Youth Consumption, Agency and Signs of Girlhood: Rethinking Young Italian Females’ Lifestyles

In contemporary society, empowering girls became a central theme in public discourse, using also consumption practices to increase social actors’ agency. In order to investigate elements that nowadays mark Italian young females’ lifestyles, we carried out a qualitative research on a group of female university students. Our main objective was to investigate their values and consumption models, since goods and products seem capable of expressing their personal biography or identity. The most evident feature to emerge concerned the students’ agency and their ability to choose more personal and responsible consumption behaviour. Ultimately, the redefinition of one’s own consumption models seems to be the consequence of assuming the responsibilities of adult life and of a new social role.