Girl Dads: spectacular girlhood, paternal appropriation, and the cultural dynamics of father-daughter filial attachment

ABSTRACT

This article examines the cultural figure of the girl dad, which has emerged as a prominent masculine sub-type in the 2020s, celebrating and spectacularising the father-daughter relationship. A diffuse presence across old and new media forms, we trace the girl dad’s long-standing origins in film and television right up to its transmedial deployment in diverse contexts including professional self-branding on LinkedIn, a hit comedy special, and an aging action star’s entrepreneurial family branding. The article unpacks the cultural work that the hyphenated subject position does at a time when masculinity is putatively under duress and the girl has emerged as the premiere subject of postfeminist media cultures. At once imbued with positive associations of innocence and fun and insulated from any suggestions of naivete or weakness that might be stereotypically deemed girlish traits, the girl dad syphons the positive associations of girlhood only, often for commercial or professional gain.

KEYWORDS:

• Masculinity
• stardom/Hollywood/celebrity
• social media
• girls
• cultural studies
• digital media
• gender

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The scholarly literature in this area includes: Allen, Mendick, Harvey, and Ahmad (2015); Littler (2013); McRobbie (2013); Tyler and Bennett (2010) and Negra (2008).

2. Tiqqun (2012) even posit that the “Young Girl” is capitalism’s premier subject.

3. Shannon Lawlor’s (2018) research on videogames suggests that the gaming realm was well populated with father/daughter dyads before the girl dad emerged in celebrity culture.

4. Some commentators have observed that in his presentation as a girl dad, Rubiales was following well-established scripts for male officials in women’s soccer. See Linehan (2023).

5. He is also the father of two sons with his first wife Sasha Czack: Sage Stallone who died of heart disease at thirty-six in 2012 and Seargeoh Stallone. In promotional material and personal media, Seargeoh is not as conspicuously linked to his father as are Sophia, Sistine, and Scarlett.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anthony P. McIntyre

Anthony P. McIntyre is Lecturer in Film and Media at University College Dublin. He is the author of Contemporary Irish Popular Culture: Transnationalism, Regionality, and Diaspora (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), and co-editor of The Aesthetics and Affects of Cuteness (Routledge, 2017).

Diane Negra

Diane Negra is Professor of Film Studies and Screen Culture at University College Dublin. A member of the Royal Irish Academy, she is the author, editor or co-editor of thirteen books including Gendering the Recession: Media and Culture in an Age of Austerity and Imagining “We” in the Age of “I:” Romance and Social Bonding in Contemporary Culture. She serves as Chair of the Irish Fulbright Commission.

Odin O’Sullivan

Odin O’Sullivan is a PhD candidate at University College Dublin working on a thesis entitled “Blood, Sweat, Respect: A Genealogy of Reactionary Hardbody Cinema.” Funded by the Irish Research Council, he has published work on performative celebrity masochism and viral video politics and works on somatic hegemony, celebrity corporeality and reactionary media.