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JOURNAL TITLE: Women's studies newsletter

USER JOURNAL TITLE: Women's studies quarterly

ARTICLE TITLE: Images from the Hannah Montana Series

ARTICLE AUTHOR:

VOLUME: 43

ISSUE: 1-2

MONTH:

YEAR: 2015

PAGES: 83-6

ISSN: 0363-1133

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WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly 43: 1 & 2 (Spring/Summer 2015) © 2015 by Leah DeVun. All rights reserved.

Images from the Hannah Montana Series

Leah DeVun

Thanks to a series of controversial music videos and live performances, pop star Miley Cyrus is back in the news, prompting strong reactions as well as a public debate about the nature of feminism. In the wake of Cyrus’s new incarnation as a twerking, pot-smoking provocateur, it is per-haps easy to forget that just a few years ago she epitomized all-American tweendom with her hit television show Hannah Montana and her whole-some, girl-next-door persona. At the height of the TV show’s popularity in 2008, Cyrus drew an enormous crowd to her concert at Reliant Stadium in Houston, Texas. I happened to be in the area and saw thousands of young girls on their way to the concert, fully arrayed in Hannah Montana cos-tumes, with makeup, toy microphones, and long blonde wigs. Struck by the scene, I stopped a number of the families and asked the girls to pose for portraits wearing their concert outfits. Some of the parents agreed, and through them I met more Hannah Montana fans, who also wanted to participate.

My photographs have long dealt with issues of gender and sexuality, especially as they intersect with popular culture, beauty, and consumption. In particular, I have been interested in how mainstream media outlets por-tray women and girls, and how the subjects of those portraits in turn form their own communities, subcultures, and realities. My photographs of Hannah Montana fans, which were taken in 2008 and 2009, explore how these girls (ages four to eleven) emulate their idol through carefully crafted appearances that at first seem rigorously conformist, but which also allow for creative possibilities.

83

Leah DeVun, America, Age 10, from the Hannah Montana series, Lightjet Print, 30 x 40 inches, 2009. Image courtesy of the artist.

84 Leah DeVun

Leah DeVun, Reileigh and Ariana, Ages 4 and 7, from the Hannah Montana series, Lightjet Print, 30 x 40 inches, 2009. Image courtesy of the artist.

Images from the Hannah Montana Series 85

Some viewers of these images have expressed discomfort with what they perceive to be an inappropriately mature or sexualized affect among the girls. Others have pointed to the girls’ exaggerated performance of femininity, citing drag as a close analogue. On the one hand, my photo-graphs demonstrate that trends in celebrity and beauty culture now influ-ence the ways in which even very young children fashion their identities; on the other hand, the desire to mimic celebrities is nothing new, nor is the attraction of dress up and imaginative play. At the least, there is a ten-sion between how these young fans passively absorb prefabricated media images of femininity and how they reinterpret them in ways that exceed any prescribed meaning.

Leah DeVun is an artist and historian living in Brooklyn, New York. Her photographs

and installations explore the legacies of feminism—the landscapes of rural lesbian

communes, the drag-like costumes of preteen obsessive Hannah Montana fans, the

contents of a historic gay and lesbian archive—with a special interest in queer and

gendered communities, fashion and fandom, memory, politics, and identity.

86 Leah DeVun

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