Kenny, Lorraine Delia. (2000). Daughters of Suburbia: Growing Up White, Middle Class, and Female. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press
229 pp. $20 ISBN 0-8135-2853-4
Reviewed by Emily R. Froimson
Arizona State University
October 25, 2002
Daughters of Suburbia provides an account of what it means to be a white middle-class suburban teenage girl in America. Middle-classness “thrives on not being recognized as a cultural phenomenon” (p. 1). It is through the silences and avoidances that the middle class constitutes itself as the cultural norm. Kenny’s central purpose is to understand how white middle-class girls are made and the social processes that make these girls feel cultureless (Kenny, 2000, p. 73). She questions the effect of the culture of privilege on the girls’ lives. She examines the complex ways in which middle-class girls and their communities practice privilege. She also seeks to make sense of the girls’ dramatic storytelling and its relationship their white middle-class culture. Throughout much of the book, Kenny questions who the media makes these girls out to be.
Kenny’s work can be situated within multiple fields and at the crossroads of many current debates. Daughters of Suburbia takes its place in the growing field of critical white studies. Her work is part of the literature attempting to understand and discern the invisible, taken-for-granted, seemingly cultureless, “white culture.” Some scholars in this debate argue that white culture is completely nonexistent (Roediger, 1991) where others argue that whites do have culture but it is invisible (Rosaldo, 1989) and that the invisibility is a product of power and full citizenship. For Kenny, the white culture is one of silence and avoidance. In other words, white culture is based on “indirectness, moral ambiguity, and the historical and everyday silences that sustain [the community’s] normative and hence privileged life” (p. 11). Thus, the issue is not that the white middle class has no culture, but that they have no cultural awareness (p. 74).
Although her work focuses in large part on the social construction of white middle-class identity, she departs from studies that center on sites of racial conflict or on marginalized and stigmatized groups. Moreover, she explicitly departs from the model of identity construction based on negation. Instead, she chooses to study this group from within, using reference points from the media, the town’s history, and her own life. More generally, Kenny’s work also belongs in the tradition of studies examining the intersectionality of race, sexuality, gender, and class. Kenny, however, studies the intersection from the middle class white girls’ perspective, adding adolescence to the mix.
Kenny argues that girls occupy a position as insider-Others. Insider-Others are simultaneously insiders and outsiders. Because the girls she studies appear to be established insiders, it is difficult to see how their identity is outside the norm. Unfortunately, it is also difficult to distinguish the girls who are the insider-Others from those who are simply insiders or “hyper-normal” (p. 179). Adding to the ambiguity is Kenny’s self-identification as an insider-Other because she, too, was a daughter of suburbia. Nevertheless, Kenny argues that this insider-Other status offers the girls at least some perspective on the culture of white middle class America that insiders would not have (p.3).
Among the debates in which Kenny participates is one with Foucault. Using the story of Cheryl Pierson, Kenny highlights how Foucault fails to consider issues of power (and abuses of power) in relation to emergent heterosexuality and teenage girls (p. 85). Cheryl Pierson was the teenage girl who, in 1986, hired a classmate to kill her sexually abusive father. The media initially portrayed Cheryl as the typical suburban high school cheerleader but had difficulty reconciling her as a good girl who had done bad things. Because she became pregnant by her teenage boyfriend and not her father, as she had originally claimed, her claims of sexual abuse appeared less credible. Aligning with Freud and Foucault, the media places blame on the girl’s sexuality and not on the adult male abuser. Kenny argues that Foucault fails to acknowledge the technology of female adolescence where girls are simultaneously supposed to know and not know about sex and sexuality. Whereas Foucault argues that our modern culture manages to constantly speak about sex (even though it is a taboo subject), Kenny points out that not everyone is supposed to speak about sex, particularly not the middle-class teenage girl. This constraint contributes to the culture of avoidance.
Kenny’s conceptual framework is somewhat diffuse. The center of her study is the girls of Shoreham Wading River Middle School, where Kenny observes the interactions of girls, listens to their storytelling, and observes their efforts to become “normal.” However, she contextualizes the girls’ lives and stories by incorporating the media’s fascination with wayward white teenagers, the town’s history, and the parent’s, teacher’s, and administrator’s roles in instilling the culture of avoidance. As discussed above, Kenny herself is part of the conceptual framework. Perhaps she is even the center of her conceptual framework.
Parents are included in this conceptual framework, but only marginally. For example, Kenny observes parents at a basketball game against a predominantly black school. The parents comment on the girls’ physicality and color of their school uniforms, using these seemingly innocuous markers as codes for race. Teachers and administrators serve to highlight the complicity of schools and adults in fostering the culture of avoidance. The principal vehemently opposes Kenny’s proposed research plan because she wants to study white culture. The teachers repeatedly miss opportunities to discuss race or critically examine stereotypes.
The town’s history of resisting the construction of apartments and group homes also exemplifies the culture of avoidance at the center of her study. Indeed, New York City serves to highlight the white culture of Shoreham. The youth seem unaware of, even sheltered from, the town problems with a local nuclear power plant.
Kenny incorporates the media into her conceptual framework because of the media’s role in storytelling. The media’s all-consuming interest in stories of “bad girls” allows Kenny to distinguish what it means to be a “normal” middle-class white girl. In large part through the normative culture’s interest in redeeming these girls, Kenny is able to determine what it means to redeem these girls (and how they can be redeemed) (p. 8). For Kenny, the media stories serve as both pseudo-ethnographies and research subjects (p. 47).
In studying these pieces of her conceptual framework, Kenny employs a feminist epistemological approach. In this approach, knowledge is socially constructed and understood from a particular standpoint. Thus, Kenny shares her own beliefs, understandings, biases and social position. She identifies herself as a white, suburban thirty-something middle-class woman. Rather than presenting her findings as the “truth about teenage girls,” Kenny contextualizes the girls’ stories, placing them not only within the context of her life, but also within the context of media portrayals and their relationship to others.
Kenny’s epistemological approach does not privilege objectivity over subjectivity. Indeed, subjectivity is central to understanding how the girls position themselves in relation to others and how society positions “normal” teenage girls in relation to Others (e.g., Amy Fisher). Kenny’s own subjectivity is also critical to her construction of knowledge. For example, she interprets the media’s ethnicizing Amy Fisher as an attempt to displace issues of class and to protect the white middle class from having to own Fisher’s transgression (p. 72). The subjectivity of the girls is also important. Thus, it is important that the girls view their own lives as normal and boring.
Kenny’s approach allows her to deal with the emotion in her research. In sharing her story of an unwanted pregnancy, she questions how much of her emotions had to do with herself and how much they had to do with the collective subject—adolescent middle-class white girls. She shares her fears about reconstituting herself as a teenage girl with all of its attendant insecurities and uncertainties (p. 20).
Another aspect of Kenny’s epistemological approach is her consideration of the body. At the outset, she places her own body at “ethnographic ground zero” (p. 18). Throughout, Kenny interprets the role of the body in the making of white middle-class consciousness. For example, one of the popular girls describes another, a working class insider-Other, as “so big and muscular” (p. 182). Kenny explains that the girls draw on stereotypes—in this case, the working class stereotype—reducing Others to their physicality. In a basketball game against a predominantly black team, she hears parents commenting on how “big” the other girls were and how “skinny” the home team girls were, avoiding the real distinction between black and white (p. 183).
Her feminist epistemological approach informs Kenny’s choice of methodology, as well as the interpretation and presentation of data. Daughters of Suburbia is primarily a series of narratives of infamous Long Island “bad girls,” “normal” girls at Shoreham Wading River Middle School (“SWR “), and even the town of Shoreham. Kenny presents this work as an “autoethnography,” placing herself at the center of the research, sharing her own personal narratives. Because she is now an adult, she identifies herself as an insider-Other. Interestingly, she identifies all of the girls that she studies as insider-Others. As a one-time member of the group she seeks to understand, part of her task is to uncover her own taken-for-granted assumptions about being a cultureless middle class white girl growing up in the suburbs. She uses some autobiographical elements to position herself in relation to the students and to provide context for the girls’ stories. Thus, using a deeply personal story of unwanted pregnancy and abortion, she begins to shed light on the culture of avoidance and the normalizing of white middle-class girls that occupies much of her research. Autoethnography allows her to highlight the role of the ethnographer in producing cultural knowledge, while exploring her own vulnerabilities as a researcher (p. 18).
Kenny’s work is more than an autoethnography, however. Multiple methods were necessary because she was an insider studying the taken-for-granted nature of being white and middle class. In other words, she needed perspective and context. The multiple methods allowed Kenny to identify the whiteness and middle-classness in a community that refused to acknowledge its culture. She uses ethnographic methods (fieldwork including in-depth interviewing and observations across the continuum of participant-observer) to study the girls at SWR and hear their stories. Kenny conducted most of her research at the middle school during an academic school year in the early 1990s. She sat in classrooms, observing and at times facilitating, roamed the school hallways, went on school field trips and overnight excursions, attended extracurricular activities, and eventually hung out at the mall with the girls, shopping, going to movies and eating pizza. During these interactions, she conducted formal and informal participant-observations, in-depth interviews, and some textual analysis. To tell the stories of Amy Fisher and Cheryl Pierson, who hired a classmate to kill her abusive father, Kenny relies on media analysis—primarily newspapers, television interviews, comedic parodies, and television movies.
Because Kenny presents her research in a series of narratives, she threads findings throughout her work. Ultimately, she concludes that “[t]o be born white . . . is to live in a world of dubious privilege, to live in a world where you are waiting to discover what it means to be white, to sense that whiteness is laden with culture but to be surrounded by public and private denials of this condition” (p. 164). Kenny finds this “culture of avoidance” pervasive throughout the Shoreham-Wading River Middle School. Parents and teachers teach the white students not to discuss or notice the Other, even when they leave the suburban greenhouse (p. 192). For example, following a purported cultural exchange between SWR and a predominantly black school, adults neglected to engage students in any critical discussion of racial or gender issues. Failing to recognize and distinguish the Other (or the pretense that there is no difference) results in an inability to recognize themselves and their own privilege.
Kenny also finds that adolescent girls’ storytelling is an attempt to fill in the perceived cultural void of being normal. These girls make use of “excessive discourse” to give meaning to their otherwise meaningless and uneventful lives (p. 104). Thus, the girls use stories of deaths, accidents, alcoholism and other tragedies to make their lives appear more interesting. Social knowledge, often in the form of gossip, also provides a sort of cultural capital for the girls. Girls jockey for ownership and entitlement to certain stories.
In spite of the book’s overall strength, a few minor weaknesses stand out. Kenny attributes the girls’ storytelling as a practice of whiteness and middle-classness, an attempt to fill the perceived cultural void. It seems just as plausible that the storytelling is a practice of adolescence but this avenue is unexplored.
Her discussion of compulsory heterosexuality could be thicker. Understanding and identifying sexuality is a central part of the lives of adolescent girls and boys. She persuasively shows how gayness has become the only acceptable metonym for the Other (p. 177), but does not fully explain why or even whether compulsory heterosexuality is a piece of white middle class culture.
Kenny uses the stories of Cheryl Pierson and Amy Fisher to explain the unlovable subject or the insider-Other who violates the norms of the culture (p. 59). However, applying the same concept of unlovable subject to the mass of white middle-class girls does not work. It is precisely because these two girls violated the norms of middle class culture that they are “unlovable subjects.”
On a methodological note, the girls’ voices are often lost in the narratives and interpretations. Perhaps Kenny would justify this practice because the work is autoethnographic. However, significant portions are devoted to girls’ stories and Kenny speaks too much for the girls. Ethnographic methods are particularly appropriate for studying young people because they “allow[] children a more direct voice and participation in the production of sociological data than is usually possible through experimental or survey styles of research" (Deegan, 1996, 11, cited in Adler and Adler, 1998). Because ethnographers have interpretive authority, the challenge is to resist speaking for others. Rather than simply presenting an accurate picture of the “researched other,” the research agenda “must continually make room for her at the table” (Pignatelli, 1998, p. 421). Thus, I advocate a youth-centered approach when researching young people. Youth-centered means treating young people as experts about their own lives. Researchers should exercise care in consulting with youth about interpretations and make every effort to present young people’s voices as fully as possible in the final product.
Nevertheless, Daughters of Suburbia significantly contributes to the field of critical white studies. Kenny’s ability to study whiteness without relying on either racial conflict or oppressed peoples as reference allows her to examine whether white culture exists or exists only in reference to the Other. The study highlights the potential role of adults (teachers, parents and administrators) in stimulating critical reflections on race and class.
References
Adler, P., & Adler, P. (1998). Peer power: preadolescent culture and identity. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press
Kenny, L.D. (2000). Daughters of suburbia. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Pignatelli, F. (1998). Critical ethnography/poststructuralist concerns: Foucault and the play of memory, Interchange, 294, 402-423
Roediger, D.R. (1991). The wages of whiteness: Race and the making of the American working class. New York: Verso
Rosaldo, R. (1989). Culture and truth: The remaking of social analysis. Boston: Beacon Press
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