This thesis argues that the strategic use of popular media texts and their technologies are reflective of how the Japanese women I interviewed are able to explore new and diverse cultural practices, reaffirm those practices they are familiar with, and offer a forum from which to confidently construct and contest personal and social boundaries. Everything in life changes, but the fact that we are social beings embedded in social networks remains the same. Media practice changes too, as do the purposes to which it is put and how it meets the needs of the user. Media use remains constant in the lives of my interlocutors, despite the changing technologies and the changing circumstances of their lives and their families. Because of its quotidian nature, media practice supports the continuous formation of the Japanese self and it encourages particular expressions of agency. This thesis is also a direct response for the need for an agenda of research that increases our understanding of how media aids in the production of self and subjectivity.