How Pop Culture Shapes the Stages of a Woman's Life

Melissa Ames is an Associate Professor at Eastern Illinois University specializing in media studies, television scholarship, popular culture, feminist theory, and pedagogy. Her most recent and forthcoming publications include her books, Women and Language (2011) and Time in Television Narrative (2012); chapters in Grace Under Pressure: Grey's Anatomy Uncovered (2008), Writing the Digital Generation (2010), Bitten by Twilight (2010), and Manufacturing Phobias (2015); and articles in The Journal of Dracula Studies (2011), The Women and Popular Culture Encyclopedia (2012), The High School Journal (2013), The Journal of Popular Culture (2014), and Pedagogy (2017).Sarah Burcon is a Lecturer in the Program for Technical Communication at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. She specializes in technical communication, feminist theory, popular culture, and linguistics. She has published in anthologies and encyclopedias, and her most recent publications include her books, Women and Language: Essays on Gendered Communication Across Media (2011), Fabricating the Body (2014); chapters in Time in Television Narrative: Exploring Temporality in 21st Century Programming (2012) and Revisiting the Past through Rhetorics of Memory and Amnesia (2011); and articles for Women and Popular Culture Encyclopedia (2014).

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction. Funhouse Mirrors: Popular Culture's Distorted View of Girl/Womanhood1. Becoming a Girl: Pop Culture's First Stage of Gender Training2. Reading between the Lines: The Lessons Adolescent Girls Learn through Popular Young Adult Literature3. The Gendered Self-Help Reel: How Romantic Comedies Instruct Women on Dating Dos and Don'ts4. Selling Weddings and Producing Brides: Mediated Portrayals of that 'Perfect Day'5. Love, American Style: Gendered Representations of Marriage in the Media6. Nine Months of Fear & A Lifetime of Paranoia: The Hidden Effects of Pregnancy Manuals, Child Rearing Products & More7. Changing the Playing (or Reading) Field: Reconceptualizing Motherhood through Humorous Parenting Texts8. Pumas, and Cougars, and M.I.L.F.S., Oh My!: Popular Portrayals of Romance & Sexual Encounters Between 'The Older Woman' & Younger Man9. Beyond the Hot Flashes: New Portrayals of Mature WomenConclusion. Exiting the Funhouse: Challenging Society's Lessons One Stage at a TimeBibliography

“How Pop Culture Shapes the Stages of a Woman’s Life focuses on how popular culture has created stereotypical roles for women that have potentially limited their progress. … The book is clearly intended for a scholarly audience but is accessible for the lay reader as well.” (Maire Simington, Journal of American Culture, Vol. 41 (2), June, 2018)“In this timely and accessible book, Ames (Eastern Illinois Univ.) and Burcon (Univ. of Michigan) use meta-analyses of audience studies, textual analyses of blogs, user comments and reviews of media texts and products, and one survey to analyze regressive popular cultural texts (e.g., films, toys, self-help books) and stereotypical representations of cisgender girls and women. … Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.” (T. E. Adams, Choice, Vol. 54 (3), November, 2016)