Researcher ORCID Identifier

0009-0008-7370-1226

Graduation Year

2025

Document Type

Open Access Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Reader 1

Jih-Fei Cheng

Reader 2

Michelle Decker

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Terms of Use for work posted in Scholarship@Claremont.

Rights Information

© 2025 Emily R. Dietrick

Abstract

This thesis examines the American tween as a postfeminist subject within the context of youth cultural production on TikTok, responding to the recent resurgence of concern about the young girls’ body in popular discourse. The first chapter will explore the origins of the tween as the marketing industry category previously known as the subteen, particularly through the lens of tween media culture and postfeminist narratives of choice and authenticity in identity formation. The second chapter will analyze the current technological facets of TikTok with attention to the For You page, algorithm, user-generated content, and influencer self-branding. This will demonstrate how the app’s structural condition facilitates a certain type of youth cultural production through (re)producing dominant white middle-class femininity as ideal, as well addressing the broader cultural crisis about the girl in America. The third chapter performs two case studies of tween TikTok Get Ready With Me influencers to demonstrate the difficulty of finding balance between an appropriate performance of ideal femininity while still appearing to remain authentic. Through this analysis, this thesis will discuss who the tween is today and how the tween as a postfeminist subject on TikTok works to perform the social reproduction of ideal femininity, thereby reinforcing the focus on empowered self-attainment rather than intersectional collective action.

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