REMOLQUE, SEMIREMOLQUE Y REMOLQUE LIVIANO:

While non-White girl characters and performers figure prominently in this chapter and the chapters that follow, discussions of race and postfeminism in popular media must also critique representations of Whiteness. In regards to the body, Dyer describes a sense of Whiteness “having to do with tightness, with self-control, self-consciousness, mind over body” (White 6). In addition, he sees Whiteness represented in specific ways, not necessarily through stereotypes, as Blackness has been, but instead via “narrative structural positions, rhetorical tropes and habits of perception” (White 12). While the following discussion posits that girl characters on Hannah Montana generate a kind of White ethnic difference, I also wish to keep in mind this caveat, that “the right not to conform, to be different and get away with it, is the right of the most privileged groups in society” (White 12). Ultimately, then, the ethnic differentiation in representations of Whiteness in this series and in Miley Cyrus’ star image also reify and normalize White privilege. Analyses of Miley Cyrus and the girl characters on Hannah Montana bring to light some of the tensions between ideals of White femininity and the realities of

differences in socioeconomic class status and regional identities, in particular.

have been constructed in relation to ideals of spectacular White femininity and may be construed as perpetually failing to achieve them. As I argue in the previous chapter, Lilly Truscott troubles femininity as an “alternative girl,” and Miley Stewart represents

“ordinary” girlhood as Hannah Montana’s klutzy, brunette counterpart. Lilly is an avowed—albeit still overtly girly—tomboy throughout the series, and she also comes from a working-class family, which becomes a single-parent household and precipitates Lilly’s moving in with the Stewarts in the show’s third season. As demonstrated when Miley attempts to makeover Lilly “from skate chick to date chick,” Lilly may become more feminine, more “classy” or sophisticated, and therefore Whiter by proximity to Hannah, but she can never displace Hannah. Miley Stewart, however, has attained her upper-middle class status and superstar fame as a result of performing the rich White feminine spectacle that is Hannah Montana. While Lilly is a foil for both Miley and Hannah, Miley’s recurring difficulty throughout the series lies in the maintenance of difference between Hannah and herself. Ultimately, Miley and Lilly both lack the kind of feminine poise and posturing—and the level of visibility and performance—that defines Hannah as the ideal. While Lilly transgresses the boundaries between working-class and middle-class Whiteness, the Stewart family’s regional identity as Southern “hillbillies” often structures performances of gender and class and race within the series. Further, this Southern-ness extends to (and from) Miley Cyrus’ star image in ways that similarly trouble the discursive construction of her as a classed, raced, and gendered subject.

on Hannah Montana. Miley Stewart’s excessive comic performances and the otherness precipitated by the reification of Whiteness and femininity via her alter ego, Hannah Montana, may help to configure Stewart as another kind of unruly girl for the

postfeminist/postrace era. Introducing youth to the critique offered by the unruly woman described previously in my analysis of Raven-Symoné and Raven Baxter, Karlyn later distinguishes between the unruly woman and the unruly girl in contemporary media culture. The unruly girl “evokes the tradition of female unruliness . . . Yet with her faith in romantic love and individual freedom, she also embodies the contradictions of postfeminism” (Karlyn Unruly Girls 2). The unruly girl’s self-worth, then, is anchored simultaneously in heteronormative romance and male approval and also in individual achievement and the discourse of personal choice.

While this characterization of the unruly girl contradicts Raven Baxter’s (and Raven-Symoné’s) general lack of reliance on romance narratives and male approval, rendering the star and her character more accurately as unruly women than girls, Miley Cyrus and Hannah Montana clearly embody the White-privileging “contradictions of postfeminism.” The unruly girl “dominates men” perhaps less so via bodily excesses or androgyny, as her older counterpart would, and more-so via her use of the feminine masquerade and her success at being a girl. In this case, Hannah can represent the excessive or emphasized femininity from which Miley takes her power. Both Miley Cyrus and Miley Stewart can be understood as unruly girls to the extent that each struggles to uphold ideals of White femininity by reproducing and performing the postfeminist girly-ness of Hannah Montana. Miley Stewart is unruly in somewhat

wholesome, “Disneyfied” ways relative to Miley Cyrus’s public, sometimes scandalous, real-world transgressions. Stewart’s girl-next-door relatability hails from her klutziness at school, her romantic anxieties, her contentious relationships with her brother and the mean girls, her friendships, and her Southern or “country” ways of speaking and behaving.

Miley Stewart’s Southern roots are regularly referenced throughout the Hannah Montana series, through references to her home in Tennessee, quirky colloquialisms, and Southern accents, as well as with special guest stars with country music cache playing her visiting friends and family members. In the Season one episode titled “Good Golly, Miss Dolly,” Miley’s Godmother “Aunt Dolly” (played by Dolly Parton, Miley Cyrus’ off- screen Godmother) “Dolly-sizes” the Stewart household and reveals the campy, excessive Southern White femininity that inspired Hannah Montana’s blonde wig and feminine, often pink, always sparkling costumes. Here, I explore Aunt Dolly’s role in this episode in order to illuminate the Southern, “White trash” connotations that help to define the Stewart family in the program, and the Cyrus family off-screen.

Appropriately enough, the episode primarily revolves around Miley Stewart’s romantic feelings for a boy in her class, illustrating the contradictory logics of

postfeminist discourse, which demand that girls “choose” of their own independent volition to seek male approval. Early in the episode, Miley daydreams about kissing her crush, television star and fellow student, Jake Ryan (played by Cody Linley). She imagines herself as a gutsy, quick-witted femme fatale and him as a film noir-inspired

protests, “I’m over you, O.K.? Get on with ya’ life!” As she walks away, Jake points out that her shoe is untied, and she trips and falls flat, punctuating the end of the sequence with physical humor. Later, Miley, dressed as Hannah, works with Robbie Ray in the recording studio, but cannot get her mind off Jake, though she tries. She resists the romantic lyrics of the song she is singing, saying, “there’s more important things [than dreaming about boys] in life like world peace . . . and whales! . . . And not stupid boy whales—happy, independent girl whales!” Miley wants to be a “happy, independent girl,” or at least to make sure Jake thinks she is one. The reference to whales, here, can be understood as a typical move to suggest social awareness in a most depoliticized way— Miley imagines whales as appropriately gendered, but not concerned with romantic entanglement, and certainly not differentiated by race, ethnicity, region, or class status.41

Without hearing any of this, Aunt Dolly appears, and seems to know instinctually that Miley is frustrated over a boy. When Miley deflects, Aunt Dolly replies, “I am talkin’ about my god-daughter crushin’ over some boy harder than a monster truck drivin’ over a little clown car.” Aunt Dolly exhibits feminine intuition and wisdom in this brief scene. Though she is “othered” in particular ways throughout the episode, she is also an icon of country music success and Southern White femininity both within and beyond the show, as well as being a clear role model for Miley/Hannah. In the final moments of the

episode, Aunt Dolly, wearing a bright pink dressing gown piled high with pink ruffles and feathers, administers facials for Miley, Jackson (Miley’s older brother, played by

41 _{The use of animals in such a scenario is common to Disney texts and Disney corporate logics. I discuss}