Girl Dads: spectacular girlhood, paternal appropriation, and the cultural dynamics of father-daughter filial attachment

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines the cultural figure of the girl dad, which has emerged as a prominent masculine sub-type in the 2020s, celebrating and spectacularising the father-daughter relationship. A diffuse presence across old and new media forms, we trace the girl dad’s long-standing origins in film and television right up to its transmedial deployment in diverse contexts including professional self-branding on LinkedIn, a hit comedy special, and an aging action star’s entrepreneurial family branding. The article unpacks the cultural work that the hyphenated subject position does at a time when masculinity is putatively under duress and the girl has emerged as the premiere subject of postfeminist media cultures. At once imbued with positive associations of innocence and fun and insulated from any suggestions of naivete or weakness that might be stereotypically deemed girlish traits, the girl dad syphons the positive associations of girlhood only, often for commercial or professional gain.