[Truncated abstract] In 2010, a young woman aged seventeen received widespread media attention after she posted photographs on social networking site Facebook of AFL (Australian Football League)1 players, two of whom were naked, with the message, 'Merry Christmas courtesy of the St Kilda schoolgirl' (Pierik np). This article investigates how the series of incidents that became known as the 'St Kilda Schoolgirl Sex Scandal', and the ensuing maelstrom that played out in the media and on social networking sites, connects to contemporary understandings of neoliberalism and postfeminism. It further demonstrates how societal anxiety heightens when a young woman does not adhere to prescribed social roles. In neoliberal society, the structural context is often disregarded in the examination of social dispositions in favour of the construction of binaries that portray young women as successful or failing, as strong or vulnerable. For the contemporary neoliberal subject, responsibility sits with the individual and success is aligned with flexibility, adaptability, and being able to recognise and exploit opportunities as they arise, whereas failure is understood to be the result of poor management of the self....This is exemplified by Kim Duthie, the St Kilda schoolgirl who, through her resourcefulness and initiative, in many ways personified the archetypal neoliberal subject, yet who was also discursively positioned as a 'disturbed girl'. By examining the socio-sexual roles that have emerged for young women within the hegemonically masculine (Connell and Messerschmidt 833) environment of AFL through the context of the 'St Kilda Schoolgirl Sex Scandal', this article explores how subject positions are constructed for, and ascribed to, young women under neoliberalism in relation to AFL; the inadequacy of these roles in reflecting the complexity of young women's lives; and how these roles were destabilised when they were contested by a young woman.
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