"My god I’m wearing Tesco!": fashion, pre-teen femininity and the commercialisation of childhood

As a lecturer in historical and theoretical studies within the creative business field, I encourage students to think critically and creatively about the world around them. In order to keep up-to-date with current theory and push my own critical thinking, it is important that I maintain my own research, which subsequently feeds into my teaching. As such, this chapter draws on my doctorate study, which sought to explore recent UK debates about the potential commercialisation of childhood through girls' consumption of fashion. Taking a post-structuralist, feminist approach, the research was ethnographic, exploring pre-teen girls' relationship with their dress. Mixed methods were used in order to create a multi-faceted picture of girls' everyday experiences of dress. Fashion is a shared phenomenon, therefore firstly focus groups were conducted to explore how fashion was discussed and debated. Secondly, participants were asked to take photographs of their clothes, and lastly, individual, semi-structured interviews were carried out asking the girls about the items they had photographed, in order to explore their personal relationship with the materiality of their dress. The findings suggested that many girls knew a whole range of clothing brands, felt the general pressure to consume and also experienced pressure from peers. However, pre-teen girls engagement with fashion and brands is more nuanced than popular debate allows. For example, dressing the same as peers also helped friendship groups ‘display’ (Finch 2007) their friendship to others, and in addition, there was talk of using dress to express individuality and self-expression. Some participants showed an awareness of financial constraints to consuming and clothes did not always need to be brand new to be acceptable to wear. However, girls are constantly growing out of clothing, a favourite outfit and resultant constructed identity is soon rendered obsolete and girls must constantly consume in order to be clothed and constitute a new subjectivity. Dressing is a social practice, and it is through girls’ interaction with fashionable dress that they are able to explore their identity and their relationship with others, in complex and interesting ways