In the 16 months before TIME magazine naming Greta Thunberg its Person of the Year, as her influence grew, so too did the news media’s attempts to make sense of her. This project analyzes profiles of Greta Thunberg to understand how journalists constructed the persona that has become “Greta.” We argue the paradoxical framing of Thunberg as exceptional and fierce and childlike contributes to an alternative construction of girlhood grounded in the positive portrayal of her Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) diagnosis. While featuring ASD as her “superpower” is potentially progressive, we argue foregrounding Thunberg’s whiteness and age cements her construction as the iconic voice of the climate crisis movement, potentially downplaying the need for collective action to end climate change.

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In 2010, Phoebe Prince committed suicide according to news reports because of the bullying of “mean girls.” The discourse that emerged in the news framed the girls as committing murder with words, contributing to a moral panic that condemns White middle‐class girls for their aggression. The mediated narrative about the mean girls vilifies girls' communication (since the girls reportedly bullied through talk, not physical violence) and calls for escalating inspection of girls in order to tame the “threat” of female aggression, while ignoring the role boys may have played in Phoebe's bullying. This discourse reflects the power of gendered and racialized images in escalating cultural anxieties about White femininity.

Orange Is the New Black (OITNB) offers Netflix viewers the chance to go behind bars and see the Prison Industrial Complex from the inside. Described by creator Jenji Kohan as “my activism,” OITNB showcases the reprehensible treatment of elderly female prisoners, while simultaneously adhering to age-old tropes of femininity as manipulative. Using Goffman’s work on stigma as a framework, we examine representations of elderly women on OITNB, while also considering “binge-watching” (the process of consuming mass amounts of television) as a method of analysis. Binge-watching, or “marathon viewing,” a temporal phenomenon laden with feelings of guilt and shame, works to highlight the stigma of temporality aging women on OITNB face. Thus, we offer “marathon viewing” as an alternative, stigma-free method of critical feminist media analysis. This article suggests marathon viewing is a product of media convergence, reliant on today’s streaming services and a highly productive method of media critique.