The siren song of girl culture
Gimme my woman dinner please
A few weeks ago, Isabel Cristo wrote a piece for The Cut trying to make sense of the proliferation of girl culture that dominated 2023. She notes the massive influence of Barbie, the Taylor Swift Eras tour (which can certainly be viewed as an ode to girlhood), bow-bestrewn fashion, and a number of exhausting TikTok trends like “girl dinner” which I’m eating right now at 10:38AM in the form of pickles, cheddar cheese, and Triscuits.
Cristo sees 2023 as unique in its focus on girlhood, and maybe it feels that way simply because both Barbie and the Eras tour commanded so much critical attention, so much participation of the general population, and, of course, generated so much money.
But I have to ask, when has girlhood ever NOT been both financially lucrative and culturally desirable?
Girlhood has always been A THING, mostly due to our culture’s fetishization of youth and the patriarchal lens of sexual desirability foisted onto girls with or without their consent. But it’s not just that girls have unlined skin and glossy hair, it’s that they exist within an identity that is mostly notable for being unfixed, unlike so many other identity markers of adulthood. In 2020, I wrote a piece for InStyle (which bafflingly can no longer be found on their website) about my attraction to beauty products marketed for “girls” rather than “women.” Please forgive me while I quote myself in the interest of expediency!
Given the choice between an oil marketed toward a "busy working mom" and an oil marketed toward "the girl who's always on the go," I will choose the latter, even though I most assuredly could be more accurately described as the former. I don’t see this as a symptom of self-loathing so much as a rejection of sitting quietly in my assigned seat as a “woman.”
In the essay, I argue that the category of woman feels fettered by assumptions of maternal identity and some sort of finality, whereas the category of girl allows for more expressions of individuality, and more potential for growth and transformation. As Cristo writes, “girlhood is a before time.” As girls, our identities and bodies are in flux, and while we exist as daughters, siblings, and friends, those identity markers don’t imply the same sort of stasis as “wife” or “mother.” Cristo writes, “In girlhood, we’re not even ourselves.”
When I read that sentence (as an adult woman), I feel a little thrill of nostalgia. It’s relatively easy for me too look back on my experience as a girl and recast the lack of selfhood as being exhilarating. I absolutely did my fair share of pensive staring into the mirror as a girl. It was fun to lose myself in my eyes and believe I was destined for a big life. The best part was that I didn’t have to plan or strategize for the bigness, because in girlhood you can afford to trust fate in a way that you really can’t as a woman.
But! It’s also easy for me to read Cristo’s sentence and feel visceral gratitude for no longer being a girl and instead, being myself. If someone were to pay me MILLIONS of dollars, I’d go back and inhabit my 16-year-old body, sure, BUT ONLY with the self-knowledge of my 42-year-old self. Going back to the insecurity, doubt, and lack of selfhood of my girlhood? Absolutely not. Not enough money in the world. As a girl (when I wasn’t gazing into mirrors and daydreaming), I was mostly longing for an after time. After high school. After puberty. After I had to ask so many people for permission. After I knew who the fuck I was. Unknowns are exciting. But they’re also frightening.
In 2020, I had a baby at home and two kids in elementary school. I was 38 and only just beginning to call myself a writer when people asked, and I hadn’t yet published a book so still believed in the life-changing power inherent to publishing a book. I was becoming a new version of me, or at least that’s how it felt then.
Sometimes personal evolution is difficult (for me, adolescence and matrescence were similarly fraught times I’d never want to relive). But sometimes, like girlhood, it’s exhilarating. It’s a “before time” when you’re free to daydream about who you might become and how your life might expand.
And maybe that’s why, in 2020, I was buying $28.00 bottles of “French Girl Eye Opening Oil” fully invested in every word of that copy. I’m 42 now and in many ways, feel more confident and settled than I did at 38. I’ve published a book and have tucked my rose-tinted glasses neatly way in a bottom drawer, which might read as melancholy but to me feels freeing. My youngest kid starts public kindergarten next year, which means the last decade spent caring for children in the home (during work hours) will be soon a thing of the past. I’m fully invested in my career and no longer flinch when asked what I do for a living. This self-knowledge and stillness feels comforting sometimes, particularly when I’m able to navigate an emotionally complicated situation and not lose myself in the process. I adore routines, early bedtimes, and the relative slow-moving pace of my life.
But this self-knowledge, stillness, this pace of life, does not feel exhilarating.