improving physical activity opportunities for teenagers in deprived schools especially active transport and access to natural resource, would be beneficial to cardiovascular health.

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The first home video-gaming console, the Magnavox Odyssey, was released in 1972. Its limited graphical capacities led Magnavox to ship it with a number of plastic overlays for the user's television that would admit a little variety into the then relatively crude gaming experience, limited to a built-in, Pong-like game. Computer and video games have come a long way since then, but it often seems as if critical approaches to gaming have continued shuffling through these plastic films, taking transformations of the screen, or on-screen events, for the whole of the gaming experience. It seems to me that reflection has been paralysed, becoming a discourse of regulation as it revolves around anxieties about gender, violence and narrative. I'd like to explore these anxieties as they've emerged in a few places, and then see if I can articulate the beginnings of an approach that might afford us a more complex, less pessimistic aesthetics of gaming. Anxieties around gender are partly premised upon an evident difference in the types, frequency and extent of gameplay on the part of boys and girls. Recent Australian research suggests that while 76% of boys use home computers for gameplay, the proportion of girls who do the same is around 60% (Cuppitt and Stockbridge 1996). In addition, similar Australian research suggests that while 98% of 12-17 year old boys play games regularly, only around 89% of girls do (Durkin and Aisbett 2000). There is evidence that girls and boys favour different gaming genres (Durkin and Aisbett 2000), and there is little doubt that the magazines and Websites that operate so integrally within gaming cultures tend to hail and attract a mostly male audience. Evidence of this kind of gender split can be seen across the extant research, and from it the argument is often made that this gender imbalance implies a lifelong advantage for boys proceeding from an early pleasurable familiarity with computers. In addressing this problem, rather than confronting questions of access, and parental or teacherly responsibilities to guarantee equity of access for boys and girls, or even looking at issues of gender representation, many critics have instead argued that most games are fundamentally unsuited to the way girls play. In a recent anthology, From Barbie To Mortal Kombat (1998), essentialist discourses of gender are deployed in assembling a consensus around what is termed the 'girls games movement'. Time and again in most of the assembled articles and interviews, claims are made that girls' and boys' interests and styles of play are fundamentally different. While boys allegedly favour destructive play, with an emphasis on mastery, control and competition, girls -- it's constantly asserted -- require collaboration and co-operation, an emphasis on feelings and discussion, a less competitive framework for play, and, above all, narrative. Repeatedly in the anthology, its impugned that games now do not encompass the narrative complexity or richness that girls need, and that girls are alienated from the violent 'twitch and kill' dynamic that pervades gaming. Apart from the thoroughgoing essentialism -- which is brilliantly interrogated by the game-grrlz featured at the end of the anthology -- what troubles me about much of the anthology and much contemporary critical work on games is the implied moral demand that young people's game-culture begin to measure up to another generation's notions of 'appropriate' cultural experiences. A persistent trope in critical work on games -- from Jenkins's piece in the anthology (Jenkins 1998) to works like Marsha Kinder's Playing with Power (1991) -- is the parent-critic watching their children playing video games and becoming perplexed and worried about what is going on. The panic around the lack of 'girls games' -- apart from affording a lucrative opportunity to produce and market worthy material to concerned parents -- serves to authorise the 'correction' of young people's culture. The move from a critique of gaming -- one which rarely engages sympathetically with its pleasures -- to an attempt to inject strong, adult-devised narrative content into games is a move from speaking about gamers ('over their heads') to speaking for gamers. This speaking-for, this flutter of panic has, I think, more than a little to do with an anxiety around the dissipation of cultural power. Theorists of moral panic like John Springhall tell us that moral panics function as attempts to preserve the intergenerational status quo and the cultural-critical hierarchy of a particular period (Springhall 1998). Catharine Lumby argues that new media are like force-fields that reorganise social relations in their wake, and that the anxieties they can inspire can tell us a lot about who feels threatened by such re-organisations, and why (Lumby 1997). Gaming is disturbing in that although it shares some features with other, more familiar visual media, it seems finally, stubbornly unassimilable to the modes of criticism that have developed in relation to those forms. Entrenched critical narratives of spectatorship, or the relationship between viewers, texts, meaning and the economies of cultural production don't seem to find any useful or lasting purchase here. No-one would now argue that televisual or cinematic experiences are passive, but gaming's requirement in principle for the player's direct physical participation in the production of cultural experience means that the old separations underpinning mechanisms of identification or notions of consuming audiences seem irritatingly awkward. Faced with these and other difficulties, criticism has tended to become mesmerised with what is shared -- the screen -- and to be at once frustrated and provoked by the enormous differences still inscribed there. While the close scrutiny of gender representations in gaming has uncovered some serious problems, alongside the demand for narrative we can also see it as part of an older generation's attempt to adapt familiar, free-floating critical modes and models to a group of media with which it has no apparent deep or pleasurable engagement. Faced with a radical analytical and critical failure, the lack of any pleasure to account for or recover, and the need to preserve a cultural and critical hierarchy premised upon the study of other media, it is perhaps inevitable that a desire to alter gaming -- to make it more familiar -- has arisen, and with it a critical discourse of regulation. If we move beyond the screen, if we simply attend to what happens when we and others play games, we allow the possibility of a new aesthetics of gaming to emerge that moves beyond such desires for control. When we realise that what is almost never talked about in current critical work is the body of the player or the nature of machine-mediated play, a field begins to open that might allow us to talk about the uses and pleasures of gaming, and to see its various forms in a wider network of interactions. Paradigm-cases for beginning the sorts of investigations I'm thinking of are those amazing arcade games, like Dance Dance Revolution, that enable and even require public performance and public display. Often positioned at the street entrances of arcades, these games usually attract passing crowds to stop and watch (male and female) players dancing in time with thumping tunes and on-screen instructions. Points are scored by closely matching foot placement with the directional arrows thrown up onto the small screen, but what really attracts the onlookers is the undeniable, individual -- and, strictly, unnecessary -- flair with which the dancers often execute their moves. What at the level of programming, and from an analysis of the screen alone, is the most rudimentary of narratives nevertheless mediates a thrilling and spectacular playful-performative display. And this is where we begin to see that gaming pleasures do not, perhaps cannot, rely on finished or closed narratives. It seems to me that the undeniable popularity of gaming comes from the provision of endlessly recursive grammars and vocabularies for cyborg players to narrate performance, play and self. While many gaming genres and titles do include chunks of traditional narrative storytelling, it seems to me that these often simply embellish the distinctive pleasures of gaming, which require and enact the fundamental redistribution of authorial and narrative power. Gaming establishes a new relationship between perceptual fields and bodies -- a relationship fundamentally different from cinematic or televisual relationships. Associated with these pleasures and relationships is gaming's demand for an ontology -- a series of ontologies -- that can conceive of the moment of play as simultaneously social, mechanical, neither, both. Code and performance, programming and improvised play, when seen together in this way, make the demand for narrative -- ultimately premised upon the separation of consumer and product, spectator and image -- empty of any force. This is to say that when we begin to see the moment of gameplay as a hybrid one -- one where human and machine, play and code, text and reading, producer and consumer cannot be meaningfully distinguished -- we can then begin to see that its unfixed, unstriated forms of play demand a hybrid aesthetics. Such a hybrid aesthetics would move beyond the screen alone to consider gaming's involvement in multiple networks, and thus come to a consideration of its pleasures and possibilities that avoided discourses of morality and control. What it would consider is not only the relationship between gaming and other forms of 'visual culture', but simultaneously its technological artefacts, its involvement with transnational industry, the physical dexterities and epistemologies it demands, the differing shapes of its collectives as it proliferates, its interactions with urban spaces, and its production of different kinds and mixtures of spectators, players, narratives and machines. This kind of Latourean anthropology, with its refusal to bracket gaming as another form of 'soft' culture, is a critical approach that will allow us some traction on gaming's slippery surface, as it allows us to talk about its complexity all at once. If we begin to see games as 'mediators -- that is, actors endowed with the ability to translate what they transport', who in turn 'associate, combine and redeploy countless actors' (Latour 1993), if we look beyond the screen and instead, following Wittgenstein, look for the meaning of games in their everyday social use, we will have begun to look at games in a way that is more interested in what they do, than in what they allegedly do not do. Carrying out this kind of aesthetic project will require not only an attention to the involvement of players' bodies in gaming, but to the patterns of games' dissemination, and to what players themselves say about the games they play. Such an approach need not, in opposing the pessimism that goes with screen-fetishism, veer toward the utopianism of so much cyber-rhetoric. If we take arguments like Latour's seriously, we will say not that gaming represents a revolutionary moment, but that there has always been a deep involvement between humans and our technologies, such that machines and humans constitute collectives for social action. An aesthetics of gaming that takes cognisance of this will short-circuit conveniently polarised debates, and clear space for a more interesting consideration of the networks and uses of gaming. Perhaps those of us who have keenly felt the pleasures and possibilities of gaming can extend a conversation that is no longer sifting through the Odyssey's yellowing transparencies. References Cassell, Justine and Henry Jenkins, eds. From Barbie to Mortal Kombat. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1998. Cuppitt, Margaret, and Sally Stockbridge. Families and Electronic Entertainment. Sydney: Office of Film and Literature Classification, 1997. Douglas, Nikki, et al. "Voices from the Combat Zone: Game Grrlz Talk Back." In Cassell and Jenkins. Durkin, Kevin, and Kate Aisbett. Computer Games and Australians Today. Sydney: Office of Film and Literature Classification, 2000. Haraway, Donna J. Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge, 1991. Jenkins, Henry. "'Complete Freedom of Movement': Video Games as Gendered Play Spaces." In Cassell and Jenkins. Kinder, Marsha. Playing with Power in Movies, Television and Video Games: From Muppet Babies to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Berkeley: U of California P, 1991. Latour, Bruno. We Have Never Been Modern. Trans. Catherine Porter. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1993. Lumby, Catharine. "Panic Attacks: Old Fears in a New Media Era." Media International Australia, 85 (1997): 40-6. Springhall, John. Youth, Popular Culture and Moral Panic. Houndmills: MacMillan, 1998. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Philosophical Investigations. Oxford: Blackwell, 1951. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Jason A. Wilson. "Odyssey Renewed: Towards a New Aesthetics of Video-Gaming." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.5 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0010/odyssey.php>. Chicago style: Jason A. Wilson, "Odyssey Renewed: Towards a New Aesthetics of Video-Gaming," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 5 (2000), <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0010/odyssey.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Jason A. Wilson. (2000) Odyssey renewed: towards a new aesthetics of video-gaming. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3(5). <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0010/odyssey.php> ([your date of access]).

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The Walt Disney Company has been creating magical fairy tales since the early 1900s and is a trusted brand synonymous with wholesome, family entertainment (Wasko). Over time, this reputation has resulted in the Disney brand’s huge financial growth and influence on audiences worldwide. (Wohlwend). As the largest global media powerhouse in the Western world (Beattie), Disney uses its power and influence to shape the perceptions and ideologies of its audience. In the twenty-first century there has been a proliferation of retellings of Disney fairy tales, and Kilmer suggests that although the mainstream perception is that these new iterations promote gender equity, new cultural awareness around gender stereotypes, and cultural insensitivity, this is illusory. Tangled, for example, was a popular film selling over 10 million DVD copies and positioned as a bold new female fairy tale character; however, academics took issue with this position, writing articles entitled “Race, Gender and the Politics of Hair: Disney’s Tangled Feminist Messages”, “Tangled: A Celebration of White Femininity”, and “Disney’s Tangled: Fun, But Not Feminist”, berating the film for its lack of any true feminist examples or progressiveness (Kilmer). One way to assess the impact of Disney is to look at the use of shape shifting and transformation in the narratives – particularly those that include women and young girls. Research shows that girls and women are often stereotyped and sexualised in the mass media (Smith et al.; Collins), and Disney regularly utilises body modification and metamorphosis within its narratives to emphasise what good and evil ‘look’ like. These magical transformations evoke what Marina Warner refers to as part of the necessary surprise element of the fairy tale, while creating suspense and identity with storylines and characters. In early Disney films such as the 1937 version of Snow White, the queen becomes the witch who brings a poison apple to the princess; and in the 1959 film Sleeping Beauty the ‘bad’ fairy Maleficent shapeshifts into a malevolent dragon. Whilst these ‘good to evil’ (and vice versa) tropes are easily recognised, there are additional transformations that are arguably more problematic than those of the increasingly terrifying monsters or villains. Disney has created what we have coined the ‘princess bubble’, where the physique and behaviour of the leading women in the tales has become a predictor of success and good fortune, and the impression is created of a link between their possession of beauty and the ‘happily-ever-after’ outcome received by the female character. The value, or worth, of a princess is shown within these stories to often increase according to her ability to attract men. For example, in Brave, Queen Elinor showcases the extreme measures taken to ‘present’ her daughter Merida to male suitors. Merida is preened, dressed, and shown how to behave to increase her value to her family, and whilst she manages to persuade them to set aside their patriarchal ideologies in the end, it is clear what is expected from Merida in order to gain male attention. Similarly, Cinderella, Aurora, and Snow White are found to be of high ‘worth’ by the princes on account of their beauty and form. We contend, therefore, that the impression often cast on audiences by Disney princesses emphasises that beauty = worth, no matter how transgressive Disney appears to be on the surface. These princesses are flawlessly beautiful, capable of winning the heart of the prince by triumphing over their less attractive rivals – who are often sisters or other family members. This creates the illusion among young audiences that physical attractiveness is enough to achieve success, and emphasises beauty as the priority above all else. Therefore, the Disney ‘princess bubble’ is highly problematic. It presents a narrow range of acceptability for female characters, offers a distorted view of gender, and serves to further engrain into popular culture a flawed stereotype on how to look and behave that negates a fuller representation of female characters. In addition, Armando Maggi argues that since fairy tales have been passed down through generations, they have become an intrinsic part of many people’s upbringing and are part of a kind of universal imaginary and repository of cultural values. This means that these iconic cultural stories are “unlikely to ever be discarded because they possess both a sentimental value and a moral ‘soundness’” (Rutherford 33), albeit that the lessons to be learnt are at times antiquated and exclusionary in contemporary society. The marketing and promotion of the Disney princess line has resulted in these characters becoming an extremely popular form of media and merchandise for young girls (Coyne et al. 2), and Disney has received great financial benefit from the success of its long history of popular films and merchandise. As a global corporation with influence across multiple entertainment platforms, from its streaming channel to merchandise and theme parks, the gender portrayals therefore impact on culture and, in particular, on how young audiences view gender representation. Therefore, it could be argued that Disney has a social responsibility to ensure that its messages and characters do not skew or become damaging to the psyche of its young audiences who are highly impressionable. When the representation of gender is examined, however, Disney tends to create highly gendered performances in both the early and modern iterations of fairy tales, and the princess characters remain within a narrow range of physical portrayals and agency. The Princess Bubble Although there are twelve official characters within the Disney princess umbrella, plus Elsa and Anna from the Disney Frozen franchise, this article examines the eleven characters who are either born or become royalty through marriage, and exhibit characteristics that could be argued to be the epitome of feminine representation in fairy tales. The characters within this ‘princess bubble’ are Snow White, Cinderella, Aurora, Ariel, Belle, Jasmine, Tiana, Rapunzel, Merida, Elsa, and Anna. The physical appearance of those in the princess bubble also connects to displays around the physical aspects of ethnicity. Nine out of eleven are white skinned, with Jasmine having lightened in skin tone over time, and Tiana now having a tanned look rather than the original dark African American complexion seen in 2009 (Brucculieri). This reinforces an ideology that being white is superior. Every princess in our sample has thick and healthy long hair, the predominant colour being blonde. Their eyes are mostly blue, with only three possessing a dark colour, a factor which reinforces the characteristics and representation of white ethnic groups. Their eyes are also big and bulbous in shape, with large irises and pupils, and extraordinarily long eyelashes that create an almost child-like look of innocence that matches their young age. These princesses have an average age of sixteen years and are always naïve, most without formal education or worldly experience, and they have additional distinctive traits which include poise, elegance and other desired feminine characteristics – like kindness and purity. Ehrenreich and Orenstein note that the physical attributes of the Disney princesses are so evident that the creators have drawn criticism for over-glamorising them, and for their general passiveness and reliance on men for their happiness. Essentially, these women are created in the image of the ultimate male fantasy, where an increased value is placed on the virginal look, followed by a perfect tiny body and an ability to follow basic instructions. The slim bodies of these princesses are disproportionate, and include long necks, demure shoulders, medium- to large-sized perky breasts, with tiny waists, wrists, ankles and feet. Thus, it can be argued that the main theme for those within the princess bubble is their physical body and beauty, and the importance of being attractive to achieve success. The importance of the physical form is so valued that the first blessing given by the fairies to Aurora from Sleeping Beauty is the gift of physical beauty (Rutherford). Furthermore, Tanner et al. argue that the "images of love at first sight in the films encourage the belief that physical appearance is the most important thing", and these fairy tales often reflect a pattern that the prince cannot help but to instantly fall in love with these women because they are so striking. In some instances, like the stories of Cinderella and Snow White, these princesses have not uttered a single word to their prince before these men fall unconditionally and hopelessly in love. Cinderella need only to turn up at the ball as the best dressed (Parks), while Snow White must merely “wait prettily, because someday her prince will come" (Inge) to reestablish her as royalty. Disney emphasises that these princesses win their man solely on the basis that they are the most beautiful girls in the land. In Sleeping Beauty, the prince overhears Aurora’s singing and that sets his heart aflame to the point of refusing to wed the woman chosen for him at birth by the king. Fortunately, she is one and the same person, so the patriarchy survives, but this idea of beauty, and of 'love at first sight', continues to be a central part of Disney movies today, and shows that “Disney Films are vehicles of powerful gender ideologies” (Hairianto). These princesses within the bubble of perfection have priority placed on their physical and sexual beauty (Dietz), formulating a kind of ‘beauty contest motif’. Examples include Gaston, who does not love Belle in Beauty and the Beast, but simply wants her as his trophy wife because he deems her to be the most beautiful girl in the town. Ariel, from The Little Mermaid, looks as if she "was modeled after a slightly anorexic Barbie doll with thin waist and prominent bust. This representation portrays a dangerous model for young women" (Zarranz). The sexualisation of the characters continues as Jasmine has “a delicate nose and small mouth" (Lacroix), with a dress that can be considered as highly sexualised and unsuitable for a girl of sixteen (Lacroix). In Tangled, Rapunzel is held hostage in the tower by Mother Gothel because she is ‘as fragile as a flower’ and needs to be ‘kept safe’ from the harms in the world. But it is her beauty that scares the witch the most, because losing Rapunzel would leave the old woman without her magical anti-aging hair. She uses scare tactics to ensure that Rapunzel remains unseen to the world. These examples are all variations of the beauty theme, as the princesses all fall within narrow and predictable tropes of love at first sight where the woman is rescued and initiated into womanhood by being chosen by a man. Disney’s Progressive Representation? At times Disney’s portrayal of princesses appears illusively progressive, by introducing new and different variations of princesses into the fold – such as Merida in the 2012 film Brave. Unfortunately, this is merely an illusion as the ‘body-perfect’ image remains an all-important ideal to snare a prince. Merida, the young and spirited teenage princess, begins her tale determined not to conform to the desired standards set for a woman of her standing; however, when the time comes for her to be married, there is no negotiating with her mother, the queen, on dress compliance. Merida is clothed against her will to re-identify her in the manner which her parents deem appropriate. Her ability to express her identity and individuality removed, now replaced by a masked version, and thus with the true Merida lost in this transformation, her parents consider Merida to be of renewed merit and benefit to the family. This shows that Disney remains unchanged in its depiction of who may ‘fit’ within the princess bubble, because the rubric is unchanged on how to win the heart of the man. In fact, this film is possibly more troublesome than the rest because it clearly depicts her parents to deem her to be of more value only after her mother has altered her physical appearance. It is only after the total collapse of the royal family that King Fergus has a change of patriarchal heart, and in fact Disney does not portray this rumpled, ripped-sleeved version of the princess in its merchandising campaign. While the fantasy of fairy tales provides enthralling adventures that always end in happiness for the pretty princesses that encounter them, consideration must be given to all those women who have not met the standard and are left in their wake. If women do not conform to the standards of representation, they are presented as outcasts, and happiness eludes them. Cinderella, for example, has two ugly stepsisters, who, no matter how hard they might try, are unable to match her in attractiveness, kindness, or grace. Disney has embraced and not shunned Perrault’s original retelling of the tale, by ensuring that these stepsisters are ugly. They have not been blessed with any attributes whatsoever, and cannot sing, dance, or play music; nor can they sew, cook, clean, or behave respectably. These girls will never find a suitor, let alone a prince, no matter how eager they are to do so. On the physical comparison, Anastasia and Drizella have bodies that are far more rounded and voluptuous, with feet, for example, that are more than double the size of Cinderella’s magical slipper. These women clearly miss the parameters of our princess bubble, emphasising that Disney is continuing to promote dangerous narratives that could potentially harm young audience conceptions of femininity at an important period in their development. Therefore, despite the ‘progressive’ strides made by Disney in response to the vast criticism of their earlier films, the agency afforded to their new generation of princesses does not alter the fact that success comes to those who are beautiful. These beautiful people continue to win every time. Furthermore, Hairianto has found that it is not uncommon for the media to directly or indirectly promote “mental models of how a woman should look, speak and interact with others”, and that Disney uses its pervasive princess influence “to shape perceptions of female identity and desirability. Females are made to measure themselves against the set of values that are meted out by the films” (Hairianto). In the 2017 film Beauty and the Beast, those outside of the princess bubble are seen in the characters of the three maidens from the village who are always trying to look their very best in the hope of attracting Gaston (Rutherford). Gaston is not only disinterested but shows borderline contempt at their glances by permitting his horse to spray mud and dirt all over their fine clothing. They do not meet the beauty standard set, and instead of questioning his cruelty, the audience is left laughing at the horse’s antics. Interestingly, the earlier version of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast portrays these maidens as blonde, slim, and sexy, closely fitting the model of beauty displayed in our princess bubble; however, none match the beauty of Belle, and are therefore deemed inferior. In this manner, Disney is being irresponsible, placing little interest in the psychological ‘safety’ or affect the messages have upon young girls who will never meet these expectations (Ehrenreich; Best and Lowney; Orenstein). Furthermore, bodies are shaped and created by culture. They are central to self-identity, becoming a projection of how we see ourselves. Grosz (xii) argues that our notions of our bodies begin in physicality but are forever shaped by our interactions with social realities and cultural norms. The media are constantly filled with images that “glorify and highlight some kinds of bodies (for example, the young, able-bodied and beautiful) while ignoring or condemning others” (Jones 193), and these influences on gender, ethnicity, sexuality, race, and religion within popular culture therefore play a huge part in identity creation. In Disney films, the princess bubble constantly sings the same song, and “children view these stereotypical roles as the right and only way to behave” (Ewert). In The Princess and the Frog, Tiana’s friend Charlotte is so desperate to ‘catch’ a prince that "she humorously over-applies her makeup and adjusts her ball gown to emphasize her cleavage" (Breaux), but the point is not lost. Additionally, “making sure that girls become worthy of love seems central to Disney’s fairy tale films” (Rutherford 76), and because their fairy tales are so pervasive and popular, young viewers receive a consistent message that being beautiful and having a tiny doll-like body type is paramount. “This can be destructive for developing girls’ views and images of their own bodies, which are not proportioned the way that they see on screen” (Cordwell 21). “The strongly gendered messages present in the resolutions of the movies help to reinforce the desirability of traditional gender conformity” (England et al. 565). Conclusion The princess bubble is a phenomenon that has been seen in Disney’s representation of female characters for decades. Within this bubble there is a narrow range of representation permitted, and attempts to make the characters more progressive have instead resulted in narrow and restrictive constraints, reinforcing dangerous female stereotypes. Kilmer suggests that ultimately these representations fail to break away from “hegemonic assumptions about gender norms, class boundaries, and Caucasian privileging”. Ultimately this presents audiences with strong and persuasive messages about gender performance. Audiences conform their bodies to societal ‘rules’: “as to how we ‘wear’ and ‘use’ our bodies” (Richardson and Locks x), including for example how we should dress, what we should weigh, and how to become popular. In our global hypermediated society, viewers are constantly exposed to princesses and other appropriate bodies. These become internalised ideals and aid in positive and negative thoughts and self-identity, which in turn creates additional pressure on the female body in particular. The seemingly innocent stories with happy outcomes are therefore unrealistic and ultimately excluding of those who cannot or will not ‘fit into the princess bubble’. The princess bubble, we argue, is therefore predictable and restrictive, promoting female passiveness and a reliance of physical traits over intelligence. The dominance of beauty over all else remains the road to female success in the Disney fairy tale film. References Beauty and the Beast. Dirs. Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise. Walt Disney Productions, 1991. Film. Beauty and the Beast. Dir. Bill Condon. Walt Disney Pictures, 2017. Film. Best, Joel, and Kathleen S. Lowney. “The Disadvantage of a Good Reputation: Disney as a Target for Social Problems Claims.” The Sociological Quarterly 50 (2009): 431–449. doi:10.1111/j.1533-8525.2009.01147.x. Brave. Dirs. Mark Andrews and Brenda Chapman. Walt Disney Pictures, 2012. Film. Breaux, Richard, M. “After 75 Years of Magic: Disney Answers Its Critics, Rewrites African American History, and Cashes in on Its Racist Past.” Journal of African American Studies 14 (2010): 398-416. Cinderella. Dirs. Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson, and Hamilton Luske. Walt Disney Productions, 1950. Film. Collins, Rebecca L. “Content Analysis of Gender Roles in Media: Where Are We Now and Where Should We Go?” Sex Roles 64 (2011): 290–298. doi:10.1007/s11199-010-9929-5. Cordwell, Caila Leigh. The Shattered Slipper Project: The Impact of the Disney Princess Franchise on Girls Ages 6-12. Honours thesis, Southeastern University, 2016. Coyne, Sarah M., Jennifer Ruh Linder, Eric E. Rasmussen, David A. Nelson, and Victoria Birkbeck. “Pretty as a Princess: Longitudinal Effects of Engagement with Disney Princesses on Gender Stereotypes, Body Esteem, and Prosocial Behavior in Children.” Child Development 87.6 (2016): 1–17. Dietz, Tracey, L. “An Examination of Violence and Gender Role Portrayals in Video Games: Implications for Gender Socialization and Aggressive Behavior.” Sex Roles 38 (1998): 425–442. doi:10.1023/a:1018709905920. England, Dawn Elizabeth, Lara Descartes, and Melissa A. Collier-Meek. "Gender Role Portrayal and the Disney Princesses." Sex Roles 64 (2011): 555-567. Ewert, Jolene. “A Tale as Old as Time – an Analysis of Negative Stereotypes in Disney Princess Movies.” Undergraduate Research Journal for the Human Sciences 13 (2014). Grosz, Elizabeth. Volatile Bodies. London, Routledge, 1994. Inge, M. Thomas. “Art, Adaptation, and Ideology: Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” Journal of Popular Film and Television 32.3 (2004): 132-142. Jones, Meredith. “The Body in Popular Culture.” Being Cultural. Ed. Bruce M.Z. Cohen. Auckland University, 2012. 193-210. Kilmer, Alyson. Moving Forward? Problematic Ideology in Twenty-First Century Fairy Tale Films. Central Washington University, 2015. Lacroix, Celeste. “Images of Animated Others: The Orientalization of Disney's Cartoon Heroines from The Little Mermaid to The Hunchback of Notre Dame.” Popular Communications 2.4 (2004): 213-229. Little Mermaid, The. Dirs. Ron Clements and John Musker. Walt Disney Pictures, 1989. Film. Maggi, Armando. Preserving the Spell: Basile's "The Tale of Tales" and Its Afterlife in the Fairy-Tale Tradition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015. Orenstein, Peggy. Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture. New York: HarperCollins, 2011. Parks, Kari. Mirror, Mirror: A Look at Self-Esteem & Disney Princesses. Honours thesis. Ball State University, 2012. Pinocchio. Dirs. Hamilton Luske, Ben Sharpsteen, Wilfred Jackson, Jack Kinney, Norm Ferguson, Bill Roberts, and T. Lee. Walt Disney Productions, 1940. Film. Princess and the Frog, The. Dirs. Ron Clements and John Musker. Walt Disney Pictures, 2009. Film. Richardson, Niall, and Adam Locks. Body Studies: The Basics. Routledge, 2014. Rutherford, Amanda M. Happily Ever After? A Critical Examination of the Gothic in Disney Fairy Tale Films. Auckland University of Technology, 2020. Sleeping Beauty. Dirs. Clyde Geronimi, Eric Larson, Wolfgang Reitherman, and Les Clark. Walt Disney Productions, 1959. Film. Smith, Stacey L., Katherine M. Pieper, Amy Granados, and Mark Choueite. “Assessing Gender-Related Portrayals in Topgrossing G-Rated Films.” Sex Roles 62 (2010): 774–786. Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs. Dirs. David Hand, Wilfred Jackson, Ben Sharpsteen, William Cottrell, Perce Pearce, and Larry Morey. Walt Disney Productions, 1937. Film. Tangled. Dirs. Nathan Greno and Byron Howard. Walt Disney Pictures, 2010. Film. Tanner, Litsa RenÉe, Shelley A. Haddock, Toni Schindler Zimmerman, and Lori K. Lund. “Images of Couples and Families in Disney Feature-Length Animated Films.” The American Journal of Family Therapy 31 (2003): 355-373. Warner, Marina. Fantastic Metamorphoses, Other Worlds. London: Oxford UP, 2002. Wasko, Janet. Understanding Disney: The Manufacture of Fantasy. Polity Press, 2001. Wohlwend, Karen E. “Damsels in Discourse: Girls Consuming and Producing Identity Texts through Disney Princess Play.” Reading Research Quarterly 44.1 (2009): 57-83. Zarranaz, L. Garcia. “Diswomen Strike Back? The Evolution of Disney's Femmes in the 1990s.” Atenea 27.2 (2007) 55-65.

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The negative implications of children’s use of the Internet, particularly their loss of innocence through access to p*rnography, is a topic frequently addressed in public discussions and debate. These debates often take on a technologically determinist point of view and assume that technology directly influences children, usually in a harmful fashion. But what is really happening in the Australian family home? Are parents fearful of these risks, and if so what are they doing about it? A recent exploration of the everyday Internet lives of Australian families indicates that families manage these perceived risks in a variety of ways and are not overly troubled about this issue. Findings from the research project indicate that Australian parents are more concerned about some children’s excessive use of the Internet than about p*rnography. They construct the Internet as interfering with time available to carry out homework, chores, getting adequate sleep or participating in outdoor (fresh air) activities. This disparity, between public discourse regarding the protection of children in the online environment and the actual significance of this issue in the everyday lives of Australian families, reflects the domestic dynamics within the “moral economy of the household” (Silverstone et al. 15) whereby family relationships and household practices inform the manner in which technology is consumed within any given household. The research project described here (Family Internet: Theorising Domestic Internet Consumption, Production and Use Within Australian Families) is funded by an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant and investigates Internet use within Australian homes with specific reference to families with school-aged children. It explores how individual family members make sense of their family’s engagement with the Internet and investigates ways in which the Internet is integrated within Australian family life. Public Debates The relationship between children and technology is often addressed in public debates regarding children’s health, safety, social and educational development. Within these debates technology is usually held responsible for a variety of harmful consequences to children. These technological ‘effects’ range from the decline of children’s social relationships (with both peers and family); through sedentary lifestyles which impinge on fitness levels and the weight (body mass index) of children; to the corruption of children (and their loss of innocence) through access to unsuitable materials. These unsuitable texts include “soft and hardcore p*rn, Neo Nazi groups, paedophiles, racial and ethnic hatred” (Valentine et al. 157). Other digital technologies, such as computer and video games, are sometimes seen as exacerbating these problems and raise the spectre of the ‘Nintendo kid’, friendless and withdrawn (Marshall 73), lacking in social skills and unable to relate to others except through multi-player games – although this caricature appears far removed from children’s normal experience of computer gaming (Aisbett: Durkin and Aisbett). Such debates about the negative implications of the Internet and video games run simultaneously alongside government, educational and commercial promotion of these technologies, and the positioning of digital skills and connectivity as the key to children’s future education and employment. In this pro-technology discourse the family: …is being constructed as an entry point for the development of new computer-related literacies and social practices in young people … what is discursively produced within the global cultural economy as digital fun and games for young people, is simultaneously constructed as serious business for parents (Nixon 23). Thus, two conflicting discourses about children’s Internet use exist simultaneously whereby children are considered both “technically competent and at risk from their technical skills” (Valentine et al. 157). This anxiety is further exacerbated by the fear that parents are losing control of their children’s Internet activities because their own (the parents’) technical competencies are being surpassed by their children. Such fear may well be based on misleading information, particularly in the Australian context. The Australian Broadcasting Authority’s 2001 Internet@ home report “challenges the popular belief that parents lag behind their children in their interest and proficiency with online technology. Most often the household Internet ‘expert’ is an adult” (Aisbett 4). Nonetheless, this public anxiety is underscored by a concern that parents may not be sufficiently Internet-savvy to prevent their children’s access to p*rnography and other undesirable Internet content. This leads to the fundamental anxiety that parents’ natural power base will be diminished (Valentine et al. 157). In the case of children’s access to Internet p*rn it may well be that: although parents still occupy the role of initiated with regard to sexuality, if they are uninitiated technologically then they lose the power base from which to set the markers for progressive socialisation (Evans and Butkus 68). These popular fears do not take into consideration the context of Internet use in the real world—of children’s and parents’ actual experiences with and uses of the Internet. Parents have developed a variety of ways to manage these perceived risks in the home and are not usually overly concerned about their children’s exposure to unsuitable or inappropriate content on the Internet. Families’ everyday experiences of Internet consumption The home Internet is one site where most parents exercise some degree of care and control of their children, supervising both the quantity and quality of their children’s Internet experiences. When supervising their children’s access to particular Internet sites, parents in this study use a variety of strategies and approaches. These approaches range from a child-empowering ‘autonomous’ approach (which recognises children’s autonomy and competencies) to more authoritarian approaches (with the use of more direct supervision in order to restrict and protect children). At the same time children may use the Internet to affirm their autonomy or independence from their parents, as parents in this study affirm: He used to let me see the [onscreen] conversations but he won’t let me see them now. But that’s fine. If I come up and talk to him, he clicks the button and takes the screen off. (Kathy, pseudonyms used for interviewee contributions) Parents who tend to favour a child-empowering approach recognise their children’s autonomy, while at the same time having relatively high expectations of their children’s psychosocial competence and ability to handle a variety of media texts in a relatively sophisticated manner. When asked about her son’s access to adult Internet content, single mum Lisa indicated that Henry (17) had openly accessed Internet p*rnography a few years earlier. She expected (and allowed for) some exploration by her son. At the same time, she was not overly concerned that these materials would corrupt or harm him as she expected these explorations to be a transitory phase in his life: It doesn’t bother me at all. If he wants to do that then he can do it because he’ll get sick of it and I think initially it was ‘let’s see what we can do’. I remember once, he called me in and says ‘Mum, come and look at her boobs’ and I looked at it and I said ‘it’s disgusting’ or something and walked away and he laughed his head off. But I’ve never come in [lately] and found him looking at that stuff … It’s just not something that I’m … really worried about. It’s up to him (Lisa). As with this exchange, families often use media texts as tools in the socialisation of children. The provision of shared topics of conversation allows for discussions between generations: Such materials serve an agenda-setting role … [playing] an important role in providing a socioemotional context for the household within which learning takes place. Technoculture is consequently a critical tool for socialisation … ICTs also construct a framework on/with which to differentiate one member from another, to differentiate between generations, and to differentiate ways in which power and control can be asserted (Green 58). In this case, Lisa’s comment to her teenage son (‘it’s disgusting’) and her actions (in walking away) doubtlessly provided Henry with a social cue, an alternative attitude to his choice of online content. Further, in initiating this exchange with his mother, Henry is likely to have been making a statement about his own autonomy and transition into (heterosexual) manhood. In his interview, Henry openly acknowledged his earlier exploration of adult p*rn sites but (as his mother anticipated) he seems to have moved on from this particular phase. When asked whether he visited adult sites on the Internet Henry responded in his own succinct manner: Henry: Like p*rn and stuff? Not really. I probably did when I was a bit younger but it’s not really very exciting. Interviewer: That was when you first got it [the Internet] or when? Henry: Yeah, [two to three years earlier] all your friends come around and you check out the sites. It’s nothing exciting anymore. Sexual experiences and knowledge are an important currency within teenage boy culture (Holland et al. 1998) and like other teenage boys, Henry and his friends are likely to have used this technology in order to “negotiate their masculinity within the heterosexual economy of [their] peer group social relations”(Valentine et al. 160). In this case, it seemed to be a transitory stage within Henry’s peer (or community of interest) group and became less important as the teenagers grew into maturity. Many children and young people are also exploring the social world of Internet chat, with the potential risk of unwanted (and unsafe) face-to-face contact. Leonie, mother of teenage girls, explained her daughters’ ability to negotiate these potentially unsafe contacts: I suppose you just get a bit concerned about the chat lines and who they’re talking to sometimes but really they usually tell me … [to 17-year old daughter in the room] Like on the chat lines you, when, had that idiot … that one that was going to come over here. Just some idiots on there. A lot of the kids are teenagers. I know Shani’s [14] gotten on there a few times on the chat line and there’s been obviously someone asking them lewd questions and she’s usually blocked them and cut them off …(Leonie). Daughter Shani also discusses her experiences with unsafe (unwanted) Internet contact: “They go on about stuff that you don’t really want to talk about and it’s just ‘No, I don’t think so’” (Shani, 14). Shani went on to explain that she now prefers to use instant messaging with known (offline) friends—a preference now taken up by many teenagers (Holloway and Green: Livingstone and Bober). Electronic media play an important role in children’s transition to adulthood. The ubiquitousness of the World Wide Web, however, makes restriction and protection of children increasingly difficult to realise (Buckingham 84-5). Instead, many parents in this study are placing more importance on openness, consultation and discussion with their children about the media texts they encounter, rather than imposing restriction and regulation which these parents believe may well be “counter-productive” (Nightingale et al. 19). Of greater disquiet to many parents in this study than their children’s access to unsuitable online content is concern about their children’s possible excessive use of the Internet. Parents were typically more concerned about the amount of time some of their children were spending chatting to friends and playing online games. One mother explains: They [my daughters] started to use MSN whilst they were doing school work and obviously kids are able to listen to music, watch television, do a project. They can multi-task without all the confusion that I [would have] but we actually now, they’re not able to do MSN during the school week at all … so we now said to them, “if you want to ring somebody, give them a call, that’s fine, we don’t mind, but during the week no MSN” … we’ve actually restricted them (Stephanie). Parental concern about children’s excessive use of the Internet was most marked for parents of teenage children: adolescence being a time when “rules about media consumption can be an early site of resistance for young adults keen to take more power for themselves and their own lives” (Green 30). Father of two, Xavier, expressed his concern about (what he perceived as) his teenage son’s excessive use of the Internet: Well I think there’s far too much time … Gavin’ll spend a whole day on it. I try to get him to come to the footy on Sunday. No. He’s available for friends [for online gaming and chat on the Internet]. He’ll spend all day on the computer (Xavier). Son Gavin (16), in a separate interview, anticipated that this criticism had been made and felt compelled to counter it: Well he [dad] makes comments like saying I’m not fit enough ‘cause I spent too much time on the computer but I play soccer a lot. Like, I do sport perhaps everyday at school … I mean, I think, such a piece of crap (Gavin). Thus, the incorporation of the Internet into the domestic sphere often sees previously established boundaries (who uses what, when, where and for how long) redefined, challenged, resisted and defended by various family members. In this way the Internet (and other new media) helps shape (and is shaped by) the temporal and spatial boundaries within the home. Conclusion While all parents in the Family Internet study construct the Internet as a site which requires some level of care and control over their children’s online use, they use a variety of approaches when carrying out this supervisory role. Some parents tend to allow for children’s free exploration of the Internet and are relatively confident that their children are able to negotiate adult texts such as p*rnography in a comparatively sophisticated manner. Other parents, those inclined to protect their children from the dangers of adult content and unsafe Internet contact, choose to monitor and restrict their children’s access to the Internet to varying degrees. More consistent is parental concern about excessive use of the Internet, and the assumption that this displaces constructive use of children’s time. Public anxieties about children’s use of the Internet make assumptions about children’s media practices. Children (and their families) are often assumed to be less able to differentiate between suitable and unsuitable Internet texts and to deal with these potential dangers in a sensible manner. These fears presuppose a variety of negative impacts on children’s and young peoples’ lives which may have little to do with daily reality. Our exploration of families’ everyday experiences of Internet consumption highlights the disparity between public anxieties about Internet use and the importance of these anxieties in the everyday lives of families. The major concern of families – ill-disciplined and excessive Internet use – barely registers on the same scale as the public moral panic over children’s possible access to online p*rnography. These findings say less about the Internet as a locale in cyberspace than they do about the domestic dynamics of the household, parenting styles, relationships between parent(s) and children, and the sociocultural context of family life. References Aisbett, Kate. The Internet at Home: A Report on Internet Use in the Home. Sydney: Australian Broadcasting Authority, 2001. Buckingham, David. After the Death of Childhood: Growing up in the Age of Electronic Media. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2000. Durkin, Kevin and Kate Aisbett. Computer Games and Australians Today. Sydney: Office of Film and Literature Classification, 1999. Evans, Mark and Clarice Butkus. “Regulating the Emergent: Cyberp*rn and the Traditional Media.” Media International Australia 85 (1997): 62-9. Green, Lelia. Technoculture: >From Alphabet to Cybersex. Crows Nest Australia: Allen and Unwin, 2002. Holland, Janet and Caroline Ramazanoglu, Sue Sharpe and Rachel Thomson. The Male in the Head: Young People, Heterosexuality and Power. London: Tufnell Press, 1998. Holloway, Donell and Lelia Green. “Home Is Where You Hang Your @: Australian Women on the Net.” Communications Research Forum. Canberra: Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, 2003. Livingstone, Sonia and Magdalena Bober. UK Children Go Online: Listening to Young People’s Experiences. London: London School of Economics and Political Science, 2003. Marshall, P. David. “Technophobia: Video Games, Computer Hacks and Cybernetics.” Media International Australia 85 (1997): 70-8. Nightingale, Virginia, Dianne Dickenson and Catherine Griff. “Harm: Children’s Views About Media Harm and Program Classification.” Forum. Sydney, Australia, 2000. Nixon, Helen. “Fun and Games Are Serious Business.” Digital Diversions: Youth Culture in the Age of Multi-Media. Ed. J Sefton-Green. London: UCL Press, 1998. Silverstone, Roger, Eric Hirsch and David Morley. “Information and Communication and the Moral Economy of the Household.” Consuming Technologies: Media and Information in Domestic Spaces. Eds. Roger Silverstone and Eric Hirsch. London: Routledge, 1992. 17-31. Valentine, Gill, Sarah Holloway and Nick Bingham. “Transforming Cyberspace: Children’s Interventions in the New Public Sphere.” Children’s Geographies: Playing, Living, Learning. Eds. Sarah L. Holloway and Gill Valentine. London: Routledge, 2000. 156 – 93. MLA Style Holloway, Donell, Lelia Green & Robyn Quin. "What p*rn?: Children and the Family Internet." M/C Journal 7.4 (2004). 10 October 2004 <http://www.media-culture.org.au/0410/02_children.php>. APA Style Holloway, D., Green, L. & Quin, R. (2004 Oct 11). What p*rn?: Children and the Family Internet, M/C Journal, 7(4). Retrieved Oct 10 2004 from <http://www.media-culture.org.au/0410/02_children.php>

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Uhh, dirrty Filthy Nasty (too dirrty to clean my act up If you ain’t dirrty .. you ain’t here to party)—Christina Aguilera “DIRRTY” The teacher engaged in a pedagogy which requires some articulation of knowledge forms and pleasures integral to students’ daily life is walking a dangerous road.—Henry Giroux and Roger Simon, “Schooling, Popular Culture and a Pedagogy of Possibility” p*rnography and pedagogy have been positioned as mutually exclusive domains within educational discourses that seek to regulate the borders between rational knowledge and sexually lewd commercial imagery. Yet these realms begin to overlap in productive ways when hypersexual popular cultures are integrated as meaningful social texts within the classroom. As mainstream youth media increasingly play up the appeal of what Brian McNair calls “p*rno-chic” cultural entertainment, teachers and students of cultural meanings are compelled to take seriously the pervasive power of soft p*rn influencing everyday desires and identifications. McNair writes that “p*rno-chic is not p*rn, then, but the representation of p*rn in non-p*rnographic art and culture, the pastiche and parody of, the homage to and investigation of p*rn; the postmodern transformation of p*rn into mainstream cultural artifact for a variety of purposes.” (61) The crossover of p*rn imagery into commercial advertising and entertainment industries is an extension of a problem that Sut Jhally refers to as the commodity-image system which frames sexy bodies within marketing strategies that encourage fast voyeuristic forms of consumption (252). Yet complex questions about how youth engage with the intensification of their sexual fields of vision as part of their daily routines watching TV, playing video games, enjoying films and music videos as desiring subjects are often overlooked. As young people grow up today within p*rno saturated visual cultures, they need to be given space to talk about their ideas, feelings and contradictory responses. In this way, bringing p*rn into university curriculum is a necessary part of a critical and creative pedagogical practice. I learned about the urgency and difficulty of such a practice when my students brought in Christina Aguilera’s video Dirrty to a class on consumer cultures and sexual representation. Out of some wildly disparate and complex readings of this video developed by my students, we were able to explore ideas about body images, censorship, queerness, commodification and fantasy without foreclosing the ambivalence unleashed in the process of studying Dirrty p*rnographic styles. In my introductory popular culture classes, I give permission to students to exchange stories about the sexualized pleasures of mediated youth cultures as a way to encourage awareness of the specific icons, textual details and patterns of representation that make up our viewing and listening experiences. I use this as a take off point to consider how our popular conceptions of sexuality are constructed and contested by desiring and relational interpretations connecting hegemonic image fantasies with subjective investments. Once students start conversing about what they notice and how they see and feel about sexually explicit images shown in class, the contested terrain of popular cultural p*rn becomes vividly animated. The point is to demystify the topic of p*rnographic imagery as something fixed, taboo, banal, asocial, shameful or demeaning. What students of media cultures do not expect is that their personal pleasures and longings will be socially situated and theorized as a dialogue about the politics of representation. Student pleasures collide in unexpected ways. I am always surprised by what appeals to their fantasy ideals, and the reasons they offer to explain why and how they seek out and utilize their desires as viewers. To spur discussion, I bring in sex texts that range from Hollywood film clips to nightclub fliers to queer photography to internet homepages. But while I have a rough idea of the conceptual course we will take, we usually end up following alternative paths, negotiating incommensurable psychic and social life-worlds. What I find troubling, erotic or fascinating might not connect up with what my students notice or experience as seductive or meaningful. Foregrounding the pleasures of sexual images in teaching popular culture is tricky because they are hard to predict or contain for analysis. Consensus is an impossibility from the start as sexual fears, denial and fantasies disrupt any possibility of rational unity. p*rnography leaks across disciplinary boundaries and blurs conventional distinctions between, private/public, subjective/social, work/play, school/leisure, sexual/intellectual realms of experience. Teaching p*rnography is risky business. Turning theoretically back upon the popular fascinations of “p*rno-chic” images also invites pleasure into the very process of academic learning that has traditionally scorned its worth and relevance. The interactions of teaching and learning become infused with affective longings and frustrations. Questions arise such as: What happens when sexualized pleasure as an experience lived through popular cultures is reenacted in the classroom? Who is willing to risk exposure and vulnerability? What are the ethical and political limits of interrogating intimate pleasures? How do I render this intimacy culturally meaningful? When personal pleasures are questioned as part of a public dialogue are they diminished? Intensified? Transformed? I have spent many years theorizing sexuality and pleasure, trying to find a language that overcomes the one-sided institutional focus and conceptual detachment of ideological critiques without falling prey to empirical approaches that claims to pin down the authentic transparent truth of popular pleasures as fixed and isolated data. What is needed is a process of reading experience as a social semiotic process capable of attending to textual representations and institutional power formations that organize popular pleasures, without foreclosing the nuances of the erotic subjective and collective engagements with culture that exceed and disturb hegemonic meanings. Teresa de Lauretis’ writings are useful toward interconnecting subjectivity and social/cultural worlds in terms of dynamic mediations between texts, contexts, psychic memories and sense perceptions. Drawing upon Charle’s Peirce’s notion of interpretants, de Lauretis theorizes a semiosis of experience that is actively engaged with and constituted through everyday signs, objects, relations and events. A cultural sign such as a song or music video becomes mediated through intellectual, emotional and energetic interpretants, to comprise a “habit-change,” changes in consciousness and concrete action in the social world. The experiential process here is open-ended and ongoing in its formation and includes rational will and reflection in reading signs along with affective, bodily responses and enactments (1984). The realm of subjective experience and pleasure does not abstract or diminish the status of cultural texts and meanings but implicates them in a living practice. De Lauretis uses this approach to think through the exchanges of “perverse” desires that exceed heteronormative sex/gender relations between texts and spectators (1994). Acknowledging the normalization of “perverse” desire enables a more dynamic understanding of the psychic and social movements of fantasy scenarios as a historical process. I think it’s impossible to begin to embrace p*rnographic pleasure as pedagogically productive without such an elaboration of experience as always already appropriating, mediating, and transforming dominant social texts. At the same time, what has become vividly apparent to me is that translating a theory of the semiosis of experience into practical strategies performed in the classroom is easier said than done. Nothing complicates and impels thinking about pleasure more than a room filled with dozens of teenage students who are asked to speak openly about their feelings and thoughts about sexy pop music stars and performances – especially when the topics and examples are chosen by, for and about students. During a week of my pop culture class last year, several students giving presentations coincidentally brought in the same video to show and talk about: Christina Aguilera’s music video for her song Dirrty – from the album Stripped. The video features aggressive erotic scenes of young women taking the lead with young men watching and dancing in a darkly lit underground boxing club, including signs of Hip Hop street culture- graffiti, break dancing, and rap, intermixed with raunchy soft-p*rn images of women wrestling and showering together. It is a massive party verging on sexual orgy compelling the audience to join in and get “dirty, filthy, nasty, and if you ain’t dirty you ain’t here to party.” This is an exemplary televised fantasy product designed shock and tease youth audiences with rebellious hip seductive visual forms and contents. What is important for my purposes is not any single value or meaning of this video but the ways it elicited multiple engagements and interpretations from student presenters and classmates through their experiential pleasures and displeasures. The first presenter analyzed Dirrty as an example of the corporate commodification of youth sexuality. >From this perspective the video sells packaged consumable fragments of sexy bodies as imaginary fetish ideals. Drawing upon feminist analysis of p*rnography, the student argued that girls’ bodies continue to be objectified in the guise of physical femme dominance, remaining on display for the dreamworlds of adolescent men. What gets stressed are the ways sexual transgressions within mass media work in the service of maintaining inequalities, idolizing promiscuous feminine aggressors whose power is contained to feed fantasies of sexual submission that reinforce hierarchical control. Eroticized grrrl power becomes a contest of popularity intensified through the polymorphous visual style of MTV. Referring to Giroux’s critique of the hypersexual promotion and commercial branding of youth (1998), this student articulates her own desires for representations of youth sexuality focused on historically grounded and substantial relational qualities rather than normative beauty ideals. In the first presentation “p*rno-chic” entertainment pleasures are analyzed as something to be wary of, as cheap surface distractions and corporate manipulations. The next presentation explored the cultural and emotional volatility of Dirrty’s visual spectacles. This student identified herself as seeing something else, a glimpse of sexual openness, diversity and freedom. Multi-racial/sexual groups of men and women, women with women and men moving together in playful scenarios through fluid urgent expression of desire, become framed here in terms of a productive excess. This person glimpsed utopian possibilities through exaggerated sexed-up styles of commodification. Postmodern theories of queer subjectivity are used in this presentation to challenge the binary categories structuring the first presentation. Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity is engaged with to help interpret possibilities for mobile gender identifications and sexual desires constituted within discursively organized frameworks (1990). The contingency and improvisation of her reading as a queer student confronts the limits of the previous presentation’s focus on uniform hegemonic ideological powers. The final presenter turned the class’s attention to the surrounding media commentary and context of Aguilera’s video. In this argument, the public moral panic targeting Aguilera’s video Dirrty as obscene was contrasted with the acceptance and normalization of sexuality in videos by male artists such as Nelly’s Hot in Here where women move and strip in the background as decorations of male artists. The controversy in the press surrounding the sexually explicit images in Dirrty, which were seen as going too far (provoking an advisory warning), becomes politically meaningful to this student who insists that young women artists are regulated by different standards, demonized as vulgar, slu*tty and dangerous. This student affirmed the need for a broad range of images that affirm women taking sexual control, displaying creative sexual lust and publicly voicing desires as a way to confront conservative moral codes. Here viewing pleasures become focused on media pluralization and critical debates that situate sexual representations in relation to diverse forms of reception as politically vital for those historically censored and marginalized. Each of these presentations ends in dissonant readings of a specific set of images, rhythms and words, making use of a wide range of theoretical ideas combined with experiential reflection. Tension fills the room as students realize their ideas and pleasures are contested, refused, challenged, and altered when in dialogue with others. What is my role as an instructor at this point? Do I synthesize the scattered heterogeneity of experiences arising in relation to Dirrty by promoting a single issue, theory or concept? Do I emphasize a playful “p*rnographication” of mainstream youth culture and encourage their guilty pleasures? Do I assert my authority as professor and provide a critical reading that tops theirs as moral, rational and free of personal pleasure and bias? Do I allow my class to become a free for all? None of these options are pedagogically satisfying to me since I am interested in the very discomfort and questions provoked by the differences unleashed by this video. Perhaps it is precisely the wild loose ends of a questioning process that makes p*rnography a useful pedagogical tool. Differences produced through p*rno-chic entertainment are about a shifting divergence of social experiences, media powers and embodied pleasures. As a teacher I try to foster an ongoing dialogue about such differences by theorizing what gets privileged and left out of our purview without delimiting new ways of experiencing and interpreting their subjective and political significance. I smile, turn off my power point presentation and allow for a space of silence in which no definitions are offered, no contradictions resolved, no conclusions are reached. I try to convey the productive tensions between positions offered within this moment of radical ambivalence as part of a pedagogy engaged with popular sex cultures. It is at such times of learning as a semiosis of experience engaged with the p*rnographic edges of media cultures, that possibilities emerge for understanding our vulnerable pleasures in relation to those of others. References Aguilera, Christina. “DIRRTY,” from Stripped, 2002. Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Routledge, 1990. De Lauretis, Teresa. Alice Doesn’t: Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema. Basingstoke an London: Macmillan, 1984. —-. The Practice of Love: Lesbian Sexuality and Perverse Desire. Bloomington and Indianapoli: Indiana University Press, 1994. Giroux, Henry. “Teenage Sexuality, Body Politics, and the Pedagogy of display,” Youth Culture: Identity in a Postmodern World, ed. Jonathan Epstein, Blackwell, 1998. Giroux, Henry and Roger Simon. “Schooling, Popular Culture and a Pedagogy of Possibility,” Popular Culture Schooling and Everyday Life, Henry Giroux and Roger Simon eds., Bergin & Garvey, 1989. Sut Jhally, “Image-Based Culture: advertising and popular culture,” Gender, Race and Class in Media. Eds. Gail Dines and Jean Humez, Sage, 2003. McNair, Brian. Striptease Culture: Sex, Media and the Democratization of Desire. New York: Routledge, 2002. MLA Style Driver, Susan. "p*rnographic Pedagogies?: The Risks of Teaching “Dirrty” Popular Cultures." M/C Journal 7.4 (2004). 10 October 2004 <http://www.media-culture.org.au/0410/03_teaching.php>. APA Style Driver, S. (2004 Oct 11). p*rnographic Pedagogies?: The Risks of Teaching “Dirrty” Popular Cultures, M/C Journal, 7(4). Retrieved Oct 10 2004 from <http://www.media-culture.org.au/0410/03_teaching.php>

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Introduction Nancy Thompson (Heather Langekamp) is one angry teenager. She’s just discovered that her mother Marge (Ronee Blakley) knows about Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund), the strange man with the burnt flesh and the switchblade fingers who’s been killing her friends in their dreams. Marge insists that there’s nothing to worry about. “He’s dead, honey,” Marge assures her daughter, “because mommy killed him.” This now-famous line neatly encapsulates the gender politics of Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984). We argue that in order to fully understand how gender operates in Nightmare, it is useful to read the film within the context of the historical period in which it was produced. Nightmare appeared during the early years of Ronald Reagan’s presidency. Reagan valorised the white, middle-class nuclear family. Reagan’s presidency coincided with (and contributed to) the rise of ‘family values’ and a corresponding anti-feminism. During this era, both ‘family values’ and anti-feminism were being endorsed (and contested) in Hollywood cinema. In this article, we suggest that the kind of patriarchal family structure endorsed by Reagan is thoroughly ridiculed in Nightmare. The families in Craven’s film are dysfunctional jokes, headed by incompetent adults who, in their historical attempts to rid their community of Freddy, instead fostered Freddy’s growth from sad*stic human to fully-fledged monster. Nancy does indeed slay the beast in order to save the children of Elm Street. In doing so, though, we suggest that she becomes both a maternal and paternal figure; and (at least symbolically) restores her fragmented nuclear family unit. Also, and tellingly, Nancy and her mother are punished for attempting to destroy Krueger. Nightmare in 1980s AmericaNightmare was released at the height of the popularity of the “slasher film” genre. Much scholarly attention has been given to Nightmare’s gender politics. Film theorist Carol Clover has called Nancy “the grittiest of the Final Girls” (202). Clover has used the term “Final Girl” to describe the female protagonist in slasher films who survives until the film’s ending, and who kills the monster. For Clover and other scholars, Nancy uses her physical and intellectual strength to combat Freddy; she is not the kind of passive heroine found in earlier slasher films such as 1974’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (see Christensen; Clover 202; Trencansky). We do not disagree entirely with this reading. Nevertheless, we suggest that it can be complicated by analysing Nightmare in the historical context in which it was produced. We agree with Rhonda Hammer and Douglas Kellner that “Hollywood films provide important insights into the psychological, socio-political, and ideological make-up of U.S. society at a given point in history” (109). This article adopts Hammer and Kellner’s analytic approach, which involves using “social realities and context to help situate and interpret key films” (109). By adopting this approach, we hope to suggest the importance of Craven’s film to the study of gender representations in 1980s Hollywood cinema. Nightmare is a 1980s film that has reached a particularly large audience; it was critically and commercially successful upon its release, and led to numerous sequels, a TV series, and a 2010 remake (Phillips 77).Significantly, Craven’s film was released three years after the Republican Ronald Reagan commenced his first term as President of the United States of America. Much has been written about the neoconservative policies and rhetoric issued by the Reagan administration (see, for example, Broussard; Tygiel). This neoconservatism encroached on all aspects of social life, including gender. According to Sara Evans: “Empowered by the Republican administration, conservatives relentlessly criticized women’s work outside the home, blocking most legislation designed to ameliorate the strains of work and family life while turning the blame for those very stresses back on feminism itself” (87). For Reagan, the nuclear family—and, more specifically, the white, middle-class nuclear family—was under threat; for example, divorce rates and single parent families had increased exponentially in the US between the 1960s and the 1980s (Popenoe 531-532). This was problematic because, as sociologist David Popenoe has argued, the nuclear family was “by far the best institution” in which to raise children (539). Popenoe approvingly cites the following passage from the National Commission on Children (1991): Substantial evidence suggests that the quality of life for many of America's children has declined. As the nation looks ahead to the twenty- first century, the fundamental challenge facing us is how to fashion responses that support and strengthen families as the once and future domain for raising children. (539)This emphasis on “family values” was shared by the Religious Right, which had been gaining political influence in North America since the late 1970s. The most famous early example of the Religious Right was the “Save Our Children” crusade. This crusade (which was led by Baptist singer Anita Bryant) protested a local gay rights ordinance in Dade County, Florida (Winner 184). Family values were also espoused by some commentators of a more liberal political persuasion. A prominent example is Tipper Gore, wife of Democrats senator Al Gore Jr., who (in 1985) became the chief spokesperson of the Parents’ Music Resource Center, an organisation that aimed “to inform parents about the p*rnographic content of some rock songs” (Chastagner 181). This organisation seemed to work on the assumption that parents know what is best for their children; and that it is parents’ moral duty to protect their children from social evils (in this case, sexually explicit popular culture). Perhaps unsurprisingly, the anti-feminism and the privileging of family values described above manifested in the Hollywood cinema of the 1980s. Susan Faludi has demonstrated how a selection of films released during that decade “struggle to make motherhood as alluring as possible,” and punish those female protagonists who are unwilling or unable to become mothers (163). Faludi does not mention slasher films, though it is telling that this genre —a genre that had its genesis in the early 1960s, with movies such as Alfred Hitchco*ck’s Psycho (1960)—enjoyed considerable popularity during the 1980s. The slasher genre has been characterised by its graphic depictions of violence, particularly violence against women (Welsh). Many of the female victims in these films are shown to be sexually active prior to their murders, thus making these murders seem like punishment for their behaviour (Welsh). For example, in Nightmare, the character Tina Gray (Amanda Wyss) is killed by Freddy shortly after she has sex with her boyfriend. Our aim is not to suggest that Nightmare is automatically anti-feminist because it is a slasher film or because of the decade in which it was released. Craven’s film is actually resistant to any single and definitive reading, with its blurring of the boundaries between reality and fantasy, its blend of horror and dark humour, and its overall air of ambiguity. Furthermore, it is worth noting that Hollywood films of the 1980s contested Reaganite politics as much as they endorsed those politics; the cinema of that decade was not entirely right-leaning (Hammer and Kellner 107). Thus, our aim is to explore the extent to which Craven’s film contests and endorses the family values and the conservative gender politics that are described above. In particular, we focus on Nightmare’s representation of the nuclear family. As Sara Harwood argues, in 1980s Hollywood cinema, the nuclear family was frequently represented as a “fragile, threatened entity” (5). Within this “threatened entity”, parents (and particularly fathers) were regularly represented as being “highly problematic”, and unable to adequately protect their children (Harwood 1-2). Harwood argues this point with reference to films such as the hugely popular thriller Fatal Attraction (1987). Sarah Trencansky has noted that a recurring theme of the 1980s slasher film is “youth subjugated to an adult community that produces monsters” (Trencansky 68). Harwood and Trencansky’s insights are particularly relevant to our reading of Craven’s film, and its representation of the heroine’s family. Bad Parents and Broken FamiliesNightmare is set in white, middle-class suburbia. The families within this suburbia are, however, a long way from the idealised, comfortable nuclear family. The parents are unfeeling and uncaring—not to mention unhelpful to their teenage children. Nancy’s family is a case in point. Her parents are separated. Her policeman father Donald (John Saxon) is almost laughably unemotional; when Nancy asks him whether her boyfriend has been killed [by Freddy], he replies flatly: “Yeah. Apparently, he’s dead.” Nancy’s mother Marge is an alcoholic who installs bars on the windows of the family home in a bid to keep Nancy safe. Marge is unaware (or maybe she does not want to know) that the real danger lies in the collective unconscious of teenagers such as her daughter. Ironically, it is parents such as Marge who created the monster. Late in the film, Marge informs Nancy that Freddy was a child murderer who avoided a jail sentence due to legal technicality. A group of parents tracked Freddy down and set fire to him. This represents a particularly extreme version of parental protectiveness. Marge tries to assure Nancy that Freddy “can’t get you now”, but the execution of her friends while they sleep—not to mention Nancy’s own nocturnal encounters with the monster—suggest otherwise.Indeed, it is easy to read Freddy as a kind of monstrous doppelganger for the parents who killed him. After all, he is (like those parents) a murderous adult. David Kingsley has argued that Freddy can be read as a doppelganger for Donald, and there is evidence in the film to support this argument. For example, the mention of Freddy’s name is the only thing that can transform Donald’s perpetual stoic facial expression into a look of genuine concern. Donald himself never mentions Freddy, or even acknowledges his existence—even when the monster is in front of him, in one of the film’s several climaxes. There is a sense, then, that Freddy represents a dark, sad*stic part of Donald that he is barely able to face—but also, that he is barely able to repress. Nancy as Final Girl and/or (Over-)Protective MotherIn her essay, Clover argues that to regard the Final Girl as a “feminist development” is “a particularly grotesque expression of wishful thinking. She is simply an agreed-upon fiction, and the male viewer's use of her as a vehicle for his own sadomasoch*stic fantasies” (214). This is too simplistic a reading, as is suggested by a close look at the character Nancy. As Clover herself puts it, Nancy has “the quality of the Final Girl's fight, and more generally to the qualities of character that enable her, of all the characters, to survive what has come to seem unsurvivable” (Clover 64). She possesses crucial knowledge about Freddy and his powers. Nancy is indeed subject to violence at Freddy’s hands, but she also takes responsibility for destroying him— and this is something that the male characters seem unable or unwilling to do. Those men who disregard her warnings to stay awake (her boyfriend Glen) or who are unable to hear them (her friend Rod, who is incarcerated for his girlfriend Tina’s murder) die violent deaths. Nightmare is shot largely from Nancy’s point-of-view. The viewer is thus encouraged to feel the fear and terror that she feels about the monster, and want her to succeed in killing him. Nevertheless, the character Nancy is not entirely pro-feminist. There is a sense in which she becomes “the proverbial parent she never had” (Christensen 37; emphasis in original). Nancy becomes the mother who warns the neighbourhood youngsters about the danger that they are facing, and comforts them (particularly Rod, whose cries of innocence go ignored). Nancy also becomes the tough upholder of justice who punishes the monster in a way her policeman father cannot (or will not). Thus, Nancy comes to embody both, distinctly gendered parental roles; the nuclear family is to some extent restored in her very being. She answers Anita Bryant’s call to ‘save our children’, only here the threat to children and families comes not from hom*osexuality (as Bryant had feared), but rather from a supernatural killer. In particular, parallels are drawn between Nancy and Marge. Marge admits that “a group of us parents” hunted out Freddy. Nevertheless, in saying that “mommy killed him”, she seems to take sole responsibility for his execution. Compare Marge’s behaviour with that of Donald, who never utters Freddy’s name. In one of the climaxes, Nancy herself sets fire to Freddy, before he can hurt any other youngsters. Thus, it is the mothers in Nightmare—both the “real” mother (Marge) and the symbolic mother (Nancy)—who are punished for killing the monster. In the film’s first climax, the burning Freddy races into Marge’s bedroom and kills her, before both monster and victim mysteriously vanish. In the second climax, Marge is yanked off the front porch and through the front door, by unseen hands that most likely belong to Krueger.In the film’s final climax, Nancy wakes to find that the whole film was just a dream; her friends and mother are alive. She remarks that the morning is ‘bright’; indeed, it appears a bit too bright, especially after the darkness and bloodshed of the night before. Nancy steps into a car with her friends, but the viewer notices something odd—the car’s colours (red, with green stripes) match the colours on Freddy’s shirt. The car drives off, against the will of its passengers, and presumably powered by the apparently dead (or is he dead? Was he ever truly dead? Was he just dreamed up? Is Nancy still dreaming now?) monster. Compare the fates of these women with that of Donald. In the first climax, he watches in horror as Freddy murders Marge, but does nothing to protect her. Donald does not appear in the final climax. The viewer is left to guess what happened to him. Most likely, Donald will continue to try and protect the local community as best (or as incompetently) he can, and turn a blind eye to the teenage and female suffering around him. Conclusion We have argued that a nuanced understanding of the gender politics at the heart of Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street can be achieved by reading the film within the context of the historical period in which it was released. Nightmare is an example of a Hollywood film that manages (to some extent) to contest the anti-feminism and the emphasis on “family values” that characterised mid-1980s American political culture. In Nightmare, the nuclear family is reduced to a pathetic joke; the parents are hopeless, and the children are left to fend (sometimes unsuccessfully) for themselves. Nancy is genuinely assertive, and the young men around her pay the price for not heeding or hearing her warnings. Nonetheless, as we have also argued, Nancy becomes the mother and father she never had, and in doing so she (at least symbolically) restores her fractured nuclear family unit. In Craven’s film, the nuclear family might be down, but it’s not entirely out. Finally, while both Nancy and Marge might seem to destroy Freddy, the monster ultimately punishes these women for their crimes. References A Nightmare on Elm Street. Dir. Wes Craven. New Line Cinema, 1984.A Nightmare on Elm Street. Dir. Samuel Bayer. New Line Cinema, 2010. Broussard, James H. Ronald Reagan: Champion of Conservative America. Hoboken: Taylor and Francis, 2014. Christensen, Kyle. “The Final Girl versus Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street: Proposing a Stronger Model of Feminism in Slasher Horror Cinema.” Studies in Popular Culture 34.1 (2011): 23-47. Chastagner, Claude. “The Parents’ Music Resource Center: From Information to Censorship”. Popular Music 1.2 (1999): 179-192.Clover, Carol. “Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film”. Representations 20 (1987): 187-228. Evans, Sara. “Feminism in the 1980s: Surviving the Backlash.” Living in the Eighties. Eds. Gil Troy and Vincent J. Cannato. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. 85-97. Faludi, Susan. Backlash: The Undeclared War against Women. London: Vintage, 1991. Fatal Attraction. Dir. Adrian Lyne. Paramount Pictures, 1987. Hammer, Rhonda, and Douglas Kellner. “1984: Movies and Battles over Reganite Conservatism”. American Cinema of the 1980s: Themes and Variations. Ed. Stephen Prince. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2007. 107-125. Harwood, Sarah. Family Fictions: Representations of the Family in 1980s Hollywood Cinema. Hampshire and London: Macmillan Press, 1997. Kingsley, David. “Elm Street’s Gothic Roots: Unearthing Incest in Wes Craven’s 1984 Nightmare.” Journal of Popular Film and Television 41.3 (2013): 145-153. Phillips, Kendall R. Dark Directions: Romero, Craven, Carpenter, and the Modern Horror Film. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 2012. Popenoe, David. “American Family Decline, 1960-1990: A Review and Appraisal.” Journal of Marriage and Family 55.3 (1993): 527-542.Psycho. Dir. Alfred Hitchco*ck. Paramount Pictures, 1960.The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Dir. Tobe Hooper. Bryanston Pictures, 1974.Trencansky, Sarah. “Final Girls and Terrible Youth: Transgression in 1980s Slasher Horror”. Journal of Popular Film and Television 29.2 (2001): 63-73. Tygiel, Jules. Ronald Reagan and the Triumph of American Conservatism. New York: Pearson Longman, 2006. Welsh, Andrew. “On the Perils of Living Dangerously in the Slasher Horror Film: Gender Differences in the Association between Sexual Activity and Survival.” Sex Roles 62 (2010): 762-773.Winner, Lauren F. “Reaganizing Religion: Changing Political and Cultural Norms among Evangelicals in Ronald Reagan’s America.” Living in the Eighties. Eds. Gil Troy and Vincent J. Cannato. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. 181-198.

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Introduction In a period marked by the pervasiveness of new mobile technologies saturating urban areas of the Asia-Pacific region, it can be easy to forget the realities of life in the rural areas. In a location such as Australia, in which 80% of the population lives in urban areas, one must be reminded of the sociotechnological realities of rural existence where often-newer mobile communication devices cease to function. This paper focuses on these black spots – and often forgotten areas – where examples of older, mediated technologies such as UHF Citizen Band (CB) radios can be found as integral to practices of everyday rural life. As Anderson notes, constructs of the nation are formed through contested notions of what individuals and communities imagine and project as a sense of place. In Australia, one of the dominant contested imageries can be found in the urban and rural divide, a divide that is not just social and cultural but technological; it is marked by a digital divide. This divide neatly corresponds to the images of Australia experienced by Australians (predominantly living in urban areas) and exported tourist images of the rugged vast rural landscapes. The remote Australia Outback is a popular destination for domestic tourists. Its sparsely populated and rough terrain attracts tourists seeking a quintessentially Australian experience. Roads are often unmade and in poor condition. Fuel and food supplies and health services are widely separated and there is almost no permanent accommodation. Apart from a small number of regional centres there is no access to mobile phones or radio broadcasts. As a consequence tourists must be largely self sufficient. While the primary roads carry significant road traffic it is possible to drive all day on secondary roads without seeing another person. Isolation and self-sufficiency are both an attraction and a challenge. Travelling in campervans, towing caravans or camper trailers and staying in caravan parks, national parks, roadside stops or alone in the bush, tourists spend extended times in areas where there are few other tourists. Many tourists deal with this isolation by equipping their vehicles with CB radios. Depending on the terrain, they are able to listen to, and participate in conversations with other CB users within a 10-20 kilometre range. In some areas where there are repeater stations, the range of radio transmissions can be extended. This paper examines the role of these CB radios in the daily life of tourists in the Australian Outback. Theoretical Issues The links between travel, the new communications technologies and the diminished spatial-time divide have been explored by John Urry. According to Urry, mobile electronic devices make it possible for people “to leave traces of their selves in informational space” (266). Using these informational traces, mobile communication technologies ‘track’ the movements of travellers, enabling them to communicate synchronously. People become ’nodes in multiple networks of communication and mobility’ (266). Another consequence of readily available communication independent of location is for the meaning of social connections. Social encounters provide tourists with the opportunity to develop and affirm understandings of their shared common occupation of unfamiliar social and cultural landscapes (Harrison). Both transitory and enduring relationships provide information, companionship and resources that allow tourists to create, share and give meaning to their experiences (Stokowski). Communication technology also enables individuals to enter and remain part of social networks while physically absent and distant from them (Johnsen; Makimoto and Manners, Urry). The result is a “nomadic intimacy” in an everyday social and physical environment characterised by extended spaces and individual freedom to move around in these spaces (Fortunati). For travellers in the Australian Outback, this “nomadic intimacy” is both literal and metaphorical. Research has shown that travellers use mobile communications services and a range of other communication strategies to maintain a “symbolic proximity” with family, friends and colleagues (Wurtzel and Turner) and to promote a sense of “presence while absent”, or ‘co-presence’ (Gergen; Lury; Short, Williams and Christie; White and White, “Keeping Connected”; White and White, “Home and Away”). Central to the original notion of co-presence was that it was contingent on those involved in a given communication both being and feeling close enough to perceive each other and to be perceived in the course of their activities (Goffman). That is, the notion of co-presence initially referred to physical presence in face-to-face contact and interactions. However, increasing use of mobile phones in particular has meant that this sense of connection can be affirmed at a distance. But what happens when travellers do not have access to mobile phones and the Internet, and as a consequence, do not have access to their networks of family, friends and colleagues? How do they deal with travel and isolation in a harsh environment? These issues are the starting point for the present paper, which examines travellers’ experience of CB radio in the remote Australian Outback. This exploration of how the CB radio has been incorporated into the daily lives of these travellers can be seen as a contribution to an understanding of the domestication of mobile communications (Haddon). Methodology People were included in the study if they used CB radios while travelling in remote parts of Western Australian and the Northern Territory. The participants were approached in caravan parks, camping grounds and at roadside stops. Most were travelling in caravans while others were using camper trailers and campervans. Twenty-four travellers were interviewed, twelve men and twelve women. All were travelling with partners or spouses, and one group of two couples was travelling together. They ranged in age from twenty five to seventy years, and all were Australian residents. The duration of their travels varied from six weeks to eleven months. Participants were interviewed using a semi-structured interview schedule. The interviews were transcribed and then thematically coded with respect to regularly articulated points of view. Where points of view were distinctive, they were noted during the coding process as contrasting instances. While the relatively small sample size limits generalizability, the issues raised by the respondents provide insights into the meaning of CB radio use in the daily life of travellers in the Australian Outback. Findings Staying Safe The primary reason given for travelling with a CB radio was personal safety. The tourists interviewed were aware of the risks associated with travelling in the Outback. Health emergencies, car accidents and problems with tyres in a harsh and hot environment without ready access to water were often mentioned. ‘If you call a May Day someone will come out and answer…” (Female, 55). Another interviewee reported that: Last year we helped some folk who were bogged in the sand right at the end of the road in the middle of nowhere. The wife just started calling the various channels explaining that they were bogged and asking whether there was anyone out there….We went and towed them out. …. It would have been a long walk for them to get help. (Female, 55) Even though most interviewees had not themselves experienced a personal emergency, many recounted stories about how CB radio had been used to come to the aid of someone in distress. Road conditions were another concern. Travellers were often rightly very concerned about hazards ahead. One traveller noted: You are always going to hear someone who gives you an insight as to what is happening up ahead on the road. If there’s an accident up ahead someone’s going to get on the radio and let people know. Or there could be road works or the road could be sh*tty. (Male, 50) Safety arose in another context. Tourists share the rough and often dusty roads with road trains towing up to three trailers. These vehicles can be 50 metres long. A road train creates wind turbulence when it passes a car and trailer or caravan and the dust it raises reduces visibility. Because of this car drivers and caravanners need to be extremely careful when they pass or are passed by one. Passing a road train at 100 km can take 2.5km. Interviewees reported that they communicated with road train drivers to negotiate a safe time and place to pass. One caravanner noted: Sometimes you see a road train coming up behind you. You call him up and say ” I’ll pull over for you mate and slow down and you go”. You use it a lot because it’s safer. We are not in a hurry. Road trains are working and they are in a hurry and he (sic.) is bigger, so he has the right of way. (Male, 50) As with the dominant rationale for installing and using a CB radio, Rice and Katz showed that concern about safety is the primary motive for women acquiring a mobile phone, and safety was also important for men. The social contact enabled by CB radio provided a means of tracking the movements of other travellers who were nearby. This tracking ability engendered a sense of comfort and enabled them to communicate and exchange information synchronously in a potentially dangerous environment. As a consequence, a ‘metaworld’ (Suvantola) of ‘informational traces’ (Urry) was created. Making Oneself Known All interactions entail conventions and signals that enable a conversation to commence. These conventions were also seen to apply to CB conversations. Driving in a car or truck involves being physically enclosed with the drivers and passengers being either invisible or only partially visible to other travellers. Caravanners deal with this lack of visibility in a number of ways. Many have their first names, the name of their caravan and the channel they use on the rear of their van. A typical sign was “Bill and Rose, Travelling Everywhere, Channel 18” or “Harry and Mary, Bugger Work, Gone Fishing”, Channel 18” clearly visible to anyone coming from behind. (The male partner’s name was invariably first.) A sign that identified the occupants was seen as an invitation to chat by other travellers. One traveller said that if he saw such a sign he would call up by saying: “Hello Harry and Mary”. From then on who knows where it goes. It depends on the people. If someone comes back really cheery and a bit cheeky I can be cheery and cheeky back. (Male, 50) The names of caravans were used in other more personal ways. One couple from South Africa had given their van a Zulu name and that was seen as a way of identifying their origins and encouraging a specific kind of conversation while they were on the road. This couple reported that People call us up and ask us what it means. We have lots of calls about that. We’ve had more conversations about that than anything else. (Male, 67) Another caravanner reported that he had seen a van with “Nanna and Poppa’ on the back. They used that as a cue to start a conversation about their grandchildren. But caravan names linked to their CB radio channel can have a deeper personal meaning. One couple had their first names and the number 58 on the rear of their van. (The number 58 is beyond the range of CB channels.) On further questioning the number 58 was revealed to be the football club number of a daughter who had died. The sign was an attempt to deal with their grief and its public display a way of entering into a conversation about grief and loss. It has probably backfired because it puts people back into their shell because they think “We don’t want to talk about death”. But because of the sign we’ve met people who’ve lost a child too. (Male, 50) As Featherstone notes, drivers develop competence in switching between a range of communicative modes while they are travelling. These range from body gestures to formal signalling devices on other cars. Signage on caravans designed to invite conversation was a specialised signalling device specific to the CB user. Talking Loneliness was another theme emerging from the interviews. One of the attractions of the Outback is its sparse population. As one interviewee noted ‘You can travel all day and not see another soul’ (Female, 35). But this loneliness can be a challenge. Some of these roads are pretty lonely, the radio lets you know that there’s somebody else out there. (Male, 54) Hearing other travellers talk was comforting. As with previous research showing that travellers use mobile communications services to maintain a “symbolic proximity” (Gergen; Lury; Short, Williams and Christie; White and White, “Keeping Connected”) the CB conversations enabled the travellers to feel this sense of connection. These interactions also offered them the possibility of converting mediated relationships into face-to-face encounters along the road. That is, some travellers reported that CB-based chats with people while they were driving would lead to a decision to stop along the road for a shared morning tea or lunch. Conventions governed the use of specific channels. Some of these are government regulated, while others are user generated. For instance, Channels 18 and 40, were seen as ‘working channels’. Some interviewees felt very strongly about people who ‘cluttered up’ these channels and moved to another unused channel when they wanted to have an extended conversation. One couple was unaware of the local convention and could not understand why no one was calling them up. They later discovered that they were on the ‘wrong channel’. Interviewees travelling in a convoy would use the standard channel for travellers and then agree to move to another channel of their choice. When we travelling in a convoy we go off Channel 18 and use another channel to talk. The girls love it to talk about their knitting and work out what they’ve done wrong. We sometimes tell jokes. Also we work out what we are going to do in the next town. (Male, 67) These extended conversations parallel the lengthy conversations between drivers equipped with CB radio in the United States during the 1970’s which Dannaher described as ‘as diverse as those found at a co*cktail party’. They also provided a sense of the “nomadic intimacy” described by Fortunati. Eavesdropping While travellers used Channel 18 for conversations they set their radio to automatically scan all forty channels. When a conversation was located the radio would stop scanning and they could listen to what was being said. This meant that travellers would overhear conversations between strangers. We scan all the channels so you can hear anyone coming up behind, especially trucks and you can hear them say “that damn caravan” and you can say ’ that damn caravan will pull over at the first opportunity.” (Female, 44) But the act of listening in to other people’s conversations created moral dilemmas for some travellers. One interviewee described it as “voyeurism for the ears”. While she described listening to farm conversations as giving her an insight into daily life on huge cattle station she was tempted to butt into one conversation that she was listening to. On reflection she decided against entering the conversation. She said: I didn’t want them to know that we were eavesdropping on their conversation. I’d be embarrassed if a third-party knew that we were listening in. I guess that I’ve been taught that you shouldn’t listen in to other people’s conversations. It’s not good manners… (Female, 35) When travellers overheard conversations between road train or truck drivers they had mixed responses. These conversations were often sexually loaded and seen as coarse by the middle class travellers. Some were forgiving of the conversational excesses, distinguishing themselves from the rough and tumble world of the ‘truckies’. One traveller noted that the truck drivers use a lot of bad language, but you’ve got to go with that, because that’s the type of people they are. But you have to go with the flow. We know that we are ‘playing’ and the truckies are ‘working’ so you have to be considerate to them. (Female, 50) While the language of the truck drivers was often threatening to middle class travellers, overhearing their conversations was also seen as a comfort. One traveller remarked that sometimes you hear truckies talking about their families and they obviously know each other. It’s kind of nice to see how they think. (Female, 50) Travellers had similar feelings when they overheard conversations from cattle stations. Also, local cattle station workers and their families would use CB radios for their social and working communications. Travellers would often overhear these conversations. One traveller noted that when we are driving through a cattle station we work out which channel they are using, and we lock it on that one. And then we listen until they are out of range. We are city people and listening to the station chatter gives us a bit of an insight into what it must be like as a farmer working land out here. And then we talk about the farmers’ conversations. (Female, 35) Another traveller noted: If you are travelling and there’s nothing you can see you can listen to the farmer talking to his wife or the kids. It’s absolutely awesome to hear conversations on radio. (Female, 67) This empathic listening allows the travellers to imagine the lives of others in settings quite different from those with which they are familiar. Furthermore, hearing farmers talking about fixing the fence in the left paddock or rounding up strays makes ‘you feel that you’re not alone’. The networking of the travellers’ social life arising from listening in to others meant that they were able to learn about the environment in which they found themselves, as well as enabling them to feel that they continued to remain embedded or ‘co-present’ in social relationships in circ*mstances of considerable physical isolation. Conclusions The accounts provided by tourists illustrated the way communications technologies – in this case, CB radio – enabled people to become ’nodes in multiple networks of communication and mobility’ described by Urry and to maintain ‘co-presence’. The CB radio allowed tourists to remain part of social networks while being physically absent from them (Gergen). Their responses also demonstrated the significance of CB radio in giving meaning to the experience of travel. The CB radio was shown to be an important part of the travel experience in the remote Australian Outback. The use of CB made it possible for travellers in the Australian Outback to obtain information vital for the safe traverse of the huge distances and isolated roads. The technology enabled them to break down the atomism and frontier-like isolation of the highway. Drivers and their passengers could reach out to other travellers and avoid remaining unconnected strangers. Long hours on the road could be dealt with by listening in on others’ conversations, even though some ambivalence was expressed about this activity. Despite an awareness that they could be violating the personal boundaries of others and that their conversations could be overheard, the use of CB radio meant staying safe and enjoying guilty pleasures. Imagined or not. References Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Community. London: Verso, 1983 Dannefer, W. Dale. “The C.B. Phenomenon: A Sociological Appraisal.” Journal of Popular Culture 12 (1979): 611-19. 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Ithiel de Sola Pool. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1977. 246-61. Citation reference for this article MLA Style White, Peter B., and Naomi White. "Staying Safe and Guilty Pleasures: Tourists and CB Radio in the Australian Outback." M/C Journal 10.1 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0703/11-white-white.php>. APA Style White, P., and N. White. (Mar. 2007) "Staying Safe and Guilty Pleasures: Tourists and CB Radio in the Australian Outback," M/C Journal, 10(1). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0703/11-white-white.php>.