The joy of girlhood as an adult
“Give me back my girlhood, it was mine first.” – Taylor Swift
Growing up, I saw culture created for and by women dismissed as silly, shallow, sentimental garbage. Our books were ‘chick lit’, to be hidden under beach towels. Films made for us needed cutesy rhyming names like ‘rom com’, and were only to be enjoyed with an eye roll.
The othering of girlishness starts early. Being a girl was something to shed – and quickly. Since we are most useful to the patriarchy once we are sexually viable, the rejection of anything ‘immature’ starts happening around the time we enter the male gaze. Suddenly, we can’t wait to grow up.
When a girl starts her period, she is told that she is a woman, even if she is very much a child. Historically, womanhood is associated with the onset of marriage and motherhood. Fleabag taught us that being a woman is pain.
It’s true that the female experience can at times feel… sombre. We are more likely to encounter female pain in culture than female joy (times that by a hundred for trans women). No wonder, then, that so many of us associate fun and silliness with being a ‘girl’ – notably juxtaposed with the serious business of being a woman.
This year, girl-culture went mainstream. No longer a guilty pleasure, but a profitable, cultural phenomenon. Barbie made over $1bn in ticket sales globally. Taylor Swift and Beyoncé owned the summer with the year’s biggest tours. On social media, everyone’s on Hot Girl Walks and eating Girl Dinners. Even brands are in on the act.
On TikTok, unsurprisingly, this cultural moment has been absorbed and repackaged as memes and trends that have triggered an inevitable backlash. Online discourse suggests any trend with ‘girl’ in the name is problematic, whether that means trivialising the female experience and contributing to eating disorders, inadequate mental health care, or plain bad feminism. That women referring to themselves as ‘girls’ is infantilising – a rejection of adulthood.
But the assertion of ‘girl’ as regressive and shameful is itself rooted in patriarchy, and the weaponisation of the word as a means to make women feel smaller. There’s an undeniable reclaiming of ‘girl’ in these trends. It recaptures the joy of girlhood we had to leave behind, and the shared giddiness of girl-trends and girl-culture celebrates the things we were taught to feel ashamed of.
On social media, externalising this experience creates a sense of solidarity and collectivism in culture that women don’t often get, and it's crossed over to the real world. I feel it on my lunchtime Hot Girl Walk when I pass other women on theirs. I see it in the photos of lazy, un-aesthetic dinners. Every “Hi, Barbie!” feels like a private joke.
These women don’t seem demeaned or infantile to me. They seem like they’re having a blast, and the world is still trying to make them feel bad about it. For now, at least, we’re on-trend. Culture belongs to us, and if you think that’s no big deal, I’ll take this moment to remind you that there have been 11 Fast & Furious movies. Let that sink in. And let the girlies live.