Girly Girlies
2023 was peak "girl culture." Is that a bad thing?
“Girl” dinner. Hot “girl” walks. Barbie “girls.” “Girly” aesthetics: oversized bows, friendship bracelets, pink on pink on pink on pink. The monoculture of 2023 was, in so many ways, for the “girlies.”
As the year comes to a close, some cultural critics have turned their sharp eyes onto the proliferation of girl culture. What does it mean? What does it say about us? What dark realities might be lingering just under the hot pink, Barbie-fied, Swiftie-bracelet-adorned surface?
There are two obvious responses to this question: the poptimist’s answer, that girly culture is simply worthy and rich and deserving of our adult attention because women deserve rest and ease; and the hater’s answer, that women are being sold the artistically vacuous trappings of a never-ending childhood in order to distract us from building political power. In a recent essay for The Cut, Atlantic editor Isabel Cristo takes the latter view, arguing that girlhood is “an opting out” of thorny questions about the future of feminist politics, and “a low-risk way to participate in mass cultural femininity.”
It is a worthy task to critically examine our collective impulses, especially when they include mass consumerism. A Mattel-approved, blockbuster “Barbie” movie and a pair of ballet flats are no more likely to wrap up the feminist political project than Ruth Bader Ginsburg prayer candles are. It feels darkly and fundamentally American to witness the embrace of the aesthetic markers of girlhood while actual American girls are left without access to life-saving health care, strong public education, and community.
It’s not controversial to suggest that the embrace of girliness is a reaction to the dystopian political outlook for American women today. Post-Me Too, amid nation-wide attacks on the right to an abortion, after the acute phase of a pandemic that drove many women from the workforce due to a lack of childcare for their kids (childcare that remains unattainably costly for many families), it hardly seems necessary to ask, as Cristo does, “What is it, exactly, that’s so uninviting about being an adult woman?” As she goes on to enumerate, almost everything seems uninviting! Little wonder that women find themselves reaching for girlhood in hopes of being seen as worthy of care and protection themselves, and perhaps even insulated from predatorial male attention. And the latter motive is no small component, as evidenced by the rise of Gen Z’s rigidly virginal puriteens and dogmatic age gap discourse. In an age when the dangers posed by sexuality have never been more clear to young women, a retreat to girlish innocence is a rational choice.
“Little wonder that women find themselves reaching for girlhood in hopes of being seen as worthy of care and protection themselves, and perhaps even insulated from predatorial male attention.”
To be clear, the debate about whether our culture has given up on adulthood is not, and should not be, exclusive to the girls. Every movie is now a superhero movie for adults, and the publishing industry is dominated by Y.A. books that are heavily marketed to and consumed by adults. The boys were deeply affronted by the very suggestion that Taylor Swift had put Travis Kelce on the map! American society has become a site not of extended adolescence, but seemingly permanent adolescence. This is alarming, not only because children deserve their own spaces and culture rather than spaces and culture geared to nostalgic adults, but because grappling with challenging art and political questions should be a rich and fulfilling part of adulthood.
If our society is in its Peter Pan era, we’re a bit concerned too. The roots of that, of course, go far deeper than women who like pink. It’s an entrenched capitalism, built on the exploitation of women as unpaid care workers, that has struggled to accommodate the rise of two-income households. It’s a political system so dysfunctional that actually changing the structures at work against us in a meaningful way has proven repeatedly fruitless. This situation breeds despair, and a sense of powerlessness that makes us feel more like children than adults with meaningful agency. But does this mean that girl culture has, in some insidious way, replaced feminism or political organizing?
Cristo rests much of her case on the idea that girlhood is a time “before feminism.” This assumption, not backed up in any meaningful way, undergirds her conclusion that adoption by adult women of the language, aesthetics or cultural markers of girlhood requires them to side-step the personal and political questions that adult women face – about sexual freedom, abortion care, domestic equality, wage equality, and the like.
Whether or not we believe that girls should be allowed to live childhoods unconcerned with the heady political problems created by the adults that surround them, the reality does not bear this out. Out of sheer necessity, girls have always been at the forefront of social movements. They have fought for labor rights, climate justice, civil rights, abortion rights, trans rights, and gun control. Was Harriet Hanson, who, in the 1830s, at age 11, led a walkout of factory workers protesting labor conditions, experiencing girlhood before feminism? What about Greta Thunberg, who, at age 15 began calling on the Swedish government to address climate change? Would it be different if she wore a pink bow once in a while?
While in theory girlhood precedes the adult concerns of feminism, in reality, these concerns often intrude into the lives of girls, many of whom must negotiate sex and sexual identity, enter and navigate the workforce, access abortion care, and deal with misogyny that limits their lives from the moment of their birth. Many of us began to work out our own feminist politics as children, and associate the aesthetics of girlhood strongly with our first forays into questioning the patriarchal structures around us. Girlhood offers certain comfortable, universal markers, but not all girls are the same, even if they’re wearing the same color and going to the same concert. One girl may live in near-total political ignorance; another may develop a sharp socialist feminist critique of the world she is growing up in; yet another may go down a reactionary path.
What seems to have emerged from the thorny, often bleak, realities of modern American womanhood are two parallel – but not collapsible – tracks towards “girl” culture and aesthetics.
On one track, women are using the trappings of girlhood as a way to create cultural spaces that feel safer, more joyful, and – this is key – not centered around the desires and whims of men. (See: The throngs of women and girls who went to Taylor Swift’s concerts and exchanged friendship bracelets, or who adorned themselves in sequins to attend Beyonce’s “Renaissance” tour, or who wore pink to see Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” on opening day.) On the other track, women assess the social landscape and they retreat, structuring their lives around well-worn tropes that feel safe in a different way; ones that bring them closer to male power and privilege. (See: the mass proliferation of tradwives, stay-at-home girlfriends, and other women who extol the virtues of submission to men and dressing in traditionally feminine ways on TikTok and Instagram.)
For one, embracing girlhood flows from a feminist mindset, a refusal to cater to the male gaze or to accept that female-coded aesthetics or interests are inherently low-status or contemptible. The two of us have, as we’ve grown into our 30s, found freedom in abandoning anxiety about what our male partners or relatives might think about our silly, frilly nap dresses, pink lipsticks, and reality TV shows; after all, men rarely hide their fantasy football leagues in order to seem more acceptably adult. For the other, girlhood means returning to a time when girls were expected to go directly from being a child to having children. Their girlhood is not a rejection of the male gaze but an offering to it, a promise that they are fresh and pliable, ready to be molded to a man’s pleasing and to remain as ever-dependent and worshipful as a daughter.
“What would it mean to imagine girly aesthetics as politically neutral? Something that can both function as a retreat backwards and a lifeline forwards; a way for women who want a better future to survive in an imperfect, slow-to-change present.”
The inability to differentiate between these two reactions betrays an anxiety on the part of some adult women, and contains a flawed assumption at its root: the idea that “girly” things cannot be taken seriously; that we who adopt such aesthetics are diminishing ourselves as a result. If the turn to girlhood has to do with how fucked up the world is for adult women, perhaps it’s not merely an escape or an abdication, but also an attempt to trace back to where it all went wrong, to sort out which of our experiences of femininity are joyful and powerful and which are degrading. Ultimately, both reactions are compatible with and even expressive of political choices – as much as we may disagree with the choices made by some of the girlies out there.
Aesthetics contain meaning, and reducing the experience of womanhood to ribbons and “Hi, Barbie!(s)” can be corrosive. But what would it mean to imagine girly aesthetics as politically neutral? Something that can both function as a retreat backwards and a lifeline forwards; a way for women who want a better future to survive in an imperfect, slow-to-change present. When Claire began exploring gentle parenting, the childrearing philosophy of the moment, she found that one of the essential techniques in learning to provide a steady, confident adult presence for a child is looking back on one’s own childhood with compassion and understanding. By offering our girlhood selves unconditional acceptance and respect, we learn to stand more firmly in our adult roles. A retreat does not necessarily mean a surrender; it can be strategic, an opportunity to rebuild.
And yes, a retreat to girlhood also can be joyful. As any parent can surely attest, there should be joy both in attaining new heights of maturity and in revisiting childlike pleasures. Rather than hand-wringing about the happiness some adult women are finding in reclaiming girl culture, our energies would be better spent working to make the realities of adult womanhood less dreadful.
Perhaps we can have our cake and put a bow on it, too.
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