"I allow myself to FEEL now. . . “: Adolescent girls’ negotiations of embodied knowing, the female body, and literacy

Woodcock, Christine. (2010). "I allow myself to FEEL now. . . ": Adolescent girls’ negotiations of embodied knowing, the female body, and literacy. Journal of Literacy Research, 42(4), 349-384.

I struggled to sink my teeth into the multi-layered meanings in this case study of three young women and their perceptions of their literacy practices. Maybe it’s the vocabulary; Woodcock’s article is loaded with the abstract terms we often see in writings about critical literacy, terms that can be difficult to define and visualize for those of us not well-versed in critical literacy theory. Examples of such vocabulary in this article include "embodied (or disembodied) knowing", "realized capacity", and "figured worlds". These terms are treated almost casually, as if the reader should automatically know what the author is talking about, but I struggled, and wonder how many other readers would do the same. To be fair, Woodcock does try to define these terms, but at least for me, it just wasn’t enough. In many ways reading this article was frustrating, because I had the definite sense that she was saying a number of important things about what it means to be young and female today, and how reading and writing can help young women work through what they feel as they invent and reinvent their identities as women in a changing and complex world. The quotes from the three young women’s diaries and interviews were poignant and telling. It was just that I did not have the sense that I fully comprehended the meanings the author took from the data. The notion of the "voice poem" Woodcock built from one young woman’s data went completely over my head, and little was explained about that process.

Although my understanding was admittedly incomplete, a few points resonated with me. I am in full sympathy with the mixed messages we as females receive about who we should be, and how we should look, act, and live in this world. My generation, the baby boomers who grew up in the sixties, already struggled with the "good girl vs. bad girl" dilemma forty years ago. We were the first television generation, and I remember trying to look and act like the celebrities I saw. I pored over Seventeen and Cosmopolitan as a young woman (my deepest, most unrealized fantasy was to have blonde, long straight hair and tanned skin like Cheryl Tiegs in the Cover Girl ads), even as I planned and prepared for a professional career. As I grew into my thirties, I became uncomfortable with the Cosmopolitan worldview that everything we women do should be geared toward snaring a man, and I trashed all my magazines and never bought another. I became unwilling to dress uncomfortably just to look a certain way. Ironically, only when I became comfortable in my own skin and determined to develop an honest persona, did I finally achieve lasting love and intimacy with a man.

Another point that resonated with me was the horrific disconnect that exists between the world of school and the world outside school for many young adults. Sexuality in particular, and its status as a taboo subject in schools, is discussed here. Yet for many teens, in my generation too, reading and writing were ways we discovered and worked out our sexual feelings in relatively safe ways. Schools may not need to become sexually centered institutions, but pretending that sex does not exist doesn’t cut it either. Woodcock’s article did provide some food for thought for me, even though I didn’t fully understand it.