Tweencom Girls analyzes the different ways character tropes are portrayed in media targeted at eight- to twelve-year-olds, particularly female characters, over the last twenty-five years. The book focuses particularly on sitcoms produced by the cable giants Disney Channel and Nickelodeon because of their popularity and ubiquity. It provides extensive examples and alternative interpretations of the shows' tropes and themes, particularly for those who are unfamiliar with the genre. The first section explores common tweencom tropes, focusing on different themes that are prevalent throughout the series. The second section includes a discussion of the big picture of how tropes and themes give insight into the female characters portrayed in the popular tweencom programming, as well as advice to parents and educators.

The numerous anti-bullying programmes in schools across the United States have done little to reduce the number of reported bullying instances. One major flaw in a majority of the programs and other books on bullying is that little attention has been paid to the role of the media and popular culture in adolescents' bullying and mean girl behaviour. This book addresses media role models in television, film, picture books, and the Internet in the realm of bullying and relational aggression. It highlights a significant number of portrayals with unproductive strategies that lead to poor resolutions or no resolution at all. Young viewers may learn ineffective, even dangerous, ways of handling aggressive situations. Victims may feel discouraged when they are unable to handle the situation as easily as in media portrayals. They may also feel their experiences are trivialised by comic portrayals. Entertainment programming, aimed particularly at adolescents, often portray adults as incompetent or uncaring and include mean spirited teasing. In addition, overuse of the term ""bully"" and defining all bad behavior as ""bullying"" may dilute the term and begin to trivialise the problem.

Instead of advancing women's social and professional empowerment, popular culture trends appear to be backsliding into the blatant sexual exploitation of women and girls at younger and younger ages. This study investigates the effects of mass marketed sexual images and cultural trends on the behaviors and attitudes of young girls and describes many ways in which young girls are increasingly taught to go to outrageous lengths in seeking male attention.The topics include the powerful effects of cultural phenomena such as revealing fashions, plastic surgery, and beauty pageants in influencing teen and preteen girls to willingly participate in and promote their own sexualization. These chapters also explore other cultural factors contributing to this early sexualization of young girls, including absentee parenting and material overindulgence. Later chapters focus on the sexual representations of females in the mass entertainment media, focusing specifically on how popular magazines, television programs, films, and the Internet prey upon, promote, and reinforce young girls' physical and sexual insecurities.

Professional wrestling revels in its exaggeration of masculinity. This hyper-masculinity is evident in the physical appearance of wrestlers, the sexuality-charged and violent moves used in and out of the ring, the role assigned to women and the extensive use of weapons such as chains, barbed wire and steel folding chairs. This study explores the link between watching televised wrestling matches and increases in verbal aggression, rebellion and propensity toward violence and retaliation. Wrestling is placed within the larger context of popular culture and other hyper-masculine entertainment. The book begins with a brief history of professional wrestling, a summary of the criticisms of the sport, and a discussion of the author's research methods. One chapter discusses how gender socialization plays a part in the effects of wrestling on its viewers, arguing that wrestling goes beyond the image of physically violent acts to models of interpersonal behavior. The expansion of wrestling into storylines outside the ring includes problem situations involving class, race, homophobia and nationality, to which violence is often presented as a solution. The book concludes with an investigation of the attractiveness of wrestling and its ability to lure fans back year after year.

This book focuses on the "dark side" of stand-up comedy, initially inspired by speculations surrounding the death of comedian Robin Williams. Contributors, those who study humor as well as those who perform comedy, join together to contemplate the paradoxical relationship between tragedy and comedy and expose over-generalizations about comic performers' troubled childhoods, addictions, and mental illnesses. The book is divided into two sections. First, scholars from a variety of disciplines explore comedians' onstage performances, their offstage lives, and the relationship between the two. The second half of the book focuses on amateur and lesser-known professional comedians who reveal the struggles they face as they attempt to hone successful comedy acts and likable comic personae. The goal of this collection is to move beyond the hackneyed stereotype of the sad clown in order to reveal how stand-up comedy can transform both personal and collective tragedies by providing catharsis through humor.

Banet-Weiser (2004) marked the debut of Clarissa Explains it All in 1991 as a crucial turning point for recognition of girls as "important empowered subjects in the social world." The current study of tweencoms focuses on the different ways character tropes are portrayed in media targeted to 8-12 year olds, particularly female characters, over the last 25 years. The focus is limited to the cable giants Disney Channel and Nickelodeon because of their popularity and high concentration of original programming targeted to tweens that airs nearly round-the-clock. This book employs a thematic analysis approach, similar to the one adopted by Riggs (2011) in his identification of the ways in which particular groups of characters are represented and the implications such representations might have for viewers. It incorporates cultivation theory (Gerbner 1998), which is based on media consumption's influence on distorted perceptions of reality, and social cognitive theory (Bandura 1986), which explains the relationship between vicarious exposure to specific behaviors and imitation of those behaviors. This book provides extensive examples and alternative interpretations of the shows' tropes and themes, particularly for those who are unfamiliar with the genre. Past research has shown that media and popular culture portrayals are influential for young viewers and yet live-action, cable comedies targeted to adolescents have gone relatively unnoticed. Much of the previous research has focused on very young girls and princess culture. The book is broken up into two sections. The first section explores common tweencom tropes. Subsequent chapters focusing on different themes that are prevalent throughout the series. The concluding chapter includes a discussion of the big picture of how the tropes and themes give insight into the female characters portrayed in the popular tweencom programming. The final chapter will also include advice to parents and educators.

This book focuses on the "dark side" of stand-up comedy, initially inspired by speculations surrounding the death of comedian Robin Williams. Contributors, those who study humor as well as those who perform comedy, join together to contemplate the paradoxical relationship between tragedy and comedy and expose over-generalizations about comic performers' troubled childhoods, addictions, and mental illnesses. The book is divided into two sections. First, scholars from a variety of disciplines explore comedians' onstage performances, their offstage lives, and the relationship between the two. The second half of the book focuses on amateur and lesser-known professional comedians who reveal the struggles they face as they attempt to hone successful comedy acts and likable comic personae. The goal of this collection is to move beyond the hackneyed stereotype of the sad clown in order to reveal how stand-up comedy can transform both personal and collective tragedies by providing catharsis through humor.