on girlhood, on womanhood
How our inner child isn't just like... a very young one. It's also you as a pre-teen and teenager. Remember her??
Substack • Practicing a practice is a practice
That was part of being a girl—you were resigned to whatever feedback you’d get. If you got mad, you were crazy, and if you didn’t react, you were a bitch. The only thing you could do was smile from the corner they’d backed you into. Implicate yourself in the joke even if the joke was always on you.
Emma Cline • The Girls
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
How can any girl sustain the belief that she is loved, truly loved, when all around her she sees that femaleness is despised?
Bell Hooks • Communion
Female swagger, to XCX, comes with insecurity, because no matter how much bravado she displays, she must navigate overwhelming societal standards and expectations for her behavior. Brat , then, is about how hard it is to be a brat—to project untouchability and ambition in a world that relentlessly questions successful women.
Shirley Li • The Brat-Ification of Kamala Harris
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
One might assume “girl” identity as a way to show naysayers just how clever girls actually are, or to show men how unserious those things to which they ascribe such importance may be. Claiming that something that is supposed to be “for boys” — say, baseball, the Grateful Dead, Karl Ove Knausgaard — is really “for girls,” is like a pinprick into a
... See moreNew York Times • Why ‘Girls’ Rule the Internet
I couldn’t wait to be inducted into the ranks of this female frustration—the period as albatross, lunar burden, exit ticket from Eden, keys to the authenticity kingdom. Bleeding among the sharks meant being eligible for men, which meant being eligible for hope, loss, degradation, objectification, desire, and being desired—a whole world of ways to
... See moreLeslie Jamison • Grand Unified Theory of Female Pain
