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While the reasons for these gender disparities are complex, how girls conceptualize, experience, and \u201cperform\u201d femininity may be one pathway which exacerbates psychological stress. To explore this hypothesis, we conducted an in-depth exploratory study to examine how norms and experiences of femininity among seven adolescent girls aged 16\u201317 from London, England (external factors), relate to their behaviors and psychological experiences (internal factors). To do so, we conducted two online focus groups in July 2021, and conducted discourse analysis to explore their conceptualizations of femininity and its impact on participants. We identified two key discourses relating to the concepts and experiences around femininity among these girls: \u201cValued by Conformity to Femininity,\u201d or how girls are judged by others based on their presentation and performance of femininity, and \u201cAn Uncertain Perception of Self,\u201d relating to uncertain self-identity stemming from their performance of femininity. We reveal a potential social conditioning process of \u201cperforming femininity\u201d experienced by our participants, leading to hypervigilance, anxiety, uncertainty, and confusion. Our results suggest that the paradoxical and conflicting expectations around femininity, reinforced by others, may cause cognitive distortions and dissonance, increasing vulnerabilities to low well-being and anxious cognition patterns. Thus, we believe that there are grounds for further research on a larger scale which explores whether there is a sociological mechanism which is creating the gender gap in mental health outcomes at adolescence in the UK.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1177\/10497323251324385","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2025,4,4]],"date-time":"2025-04-04T03:58:38Z","timestamp":1743739118000},"page":"658-668","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1177\/sage-journals-update-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":1,"title":["Performance of Femininity as the Potential Determinant of Lower Well-Being Among Adolescent Girls in London, UK: An Exploratory Discourse Analysis"],"prefix":"10.1177","volume":"36","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-3238-1605","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Imogen I.","family":"Hensler","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"University College London"},{"name":"Queen Mary University"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-4862-179X","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Emily H.","family":"Emmott","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"University College London"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"179","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2025,4,3]]},"reference":[{"key":"e_1_3_6_2_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1037\/10196-002"},{"key":"e_1_3_6_3_1","volume-title":"Everyday sexism: The project that inspired a worldwide movement","author":"Bates L.","year":"2016","unstructured":"Bates L. 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