On Girlhood

The month before my 20th birthday, I cut off all my hair. I spent the next 31 days agonizing if I was still pretty enough to be thought of as a woman, and if after the month ended I would still be a girl. The dominating perception I had of myself was intrinsically linked in those hundreds of strands, and with every step I took around campus I felt both the physical lightness and metaphorical heaviness of their absence. Turning 20, and that inevitable divorce from my teenage years, seemed to me to be a decisive shift from girlhood. But I did not know entirely what that meant.

Girlhood, and all its nuances, has been widely deliberated online. It is a fraction of the cultural zeitgeist, with the memes of “girl dinner,” and “girl math,” becoming an integral part of Gen Z lexicon. And in response, the media has supplied us with a host of misinterpretations and confused think-pieces on the ways that this newfound slang is representative of our cultural descent and the death of “true feminism.” Just this month, Food and Wine Magazine and Business Insider published articles entitled “Please don’t Gender my Dinner,” and “Why Girl Math is a Toxic Trend,” respectively. While both pieces attempt to address the very-real subjects of eating disorders, financial mismanagement, and misogyny— all issues that do plague women in a unique way— the authors fall short in realizing the true meaning behind these trends.

What these authors miss, and where the root of their argument falls apart, is recognition of the usage of the word “girl” as opposed to “woman.” For it is women, as opposed to girls (i.e. children) that are proliferating these trends. Why is it that these adults choose to identify with a word that relegates them to childhood? What could possibly be empowering or relatable about publicly aligning oneself with dependence, naivete, and adolescence?

I can answer only through the lens of my own experiences. I grew up as a girl in a brown body, and it is for this reason that I believe that the answers to the aforementioned questions go beyond the simple idea that youth equals desirability. The facets of my identity coalesced within the confines of what my girlhood was, and all served to detract from acting, and being treated,  like a kid.

It is a fact that Black and brown girls experience adultification at higher rates than their peers. According to research from Georgetown Law Center, adults believe that Black girls as young as five need less protection than their white peers. This has served, in my life and in the lives of many Black and brown girls that I know, to produce expectations that force one to not only act older than their age, but endure the pressures of early sexualisation. And despite the fact that this adultification happens mainly to girls of color, none are free from these societal pressures. Girls historically have been made to mind after the house, after their siblings, to be responsible for the conduct and attitudes of their male peers.

At risk of sounding trite, it is also necessary to consider the rise of social media as well. More than ever before, children are presented with information and trends far earlier than they would be otherwise. As explained by YouTube video essayist Shanspeare, “the desire to be grown is not different, but the mediums to explore such desires are.” And the result of this newfound, widely accessible medium, is that girls are engaging in trends in which they showcase their bodies, discussing what it means to be “submissive and breedable,” and presenting at more advanced rates than earlier generations. This has been widely covered as the “death of the tween.” Girls are no longer, if they ever were, expected to just be girls. To be children.

The last time my hair was above my shoulders, I was a recent 9 years old. In the photos that my parents keep plastered to the side of the fridge, I am pictured as I was then: teeth too large for my mouth, crisp blue uniform, a sepia-toned barrett pinned at the temple. In a year I would be dress coded for the first time for showing my shoulders in 90 degree weather. In four years I would be told to be understanding of the boys who would grab at my chest during class. In six years I would strive to be “perfect,” even when alone, thinking that whatever solo performance I could conjure would somehow still be perceived by the world. I was, then, just a girl.

It is within this framework that we must understand the “girlhood trend.” The reality of being a girl, then, is to have been expected to act years beyond your age. To engage in perfection, to be a sexual object, to be responsible. Your body, which you’ve only just begun to realize is there, is the site and basis upon which others judge you. Many years later, engaging in the “girl trend,” responding to conflict with “I’m just a girl,” is to honor the imperfection that should have been allowed during those years of adolescence. It is to acknowledge the messiness and confusion inherent in growing up, to reclaim all those seemingly lost years.

Therein probably lies my scissor-happy escapade all those months ago. I was trying to reclaim my body from the grasp of desirability, and so truly aging up according to my still not- yet fully-formed prefrontal cortex. If I broke up with the concept of beauty (which for so many women, and for Black women especially, is rooted in their hair), I would effectively learn what it was to be a woman and to belong to myself. Being half-white has meant that my hair has been the site upon which my desirability was pinned for my whole life. I figured that if I could divorce myself from that which made me attractive, I could self-define my own femininity and womanhood. Girlhood, to me, felt like being stuck within the confines of an incessantly-perceived body.

There are obviously faults with this way of thinking. Womanhood itself is additionally to be constantly perceived and picked apart. One need not look further than the historical record: ever-shifting body ideals, the idea that mothers are the backbone of our country’s moral condition. There is ultimately no way to escape the laser-focus of society when living in the female body. But if anything, it showcases that we’re all still figuring it out, and whether girl, or woman, we are all mutable, and ultimately imperfect.