The Disney Channel hit show, Hannah Montana, constructs contemporary US girlhood and
notions of femininity in relation to celebrity, such that its primary girl characters, Hannah
Montana, Miley Stewart, and Lilly Truscott, as well as star Miley Cyrus, are positioned as
particularly postfeminist subjects. In such a context, each of these girls can be understood as
having chosen to perform a femininity that finds its locus in the maintenance and control of the
body, as an illustration of her power as a girl, though without reference to feminist gains or
“empowerment” rhetoric. Via discursive, narrative, and ideological textual analysis, this project
explores the circulation of a postfeminist sensibility, as Rosalind Gill refers to it, and its iterations
and ramifications for constructions of girlhood in contemporary media foregrounding girls and
attracting young female audiences.