110 Children’s
Folklore
10 girls who were regular players. She found that traditional ideas of girls’ “nice-
ness” do not inhibit competitive play; instead, they offer an acceptable framework
for competition. Hughes’s informants explain that it is possible to “be nice” (by
helping other players get back into the game, for example) but not to be ex-
tremely nice to everyone; if they are “
really
nice” and never get other players “out,”
they will be “mean” to others hoping to enter the game,
and the game will be-
come boring. By being “nice-mean” and maintaining friendship with each other,
the girls make the game successful, competitive, and rewarding (139– 40). This
nuanced study demonstrates the importance of closely examining how girls and
boys play games “to provide a counterpoint to the rhetoric of contrast, difference,
and deficit” (144).
Other important insights come from Elizabeth Grugeon’s delightful essay “ ‘We
Like Singing the Spice Girl Songs . . . and We Like Tig and Stuck in the Mud’:
Girls’ Traditional Games on Two Playgrounds.” During visits to two primary-
school playgrounds in the United Kingdom in 1997,
Grugeon discovered that
the Spice Girls, a popular singing group, had become part of girls’ game playing.
At the first school that she visited, the Spice Girls’ influence had been so strong
that school administrators had banned all play related to the singers Ginger Spice,
Posh Spice, Sporty Spice, Scary Spice, and Baby Spice.
Administrators at the sec-
ond school, however, welcomed Spice Girl play and told Grugeon that the girls
had “asked for a Spice Girl corner” (107). Although the girls at the second school
loved to sing “Wannabe” and other Spice Girl songs, Grugeon concluded that
performances of the songs were no more significant than any other game played
on the playground (113). What mattered most was for the girls to have “break
time” (recess) when they could enjoy both traditional games and performances of
material adapted from the mass media.
Ethnographic studies of adolescents have demonstrated the complexity of peer-
group negotiation during the teen years. In “ ‘Poxy Cupid!’
An Ethnographic and
Feminist Account of a Resistant Female Youth Culture: The New Wave Girls,”
Shane J. Blackman explores the dynamics of 10 secondary-school girls in the south
of England in the 1980s. Wearing “confrontational” clothes and favoring new
wave, punk, reggae, and dub music, the New Wave Girls reject traditional stan-
dards of feminine beauty. They resist control by teachers, parents, and boys, “skiv-
ing” (skipping school) and trying to gain independence at home. Among their
in-group rituals are
taping evening conversations, sleeping together in one room,
and making burping and farting noises while reminiscing about going to camp.
While they are at school, the girls use various methods for repelling obnoxious
boys, including putting tampons in their mouths and saying that they are men-
struating. Other students at their school spread rumors and tell stories about the
New Wave Girls’ nefarious activities. Blackman’s ethnographic study offers insight
into the traditions and rituals of a group of teenage girls,
showing how resistance
to norms at school and at home brings the girls a sense of power and satisfaction.
Scholarship and Approaches 111
In “Boys Who Play Hopscotch: The Historical Divide of a Gender Space”
(1998), Derek Van Rheenan traces the historical transformation of Hopscotch
from a game primarily played by boys to a feminine game “where manly boys dare
not tread.” Very young boys (“tykes”), older boys who want to disrupt girls’ play
(“teasers”), and occasional older boys who do not care about the social stigma of
entering a feminine space make others more aware of the gender order that exists
on the playground Although this gendered terrain has certain traditions, it is pos-
sible to play with and resist accepted social structures. Van Rheenan suggests that
children function as “active social agents” and that adults
need to leave children
free to create or re-create culture in their own play areas, without imposition of
adult biases (21–23).
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