Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus: ‘becoming’ a woman, ‘becoming’ a star

Abstract

The beginning of the twenty-first century saw a vast expansion of media aimed at the pre-adolescent female consumer demographic. Through an analysis of Hannah Montana, and in particular its lead character Miley Stewart/Hannah Montana and star Miley Cyrus, this article argues that tween popular culture uses celebrity as an allegory for growing up female. Drawing upon the concept from within girlhood studies, it demonstrates that the girl ‘becoming’ a woman is paralleled with the girl ‘becoming’ a celebrity. Both are highly invested in formulations of the real and authentic, and Hannah Montana highlights this significance of the notion of staying true to yourself through celebrity, as a way of making sense of the tween’s growing up female. Fitting in with the broader contemporary postfeminist and neoliberal cultural context, Hannah Montana employs the narrative of a perpetual makeover, addressing the tween as a self-surveilling subject who must continually work to retain an ‘authentic’ self as she progresses towards womanhood. Both the onscreen girl and celebrity, Miley Stewart/Hannah Montana, and the franchise’s star, Miley Cyrus, are constructed as simultaneously becoming a woman and becoming a celebrity, and the three personae become more enmeshed as the series nears its end; the franchise draws upon the off-screen persona of Miley Cyrus to further parallel becoming a woman and becoming a celebrity and to emphasise the investment in the real. This article demonstrates that tween popular culture addresses the young, female viewer in terms of her becoming woman by teaching the importance of investing in celebrity, and effectively preparing her for the consumption of adult female films and television programmes.