This publication is the end product of the InvisibleGirl project, an international, Swedish-based and multi-disciplinary research project in which the interplay of power relations, gender, and age was the primary object of study. The project was global in its scope and included researchers and artists from Australia, Canada, Croatia, The Czech Republic, Estonia, India, Israel, Italy, Kenya, Madagascar, Nigeria, Serbia, South Africa, Sweden and The UK. Altogether 40 researchers have contributed to the publication with 32 chapters, including works of art, such as; poetry, video, cartoons, digital imaging, photography and installation.
The name of the project is inspired by Ralph Ellison’s novel Invisible Man from 1952. Just like Ellison portrays black Americans as being socially invisible, it is possible to view girls as invisible in the sense that their actions and competences cannot be adequately described with  the existing male-normative terminology. Is she made socially and linguistically invisible and not seen as a real person? Another inspiration is the philosophy behind Magritte’s (1929) painting

“Ceci n’est pas une pipe” [This is not a pipe], ofteninterpreted as pointing out that the painting is not a pipe but an image of a pipe. The same metaphor illuminates the philosophical essence of the Invisible Girl. When we talk about blogging girls, gamer girls, helpless girls, out-of-control-on-the-internet girls, girls as foolish innocents who invite sexual predation – is this girls’ reality or images of it? Are girls hidden in the notion of the gendered “Other”, in the general idea of a girl category?

This body of work forms a counter story including the voice of marginalized groups with the explicit aim to challenge privileged discourses. From a normcritical perspective the aim is to question accepted worldviews or implicit agreements about girls, how they are mediated by i.e. images, movies and stories, which produce sexist stereotypes, at different societal levels.

Stories, which contradict and present the world from different perspectives, are important for exposing stereotyping practices and how they are developed. The overarching research approach of the Invisible Girl Project is critical and derives from the tension between common notions about girlhood,