Simply the best? Bridging perfectionism in psychology and girlhood studies

Abstract

Perfectionism has been a popular topic of interest in psychological research over the last three decades, with research focusing on youth emerging in the early 2000s. However, the term 'perfectionism' is rarely used outside of a psychological framework. Despite lexical differences, girlhood studies researchers have employed a sociocultural lens to study 'supergirls': teenage girls who strive to have it all, at all costs. Although these literatures seem to explore a similar phenomenon, the tend to remain disparate. Consequently, this paper argues for the utility of a multidisciplinary framework for studying youth perfectionism to bridge these two seemingly opposite, yet mutually informing, literatures. First, disciplinary understandings of youth who strive for perfection in psychology and girlhood studies, respectively, are summarized. In the following section, a multidisciplinary reading of the extant literature is applied to offer a nuanced account of who a teenage perfectionist may be and how perfectionism might manifest among diverse youth. This article concludes with a call for researchers from both psychological and sociocultural backgrounds to embrace a multidisciplinary framework for research with perfectionistic youth.