Intimate Friends Research Articles

Psychosocial factors and ageing in older lesbian, gay and bisexual people: a systematic review of the literature.

To synthesise and evaluate the extant literature investigating the psychosocial influences on ageing as a lesbian, gay or bisexual person, to develop understanding about these influences and guide future research in the area. Research suggests there may be specific psychological and social factors relevant to ageing for individuals with a nonheterosexual identity. A systematic review was conducted on empirical research involving lesbian, gay and bisexual individuals aged 60 or above. The Cochrane Database, PsychINFO, MEDLINE, Web of Science and Google Scholar were searched and 41 studies met inclusion criteria. The majority had not been reviewed in earlier review articles. Findings were within two domains: psychological, consisting of sub-themes relating to identity, mental health and body image; and social, consisting of relationships, social support, discrimination, caregiving and receiving, community, accessing services and housing. The results suggest lesbian, gay and bisexual individuals mostly adjust well to ageing identities, with mediating influences including self-acceptance and connection with peers. Challenges experienced included ageism and heteronormative health and social care services; intimate friendships, social support and respectful professionals mitigated such threats and facilitated successful ageing. Methodological issues related to sampling procedures, such as purposive sampling through the gay community and limited generalisability due to the homogeneity of participants. Additionally, there was a widespread lack of heterosexual control groups. However, most studies used appropriate measures and acknowledged inherent limitations. Psychosocial influences included the challenge of societal stigma, but also resilience individuals demonstrate through a positive attitude. These factors must continue to be investigated for services to best meet the needs of this population. Clinicians are well placed to assist individuals draw on resilience when facing ageing challenges. Also, clinicians should be aware older people may have prior negative experiences of accessing services and try to involve 'families of choice' in care planning.

Relational aggression, depressive symptoms, and interdependence among school-age children

The present study examined the moderating role of relational-interdependent self-construal (relational interdependence) in the association between relational aggression and depressive symptoms as well as gender differences in the effect. One hundred thirty-two, fourth graded children (50% boys, M age=10.31) in Taipei, Taiwan participated in this study. A multi-informant approach was used to assess study variables. Relational and physical aggression and indices of sociometric status were assessed by peer nominations. Relational interdependence and friendship intimacy were evaluated by children, and children's depressive symptoms were rated by classroom teachers. Mixed linear models demonstrated that after gender and important covariates (i.e., peer acceptance, peer rejection, and friendship intimacy) were controlled, relational interdependence moderated the association between relational aggression (but not physical aggression) and depressive symptoms. Specifically, this association was stronger for children who displayed high levels of relational interdependence than their peers with moderate and low levels of relational interdependence. No gender differences in the effect were found. The findings suggest that relational aggression as a risk factor and relational interdependence as an additive vulnerability interact to influence the development of depression.

FRIENDSHIP AND POLITICS IN RUSSIA

In the context of a symposium on enmity, this article—the product of extensive research done by a group of colleagues in St. Petersburg—concerns characteristic types of friendship in Russia. The author distinguishes in particular between instrumental political friendship, which Russians tend to scorn, and the intensely emotional and intimate sort of friendship, usually shared in a group rather than a dyad, that Russians consider uniquely their own. Both types, however, have long histories in Russia, which this article undertakes to trace. Intimate friendship appears to be an overlay of attitudes and characteristics, originating in the age of sensibility, onto medieval notions about friendship in Christ. An argument is made for a more general acceptance by Russians of instrumental friendship, since even friendship in Christ can be shown to depend extensively on things held in common. The essay argues too, however, for bringing some of the peculiarities, especially the linguistic peculiarities, of intimate friendship to Russian political friendship, in both domestic and international contexts.

Correlates of partner and family violence among older Canadians: a life-course approach.

Knowledge about individual and interpersonal correlates of violence in Canadian seniors is limited. This study identifies correlates of current and past violence by intimate partner and family member(s) in community-dwelling Canadian seniors, while accounting for childhood adverse circumstances. We performed logistic regression analysis of baseline data from a longitudinal study of community-dwelling individuals aged 65 to 74 years and living in Kingston (Ontario) and Saint-Hyacinthe (Quebec). Domestic violence was assessed using the Hurt- Insult-Threaten-Scream (HITS) screening tool. Odds ratios (ORs) are reported with 95% confidence intervals (CIs). Current violence of a psychological nature was reported by 18% of the sample. Women were at greater risk of current and lifetime violence perpetrated by a family member (current violence: adjusted OR = 1.83; 95% CI: 1.02-3.30) as well as experiencing violence from their intimate partner in their lifetime than were men (adjusted OR = 2.48; 95% CI: 1.40-4.37). Risk factors have accumulated over the life course that were found to be consistently associated with both current and lifetime violence included having witnessed violence at home in childhood (lifetime violence by family member: adjusted OR = 9.46; 95% CI: 5.11-17.52), as well as poor quality of relationships with intimate partners, family and friends. Our research documents the ongoing impact of early adversity on subsequent partner and family violence in Canada. Findings identify some preventable factors associated with current psychological violence and past violence among community dwelling Canadian seniors.

Archival ambience and sensory memory: Generating queer intimacies in the settler colonial archive

ABSTRACTThe shift to archives as rhetorical places creates opportunities to examine environmental accessibility, the role of archives in legitimating official public memory, and tactics to evoke memory at the margins. I conceptualize the relation between archival environments, feeling, and memory as “archival ambience.” Ambience challenges modern theories of invention and foregrounds the entanglements of sensory culture, corporeality, sensation, feeling, and memory. Ambience reimagines invention and circulation as the relational materiality of bodies and as central to the generation of intimacies. This essay models a sensory engagement with archives at the American Heritage Center and Grace Hebard and Agnes Wergeland collections. Guided by the settler colonial environment of the American Heritage Center (AHC) and what remains of Hebard and Wergeland, I craft a queer sense of their “intimate friendship” and argue that perception of Hebard and Wergeland's intimate friendship takes shape through the sensory culture of the AHC and that their queerness is an effect of the archive.

A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Isaiah 1–5, H. G. M. Williamson, Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014 (ISBN 978‐0‐567‐47370‐7), xxxviii + 410 pp., pb £24.99

<b>A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Isaiah 1–5,</b> H. G. M. Williamson, Bloomsbury T&amp;T Clark, 2014 (ISBN 978‐0‐567‐47370‐7), xxxviii + 410 pp., pb £24.99

Elegiac Friendship: Notes on Loss

Between 2001 and 2007 three women I loved died: Naomi Schor, Carolyn Heilbrun, and Diane Middlebrook. Although we were all well past middle age, I had failed to imagine ever losing any of them. Lose one’s parents, of course, and I had. However sad, the death of parents conforms to the order of things. Each time I lose a friend I am shocked beyond sadness. The world shrinks. So does my sense of what anchors me to it. Why do friends seem to matter so much, and not any random friend, of course, but the intimate friend, the best friend? How to tell the friendship stories that so often shape our lives in the form of a memoir? These questions are at the heart of my essay about relationships forged in seventies feminism, and that came to an end in the first decade of the twenty-first century.

Relations between quality of friendships and attachment styles in adolescence

In this work relations between quality of friendship and attachment styles among adolescents were investigated. The question of the differences, among individuals of different styles of attachment in the quality of their friendly relations, both at the individual and at the dyadic level were investigated. Also, the predictive significance of attachment when it comes to the quality of friendship, were discussed. The study included 425 subjects of both genders, first grade secondary school students, aged 14 to 17 years. Following instruments were used: Friendship Quality Questionnaire, which was created for the purposes of this study, and assesses dimensions of affection, intimacy, interaction and conflicts in friendship, and a questionnaire for assessing styles of attachment UPIPAV (Nataša Hanak).Results indicate that participants of secure and insecure attachment styles differ significantly in all dimensions of quality of friendships. Secure participants have a higher level of affection, companionship, intimacy and conflict in relation to insecure subjects. Exceptions are subjects of fearful styles of attachment who have a similar level of affection in friendship to those of secure ones. When the above differences are observed at the dyadic level, the situation is as follows: couples of friends with secure styles of attachment at all dimensions of friendship have higher scores compared to couples with insecure styles. Regression analysis showed that attachment significantly contributes to the explanation of all the dimensions of friendship. The strongest individual contribution to the explanation of all dimensions of quality friendships have secure style of attachment. The results are discussed within the attachment theory perspective.

Global Frequency: Playing the Classical Chinese Literati Tradition

10 WLT NOVEMBER–DECEMBER 2016 global frequency Playing the Classical Chinese Literati Tradition by Liu Fang Ihave great respect for all musical traditions and have enjoyed collaborating in past decades with great musicians from different cultural backgrounds, including African, Arab, Indian, Japanese, Vietnamese , and Western. It was indeed mindbroadening and exciting because such collaboration often involves improvisation. While music in this context is often about expressing mood and feeling, it is fascinating to experience how musicians from different traditions, who play different instruments, come together thematically . It is inspiring and even profoundly creative, particularly when organizers provide sufficient time for musicians to rehearse before concerts. This is especially true when musicians meet with an open heart, wanting to learn from each other and not simply be satisfied with things just sounding “okay.” In the contemporary context, it is also a great joy to perform with individual musicians, string quartets, or orchestras where the pieces are mostly composed. Here the challenge, however, is more for the composers than for the performers. It is very demanding for a composer to create a piece for a traditional instrument like the pipa (a four-stringed Chinese lute) that fully explores the typical features of the instrument to such an extent that it would not sound equally satisfying if played on some other instrument, such as the guitar or banjo. This requires the composer to become familiar with the instrument, not just the sound and scales. Amazingly, there are still a number of excellent pieces available by various composers. For my solo concerts, I play mostly traditional Chinese music from the classical literati tradition, which can be considered as “traditional classical music” in contrast to folk traditions or the entertainment music industry. Traditional classical music refers to art music or “sophisticated” music composed by scholars and literati in China’s historical past. This type of music often has thematic, poetic, or philosophical associations and is intimately linked to poetry. As poetry, it sets out to express human feelings, soothe suffering, purify the mind, or bring spiritual elevation. This type of music was noncommercial, typically played solo on private occasions for oneself for the purpose of meditation or self-cultivation, or for Zhi Yin—literarily translated as “know music,” which has become a synonym for intimate friends and music lovers, on instruments such as the qin (commonly known as guqin), a seven -string zither with over three thousand years of well-documented history, or the pipa, a lute with over two thousand years of history. The music is supposed to be played in a meditative state, and the feeling and energy are present and should remain fresh even when repeating the “same old pieces.” The challenge here is the current tendency of constantly looking for “new,” underscoring that only the “original and new” music has artistic value, a viewpoint that probably came from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries regarding the artistic value for arts (in particular paintings). While there is nothing wrong with creating new—and indeed, today’s good creation will be tomorrow’s tradition—it is misleading to use this to judge music-making, particularly for music that came from oral traditions. Even for the same piece, if played from a “true self” in the state of meditation, every performance is “original and new,” not to mention the different environments and audiences. In a real sense, one cannot separate music from musician. When the musician dies, his or her music no longer exists. Recording is not the real thing. That is repeating, not music-making, which is very different from painting. A child prodigy in China, Liu Fang is recognized as one of the most eminent pipa soloists as well as a sensitive performer on the guzheng. She has collaborated with world-class musicians from various traditions and has released nine solo and collaborative albums. She now lives in Canada. Notebook above Liu Fang (center) plays the pipa during a rehearsal with fellow musicians. ...

Intimacy as freedom

Friendship arguably offers itself as the freest of all human associations. A weakness of cultural prescription opens a terrain in which intimacy can be lived in a trust relationship that personifies equality, justice and respect. Friendship’s ‘relational freedom’ enables the mutual development of selves; it is generative. Therein lies ‘the beauty of friendship’, as Agnes Heller has reminded us. But the freedom of intimacy is limited. Embedded in a society that attributes different repertoires of intimacy to women and men and privileges male homosociality, friendship’s freedom is curtailed. Especially cross-sex friendships continue to show evidence of persisting tensions. ‘Erotic friendships’ that seek to realize sexual intimacy but eschew the commitments of coupledom continue to face normative-practical challenges. In this paper, I view central aspects of heterosexual intimacy through the small world of intimate friendship, a prism that refracts gendered tensions in the world at large.

Friendship Security, But Not Friendship Intimacy, Moderates the Stability of Anxiety During Preadolescence

A two-wave longitudinal study of 380 preadolescents (M age = 10.87) from largely middle-class schools in Montréal, Québec, Canada, assessed the hypothesis that friendship security, but not friendship intimacy, moderates the stability of anxiety during adolescence. This central but largely overlooked question about peer relations concerns which aspects of friendship account for the effects of friendship on emotional adjustment. Anxiety and friendship quality were measured via self-report questionnaires, employing the Network of Relationships Inventory for security and intimacy items. An index of friendship durability, which combined reciprocity and stability within first- and second-best friendship choices, was derived from sociometric measures. A latent variable path analysis examined with structural equation modeling showed that anxiety was less stable for children who perceived their friendships as secure. The moderating effect of intimacy was statistically nonsignificant. A follow-up analysis showed that the effects of security did not result from friendship durability. These findings provide support for the long-standing but previously unaddressed hypothesis that security, rather than intimacy, accounts for friendship’s effect on anxiety reduction during early adolescence.

The Emergence of Relationship-based Cooperation.

This paper investigates the emergence of relationship-based cooperation by coupling two simple mechanisms into the model: tie strength based investment preference and homophily assumption. We construct the model by categorizing game participants into four types: prosocialists (players who prefers to invest in their intimate friends), antisocialists (players who prefer to invest in strangers), egoists (players who never cooperate) and altruists (players who cooperate indifferently with anyone). We show that the relationship-based cooperation (prosocialists) is favored throughout the evolution if we assume players of the same type have stronger ties than different ones. Moreover, we discover that strengthening the internal bonds within the strategic clusters further promotes the competitiveness of prosocialists and therefore facilitates the emergence of relationship-based cooperation in our proposed scenarios. The robustness of the model is also tested under different strategy updating rules and network structures. The results show that this argument is robust against the variations of initial conditions and therefore can be considered as a fundamental theoretical framework to study relationship-based cooperation in reality.

Biografía inédita de Francisco de Quintana: recuperación de un novelista olvidado

Este artículo pretende desvelar datos inéditos de Francisco de Quintana, escritor del seiscientos escasamente estudiado por la crítica literaria hasta nuestros días. La investigación, a partir tanto de fuentes primarias como de su obra literaria, ha supuesto el hallazgo de información sustancial sobre este íntimo amigo de Lope de Vega. Además de aportar nuevos testimonios biográficos, esta comunicación interrelaciona acontecimientos fundamentales de su vida con su obra literaria.

Predicting Generative Concern in Young Adulthood from Narrative Intimacy: A 5-Year Follow-Up

According to Erikson’s developmental model, achieving intimacy in young adulthood should predict higher levels of generativity later in life. This mixed quantitative and qualitative, longitudinal study examined the relationship between generative concern and intimacy in young adulthood (from ages 26–32). Participants (N = 147; 69 % female; 74.1 % college educated) told a narrative about a “relationship defining moment” with a same-sex friend, and completed self-report questionnaires of optimism and generative concern at ages 26 and 32. Optimism and generative concern had strong stability over time, while friendship intimacy did not exhibit test–retest stability. Most participants (88.6 %) disclosed a different story at each time point, which contributed to the lack of rank-order stability for friendship intimacy in the present study. Friendship intimacy was positively correlated with age 26 and age 32 generative concern. Both sex and optimism predicted longitudinal increases in generative concern over 5 years, with women and people higher in optimism seeing larger increases. Friendship intimacy coded from narratives at 26 predicted (p = .052) increases in generative concern at 32. The present study extended prior research by examining the relationship between intimacy and generative concern as people develop from emerging to young adulthood. Following Erikson, developing close relationships with others, exhibiting an optimistic outlook on life, and being female appear to facilitate greater generative concern in young adults.

Perceptions of intimacy and friendship reciprocity moderate peer influence on aggression

Previous research has shown that close friends' influence can exacerbate adolescents' aggressive behavior, but results of studies which examine whether friendships of greater or lesser qualities moderate peer influence effects are inconsistent. The present study tested whether the perception of the positive friendship quality of intimate exchange and friendship reciprocity moderated best friend influence on participant aggression over time. The 243 participants were approximately 12 years old and ethnically diverse. Neither intimate exchange nor reciprocity significantly moderated friend influence on aggression in a simple way, but the interaction of intimate exchange and friendship reciprocity predicted peer influence on participants' aggression over time. Specifically, highly intimate, nonreciprocal best friendships and less intimate, reciprocal best friendships showed greatest influence when friends' proportion of peer nominations for aggression was high. Reciprocity and intimacy should be considered when predicting peer influence on aggression.

The Impact of Crime on Social Ties and Civic Participation

AbstractThe present study examined associations of neighbourhood crime with residents' social ties and civic participation using multilevel models. We hypothesized that crime is indirectly associated with residents' low civic participation by negatively relating to their acquaintanceship ties because of fear of neighbours. By contrast, we predicted that crime is indirectly related to frequent civic participation by positively associating with more intimate friendship ties as a response to combat external threats. Additionally, we hypothesized that high crime rates in the neighbourhood increases the importance of generalized trust towards others. Therefore, we examined the interaction effects of neighbourhood crime and trust on social ties and participation. The study is based on a postal questionnaire mailed to residents aged between 20 and 69 years, residing in Musashino City and Kiyose City, in Tokyo. Rates of larceny reported by the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department were used as indices of neighbourhood crime. As hypothesized, our results showed that crime is positively associated with friendship ties and is negatively related to acquaintanceship ties. Through these opposing relationships, crime showed both positive and negative associations with civic participation. Moreover, we found that generalized trust buffered the adverse relationships between crime, broader social ties and participation. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley &amp; Sons, Ltd.

Reading Like a Girl: Narrative Intimacy in Contemporary American Young Adult Literature by Sara K. Day (review)

Reviewed by: Reading Like a Girl: Narrative Intimacy in Contemporary American Young Adult Literature by Sara K. Day Lisa Rowe Fraustino (bio) Reading Like a Girl: Narrative Intimacy in Contemporary American Young Adult Literature. By Sara K. Day. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2013. Given its mission “ To encourage high standards of criticism, scholarship, research, and teaching in children’s literature,” the Children’s Literature Association has always pursued a publishing agenda, beginning with proceedings from the early conferences. From 1985 through 2006, ChLA-sponsored books were published through an affiliation with Scarecrow Press and included the now discontinued Touchstones and Phoenix Award series, as well as the Centennial Studies series and individual general studies titles that remain part of the new publishing program of the Children’s Literature Association series with the University Press of Mississippi. Sara K. Day’s well-written and meticulously organized first book, Reading Like a Girl, is the second title published in this new series and lives up to the ChLA’s goal “to publish innovative, insightful literary criticism” (childlitassn.org). Day coins the term “narrative intimacy” to analyze the ways in which first-person female narrators in contemporary American young adult fiction draw readers—primarily adolescent women—into an imagined relationship that situates the reader as confidante. She defines narrative intimacy as a rhetorical situation that “draws attention to the ways in which the roles of author, narrator, and reader are all shaped by their positioning in either the real world or a fictional space” (13). Day establishes these concepts as the underlying framework for her study in chapter 1, “‘She Is a Creature Designed for Reading’: Narrative Intimacy and the Adolescent Woman Reader.” In chapter 2, “‘Opening Myself Like a Book to the Spine’: Disclosure and Discretion in Constructions of Friendship,” Day discusses the “double-edged sword concept as the dominant cultural understanding of adolescent women’s friendships” (34). In disclosing her inner thoughts and feelings—including those she withholds from characters in the novel—the first-person narrator implicitly situates the reader as an intimate friend. Thus “narrative intimacy becomes a lens through which to recognize flaws in the narrator’s relationships with her (fictional) friends—flaws that almost always return to questions of disclosure and discretion” (35). Day traces this pattern in Sarah Dessen’s Keeping the Moon, Natasha Friend’s Perfect, Stephanie Hemphill’s Things Left Unsaid, Siobhan Vivian’s A Little Friendly Advice, Lizabeth Zindel’s The [End Page 296] Secret Rites of Social Butterflies, and E. Lockhart’s Ruby Oliver series, arguing that “each of these novels constructs the role of the reader as friend, even as the construction of this role may draw attention to or deny constructions of disclosure within friendships as difficult or dangerous” (35). The chapter concludes, “The very boundary between fictional narrator and real reader that is blurred by direct address and anticipation of reader’s responses therefore actively reinforces contradictory messages about intimacy” (63). In chapter 3, “‘He Couldn’t Get Close Enough’: The Exploration and Relegation of Desire,” Day expands the notion of narrative intimacy in female friendships to “the reader as a welcome voyeur” of romantic relationships (76). Examining Judy Blume’s Forever, Dessen’s Someone Like You, Kristen Tracy’s Lost It, Sara Zarr’s Story of a Girl, Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight saga, and Rachel Cohn’s Cyd Charisse trilogy, Day finds that “even as narrative intimacy offers a location to explore desire and love, it echoes traditional warnings about the potential physical and emotional threats posed by sexual activity and reinforces the ambiguous discourse of readiness surrounding adolescent sex” (90). Day posits that “the narrator-reader relationship is in and of itself a didactic tool that echoes the traditional demands about love and sex faced by adolescent women in contemporary American culture” (99). The discussion of romance transitions to a discussion of the ramifications of narrative intimacy in books with themes of sexual violation and trauma in chapter 4, “‘She Doesn’t Say a Word’: Violations and Reclamations of Intimacy.” In such texts, Day claims, narrators “primarily treat the reader as a therapist of sorts, relying on the implication of confidentiality in order to reclaim rather...

Rachel Hope Cleves. Charity and Sylvia: A Same-Sex Marriage in Early America.

Charity Bryant put it simply, “‘On the 3rd of July 1807’ … Sylvia Drake ‘consented to be my help-meet and came to be my companion’” (p. 101). Thus, the two women initiated their lifelong union in western Vermont. They built a home and a tailoring business together, shared their finances and their bed, and over time earned the admiration of their fellow congregants and the town's ministers. They were widely recognized as a couple and when they died they were buried together under a shared headstone. Rachel Hope Cleves's deeply researched and compelling biography tells the story of their marriage and reveals how their community, family, and friends made sense of this same-sex union in early-nineteenth-century America. Charity and Sylvia: A Same-Sex Marriage in Early America is a love story. Cleves boldly, and convincingly, asserts that the two were lovers who bound themselves to one another in the most fundamental ways that marriage was understood at the time: as a spiritual and sexual union in which two became one. Diverging from earlier historical studies of women's intimacy in same-sex romantic friendships, Cleves argues that sexual attraction and physical sexual intimacy were unquestionably part of their relationship. A central goal of the book is to understand how those around them reconciled acknowledgement of Charity and Sylvia's union with a general societal condemnation of same-sex sexual practices. Cleves's answer is that Charity and Sylvia gained tolerance by being modest, productive members of their community and enmeshing themselves in public and religious service. By being otherwise exemplary reputable women, Charity and Sylvia encouraged their community to remain silent about their sexuality and treat it as an open secret. Cleves evokes the concept of the open closet wherein the denizens of Weybridge, Vermont strategically chose to remain ignorant of the couple's sexual intimacy in order to avoid the necessity of condemnation.

Testocap – a herbal solution for erectile dysfuncyion and premature ejaculation

Sexual activity is a vital principle of human living that connects the desire, energy and pleasure of the body to a knowledge of human intimacy, for the sake of erotic love, intimate friendship, human mating and procreation. Sexuality is the capacity to have erotic experiences and responses. According to Masters and Johnson, the human sexual response cycle consists of four phases: excitement, plateau, orgasm, and resolution. The World Health Organization's International Classifications of Diseases defines sexual problems as ways in which an individual is unable to participate in a sexual relationship as he or she would wish. There are four major categories of sexual problems: desire disorders, arousal disorders, orgasmic disorders, and sexual pain disorders. Sexual arousal disorder in men, erectile dysfunction. Erectile dysfunction (ED) or impotence is sexual dysfunction characterized by the inability to develop or maintain an erection of the penis during sexual activity.Orgasmic disorders In men, premature ejaculation Premature ejaculation (PE) occurs when a man experiences orgasm and expels semen soon after sexual activity and with minimal penile stimulation. Sexuality has been explained in the Ayurveda classics in detail along with the various disorders related to desire, arousal, orgasmic and sexual pain disorders. The various formulations have been explained in classics to relieve these disorders and help the man to enjoy their sexual life.Considering these issues the need of hour this conceptual study has been carried out to help, support and provide enhanced sexual life with readily available pure botanicals which are time tested evidenced based and 100% safe and effective.

Tween Intimacy and the Problem of Public Life in Children’s Media: “Having It All” on the Disney Channel’s Hannah Montana

Contradictions of public participation pervade the everyday lives of contemporary children and those around them. In the past two decades, the children's media and consumer industries have expanded and dramatically transformed, especially through the development and consolidation of tweens-people ages nine to thirteen, not yet teenagers but no longer quite children-as a key consumer demographic (Cook and Kaiser 2004). Commentators increasingly bemoan the destabilization of age identities, pointing to children's purportedly more mature taste in music, clothes, and media as evidence of a process of kids getting older younger (Schor 2004), and to adults' consumer practices as evidence of their infantilization (Barber 2007). Tween discourses focus especially on girls, for whom the boundary between childhood innocence and adolescent or adult independence is fraught with moral panic around sexuality, which only heightens anxieties about changing age identities. Girls' consumption and media participation increasingly involve performances in the relatively public spaces of social media, mobile media, and the Internet (Banet-Weiser 2011; Bickford, in press; Kearney 2007), so the public sphere of consumption is full of exuberant participation in mass-mediated publics. Beyond literal performances online and on social media, even everyday unmediated consumption-of toys, clothes, food, and entertainment-is fraught with contradictory meanings invoking children's public image as symbols of domesticity, innocence, and the family and anxiety about children's intense affiliation with peer communities outside the family (Pugh 2009). Participation in the sphere of consumption entails a form of publicness that is in stark contrast to a traditional construction of childhood as private, innocent, and islanded in domestic spaces.In this context, the Disney Channel sitcom Hannah Montana is a seminal text. Hannah Montana aired from 2006 to 2011 and ushered in a new era of childrens media. Along with the television movie High School Musical and the rock act the Jonas Brothers, Hannah Montana returned Disney to a level of commercial dominance with young audiences that it had lost since its heyday of animated musical films in the 1990s, when musical features such as The Lion King and The Little Mermaid topped movie and music sales charts and transformed the home video market (Graser 2009). In 2007 the Hannah Montana soundtrack album debuted at number one and spent seventy-eight weeks on the Billboard 200 chart (Billboard 2014). A national concert tour sold out in minutes (Kaufman 2007), and a concert film sold out theaters nationally (Bowles 2008), earning sixty-five million dollars and setting box office records for normally slow winter releases (Box Office Mojo 2014). The show transformed Disney's music business and accelerated a decade-long shift toward pop music genres and multimedia tie-ins across the children's music industry (Chmielewski 2007; Bickford 2012). Hannah Montana built on earlier Disney Channel successes like That's So Raven and Lizzie McGuire, as well as 1990s teen pop, heavily marketed to children, such as Britney Spears and NSYNC. But it combined and transformed these predecessors, establishing a model of hugely successful multimedia celebrity acts, bridging film, television, and popular music and focused entirely on preadolescent child audiences. In the changing fields of tween media and children's consumer culture, then, Hannah Montana is a genre-defining text.Hannah Montana intervenes directly in discourses about childhood, publicness, and consumerism. Its premise is that fourteen-year-old pop sensation Hannah Montana lives a life as middle school student Miley Stewart.1 The show's narrative conflict builds around tensions between Miley s public and private life, exploring in detail how Miley s public life disrupts her normal childhood and threatens her intimate friendships. This conflict seems to broadly allegorize children's changing relationship to media and public culture, but rather than reinventing the wheel in applying such questions to children, Hannah Montana adapts its approach from another sphere with a long tradition of dramatizing cultural anxiety around changing social boundaries: the postfeminist prob- lem of having it all and women's changing relationship to domestic and waged work. …