Barbie agrees to let Stacie train a guide-dog puppy, and her little sister does a great job. But soon, Stacie is faced with giving up her beloved pet.

This book reveals the profound impact that our purchasing-obsessed culture has on our children and argues that corporate marketing to youth has reshaped the experience of childhood into something that is prefabricated. Top scholars in education, sociology, and cultural studies contribute insightful essays that students, parents, and educators will find entertaining and disturbing. This third edition is thoroughly updated with examinations of the icons that shape the values and consciousness of today's children, including Twilight, Barbie, hip-hop, Disney, McDonald's, and many more.

Never before has so much popular culture been produced about what it means to be a girl in today's society. From the first appearance of Nancy Drew in 1930, to Seventeen magazine in 1944 to the emergence of Bratz dolls in 2001, girl culture has been increasingly linked to popular culture and an escalating of commodities directed towards girls of all ages. Editors Claudia A. Mitchell and Jacqueline Reid-Walsh investigate the increasingly complex relationships, struggles, obsessions, and idols of American tween and teen girls who are growing up faster today than ever before. From pre-school to high school and beyond, Girl Culture tackles numerous hot-button issues, including the recent barrage of advertising geared toward very young girls emphasizing sexuality and extreme thinness. Nothing is off-limits: body image, peer pressure, cliques, gangs, and plastic surgery are among the over 250 in-depth entries highlighted. Comprehensive in its coverage of the twenty and twenty-first century trendsetters, fashion, literature, film, in-group rituals and hot-button issues that shape—and are shaped by—girl culture, this two-volume resource offers a wealth of information to help students, educators, and interested readers better understand the ongoing interplay between girls and mainstream culture.

More than an anthology of coming out stories, From Boys to Men is a stunning collection of essays about what it is like to be gay and young, to be different and be aware of that difference from the earliest of ages. In these memoirs, coming out is less important than coming of age and coming to the realization that young gay people experience the world in ways quite unlike straight boys. Whether it is a fascination with soap opera, an intense sensitivity to their own difference, or an obsession with a certain part of the male anatomy, gay kids — or kids who would eventually identify as gay — have an indefinable but unmistakable gay sensibility. Sometimes the result is funny, sometimes it is harrowing, and often it is deeply moving. Essays by lauded young writers like Alex Chee (Edinburgh), Aaron Hamburger (Faith for Beginners), Karl Soehnlein (The World of Normal Boys), Trebor Healy (Through It Came Bright Colors), Tom Dolby (The Trouble Boy), David Bahr, and Austin Bunn, are collected along with those by brilliant, newcomers such as Michael McAllister, Jason Tougaw, Viet Dinh, and the wildly popular blogger, Joe.My.God.

Created around the world and available only on the web, Internet "television" series are independently produced, mostly low budget shows that often feature talented but unknown performers. Typically financed through crowd-funding, they are filmed with borrowed equipment and volunteer casts and crews, and viewers find them through word of mouth or by chance. The fourth in a series covering Internet TV, this book takes a comprehensive look at 1,121 comedy series produced exclusively for online audiences. Alphabetical entries provide websites, dates, casts, credits, episode lists and storylines.

In its 114th year, Billboard remains the world's premier weekly music publication and a diverse digital, events, brand, content and data licensing platform. Billboard publishes the most trusted charts and offers unrivaled reporting about the latest music, video, gaming, media, digital and mobile entertainment issues and trends.

Publisher description

Slum beautiful is a remarkable, straight forward, poetic and eye stretching memoir of KyDeja Morgan’s (Slum Beautiful) struggling life. In her first 28 years of life she was molested, practiced blasphemous acts, robbed, sold drugs, used drugs, prostituted, and arrested and almost prosecuted for the murders of both her mother and brother. Like her other siblings, Slum was raised in a dysfunctional family that practiced open sex, used drugs, gambled and treated their home as a hangout for other addicts. Through her avowed journey in life, it would take Slum 28 years and 11 months, along with becoming homeless to find the beauty in her slum (mind, body, soul and surroundings.) she was able to connect, dig out and remove some of the most scattered and unraveling moments of her life thanks to the acts of soliloquy, prison and an unlikely fallen angel along the way. However, before Slum could share her newly found beauty she has to beat a slew of charges, including breaking and entering, robbery, murder-and come fourth with secrets that inadvertently prolonged her vicious life cycle. Slum Beautiful- in retrospect not only visits the most dangerous place on earth in our heart’s memory, but gives a mind-boggling, touch of retrograde amnesia exploring the inducement of dysfunction in Slum’s family that includes, molestation, sibling rivalry, systematic dependency, drug dependency, self hate, cultural hate, racism, and women and child abuse. Slum Beautiful explores how cycles of injustice begin, and how they can continue to plague without culminating. Penned with a poetic pen, conscience mind, and honest heart, Slum beautiful is the Pangaea of life before the evolution of such disheartening events, and then some. It is an internal reflection of yours and mine. Find your beauty, before the wrong hands do. Without further do, Kenny Attaway presents Slum Beautiful: the soliloquy of the kandy lady.

This anthology is designed to assist teachers and students in learning how to better understand and interpret our common culture and everyday life. With a focus on contemporary media, consumer, and digital culture, this book combines classic and original writings by both leading and rising scholars in the field. The chapters present key theories, concepts, and methodologies of critical cultural and media studies, as well as cutting-edge research into new media. Sections on teaching media/cultural studies and concrete case studies provide practical examples that illuminate contemporary culture, ranging from new forms of digital media and consumer culture to artifacts from TV and film, including Barbie and Big Macs, soap operas, Talk TV, Facebook, and YouTube. The lively articles show that media/cultural studies is an exciting and relevant arena, and this text should enable students and citizens to become informed readers and critics of their culture and society.

"I have found Spade and Valentine's Kaleidoscope of Gender to be the most effective reader that I have used in my undergraduate Sociology of Gender class, and I was delighted to see what promises to be an even better second edition that recently arrived." -Linda Grant, University of Georgia "In a substantial theoretical introduction, Spade and Valentine move their discussion forward by introducing their kaleidoscope metaphor which is comprised of the "prisms" of culture...that intersect to produce patterns of difference and systems of privilege. Because it captures the fluidity and uniqueness of the intricate patterns, the kaleidoscope is a valuable analytical tool. Though it enters a terrain already littered with terminology, this "prismatic" understanding of gender has great potential for transforming current conceptualizations." -Jennifer Keys, North Central College Examining the elusive, evolving construct of gender in a unique text/ reader format An accessible, timely, and stimulating introduction to the sociology of gender, The Kaleidoscope of Gender: Prisms, Patterns, and Possibilities, Second Edition, provides a comprehensive analysis of key ideas, theories, and applications in this field as viewed through the metaphor of a kaleidoscope. This collection of creative articles by top scholars explains how the complex, evolving pattern of gender is constructed interpersonally, institutionally, and culturally and challenges students to question how gender shapes their daily lives. Like the prior edition, the Second Edition maintains a focus on contemporary contributions to the field while incorporating classical and theoretical arguments to provide a broad framework. Integrating a cross-cultural focus and intersectional inquiry, this unique text/reader