In this comprehensive, readable, two volume encyclopedia, experts from a variety of disciplines contribute pieces to the puzzle of what it means―and what it has meant over the last 400 years―to be a girl in America. The portrait that emerges reveals deep differences in girls' experiences depending on socioeconomic context, religious and ethnic traditions, family life, schools, institutions, and the messages of consumer and popular culture.

Girls have been commodified, idealized, trivialized, eroticized, and shaped by the powerful forces of popular culture, from Little Women to Barbie. Yet girls are also powerful co-creators of the culture that shapes them, often cleverly subverting it to their own purposes. From Pocahantas to punk rockers, girls have been an integral, if overlooked and undervalued, part of American culture.