Growing up with Audrey Hepburn [Paperback]

The first full length academic study of Hepburn's star persona and films featuring reseach into the experience of British women who have admired her in the 1950s, 1960s and the 1990s. Examines the historical specificity of discourses of feminity circulating around Hepburn and her female fans, suggesting that the flexibility of Hepburn's image has contributed to her enduring appeal. Makes a significant contribution to the growing field of star studies. Argues that class and gender are siginifcant factors in the relatonship between stars and audiences.

List of figures

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1. On the subject of Film Studies: Class, gender and the female spectator

Class, gender and 'resistance'

Discourse and subjectivity

2. Audrey Hepburn: A woman's star

'She's a phoney, but she's a real phoney': Construction, transparency and authenticity

'Once upon a time': Fairy-tales, fashion and femininity

Fashion: A gendered attractionist aesthetic

'Can't do it without make-up' : Natural, democratic beauty

Clever, not sexy: Hepburn and 'the Mammary Woman'

3. Dress and subjectivity: Remembering Audrey

Dress and desire: The articulation of self through style

Growing up with Audrey: Dress and subjectivity

Style, 'the look' and 'being a girl' in the 1950s and 1960s

Talking about Audrey

'Oh please God - let it happen to me!'

Text and audience: Resonance and address

4. Doing the Hepburn look

Difference

Being a girl

Classy, not sexy

Negotiating the social: Growing up, looking 'nice', wearing black

'She was everything. And it was all within reach, if you like'

5. Audrey's Cinderellas: Dress and status in the 1950s and 1960s

'You shall go to the ball'

Love, marriage and the domestic

'I admit I came to Paris to escape American Provincial, but that doesn't mean I'm ready for French Trlƒ-