The Death of Teenage Girlhood
Girlhood is big business. The ones who are best at it literally treat it as an occupation, modeling or taking suitably candid-looking pictures of themselves, recommending clothes and jewelry and books, going viral on TikTok. They’re performing a way of being that looks joyful, effortless, and adorable. It’s a performance that by definition has a... See more
consuming the girl
I think there’s a safety in girlhood, in the mistakes and the naïveté, the youth and maybe even the beauty, which is all pushed by the media we consume,” Ms. Reese said. “Womanhood, meanwhile, is seeped with this lack of playfulness, seriousness, aging — the horror, right?”
New York Times • Why ‘Girls’ Rule the Internet
What teenagers today are offered instead is a hyperactive landscape of so-called aesthetics — thousands of them, including everything from the infamous cottagecore to, these days, prep. These are more like cultural atmospheres, performed mainly online, with names and looks and hashtags, an easy visual pablum.