Teen pop sensation Hannah Montana (Miley Cyrus) drew enormous crowds to her concert at Reliant Center in the heart of Houston, Texas. I passed the arena that day and saw thousands of young female fans dressed in Hannah Montana costumes, complete with make-up, toy microphones, and long blonde wigs. Fascinated by the scene, I stopped a number of the families and asked the girls to pose for studio portraits wearing their concert outfits. Some of the parents agreed, and through them I met more Hannah Montana fans, who also wanted to participate. 

My photographs have long dealt with issues of gender, especially as it intersects with popular culture and consumerism. In particular, I've been interested in how mainstream media outlets imagine and represent women and girls. My Hannah Montana portraits, which were taken in 2008-9, explore how this group of fans, ages 4-11, try to emulate their idol through their look and attitude. People who see the portraits often point out the Jonbenet Ramsey-esque appearance of the girls, which makes them uncomfortable. On the one hand, my photographs demonstrate how current trends in beauty and celebrity culture influence the ways in which even very young children -- maybe younger than we're comfortable with -- fashion their identities; on the other hand, the desire to mimic celebrities is nothing new, nor is the attraction of dress-up and imaginative play. At the least, there's a tension between the way young fans passively absorb prefabricated media images of femininity, and how they reinterpret them and give them their own meaning. Unlike the aspiring pageant stars of TV shows like "Toddlers and Tiaras," the Hannah Montana fans are not proto-professional performers with stage parents. They're ordinary girls for whom fantasy and fame, like their blonde wigs, are a guise that can be adopted or thrown off at will. 

Through my experiences with the girls, I became acquainted with the commercial industry that has grown up around this particular form of dress-up. Shopping mall salons such as "Club Libby Lu" offer Hannah Montana and other pop-star look-alike packages, complete with a team of hair-stylists and make-up artists that give girls themed makeovers ("punk" and "princess" are also options). Hannah Montana-brand items, including wigs, clothing, make-up, and accessories, can be bought there. These items encourage imagination and play-acting, but they also produce a homogenized set of creative possibilities for children while exposing them to a powerful form of consumerism. A related series of photographs documents these Hannah Montana products.