Girls’ Media in the Women’s Liberation Era is a critical analysis and cultural history of popular girls’ media narratives produced in the United States between 1968 and 1980—the era of the second-wave feminist movement—and girls’ responses to those narratives.

Grounded in exhaustive archival research and close analysis of such hits as The Brady Bunch and Family, the book highlights how mainstream media negotiated feminist themes and how liberation-era girls “talked back”—especially through letters, opinion essays, interviews, and diaries—on a range of media narratives and feminist issues, thus demonstrating their crucial involvement in the women’s movement and its wider political struggle.

Girls’ Media in the Women’s Liberation Era is a key text for both students and researchers in women’s and gender studies, media studies, children’s media, American studies, cultural studies, and sociology.

Kirsten Pike is Assistant Professor in Residence in the Communication Program at Northwestern University in Qatar.