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This study uncovers the national deployment of cuteness in the multi-year birthday celebrations of the enormously popular child star Shirley Temple during the Great Depression in the United States. These widely publicized media events promoted the ideology of consumerism through Shirley Temple’s brand cuteness, addressing the prevailing anxieties about poverty and patriarchal capitalism in the 1930s. Moreover, Shirley’s brand of cuteness necessitated material protection for the child by promoting that if the little girl is “cute”—––innocent, pure, vulnerable, and loyal to the father figures–––, the adult would love her and indulge her with material abundance. Shirley Temple epitomizes girly cuteness and embodies the hope of girls and women for being rewarded by patriarchy. I use archival research and textual analysis to investigate how Fox film studio packaged Shirley’s stardom around her birthdays in her movies, media profiles, and publicity stunts between 1934 and 1940. The primary sources include Shirley’s movies, mainstream newspapers, women’s magazines, fan magazines, and the motion pictures trade press. This study fuses cuteness theories with girls’ studies to discuss the temptations for girls and women to perform cuteness.

The temptation of performing cuteness: Shirley Temple’s birthday parties during the Great Depression