“Would You Wear That to Church?!”: The Production of “Ladies” in an All Girls’ After-School Club in the Southeast United States

This study investigated how Black middle school girls negotiated an after-school club, with a specific focus on ways of knowing and acting as “ladies.” Drawing from Fordham’s intersectional analyses of the histories and politics behind her conceptualization of “those loud black girls,” we explore and critique the ways in which the girls were subjects of, and subjected to, context-specific discourses of race, class, and gender. Critical race theory and poststructural theory are merged to inform the study. The findings illustrate how the girls negotiated and resisted the traditional conceptualizations of femininity that were expected of them