Keeping it Real: Exploring Girls’ and Young Women’s Substance use Narratives

• In Event: Media and Narrative Analyses of Women and Girls' Behavior

Abstract

Narratives are a powerful qualitative methodology that inspire the criminological imagination (Presser and Sandberg, 2015). When reflective of social, structural and cultural factors, including gendered perspectives, narrative methodologies contribute much to the criminological theory base (Fleetwood 2015; Miller et al 2015). This paper draws on the narrative accounts of justice-involved girls and young women in the UK and USA to explore their use of (primarily) alcohol and marijuana. Counter-hegemonic story telling (hooks, 1989) provides a useful analytic framework for understanding the narratives as resistance to patriarchal imagery about how girls and young women should behave and live their lives and, in particular, to accounts of female delinquency and violence as unusual, unfeminine or non-agentic. We explore the ways in which young females construct stories about the dynamic aspects of substance use and the role it plays or has played in their lives, including choosing to start, to enjoy, and perhaps, to stop. An understanding of these dynamics should prove helpful to models and practices of desistance and recovery among young people.

Authors

• Elaine Arnull, Nottingham Trent University

• Judith A. Ryder, St. John's University