Acknowledgments

This project evolved over the course of several years. At first, it was a solo project, an extension of Heather Warren-Crow’s Girlhood and the Plastic Image (2014) and “Gossip Girl Goes to the Gallery: Bernadette Corporation and Digitextuality” (Performance Research 18, no. 5 [2013]). Then it became a duet, thanks to the support of a fellowship from the Humanities Center at Texas Tech University. This collaboration took the authors down a Franco-American path of two moms (re)living the complexities of girlhood while going to bat for Young-Girls. Ideas matured over mini milkshakes at J&B Coffee and mini prosecco bottles, long walks, food adventures, and backyard dance parties. Drafts emerged and were mixed, sampled, and echoed. It has been an unforgettable experience to find the points of interdisciplinary intersection and to test out and orchestrate ideas in ensemble.

The authors thank the following artists for their private correspondence and the access they gave to archival materials: Madelyne Beckles, Jennifer Boyd, Laurence Brunelle-Côté, Judith Cahen, Olivier Choinière, Simon Drouin, Nesrine Khodr, Alex McQuilkin, and Stacey Teague. Many thanks go to generous reviewer Andrea Righi and especially our stalwart editor, Eric Lundgren, both of whom made suggestions that shaped the final document.

Drea would first and foremost like to send her deepest gratitude to Heather for her intellectual generosity and mentorship. She thanks the Women’s Faculty Writing Program and the Department of Classical and Modern Languages and Literatures at Texas Tech University and the School of Modern Languages at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Special thanks to her family for their support.

As always, Heather is grateful for her partner, Seth Warren-Crow, for such close listening to the soundscape of their world. It’s a banger with a beat you can dance to.