Online, the lives of people, especially women, are dictated by the aesthetic they want to portray to their audience, often communicated through products and commodities. But what happens when the tangible indicators of your persona are simply commodities? Does that make you a product of your products?
Recently, the word “girl” has been attached to as many objects and activities as influencers can find to show how life is done differently under that month’s chosen microtrend. From girl dinners and clean girl hairstyles to hot girl walks and coastal cowgirl room decorations, the list goes on a mile.
When you’re bad at math or driving you’re “just a girl.” At this point, the internet has co-opted the meaning of “girl,” deconstructing what and who you identify as through commodities sold to us with a pink bow to seal the deal.
There is so much money to be made by selling things to women with a “girlhood” state of mind.
Musicians like Kacey Musgraves and Olivia Rodrigo brand their merchandise to mimic early 2000s magazines so that people who long to be a part of the unattainable past can catch a glimpse into what it was like. You need to look no further than Taylor Swift and the Super Bowl to see that celebrities define culture whether we like it or not, and in turn they yield a huge amount of economic power.
A lot of the people online desperately spouting the kind of girl they are and participating in these trends are women inching toward 30. Is the label of girlhood on each aspect of life a desperate cry for what life once was? Maybe the propensity to embrace girlhood is a dismissal, or even rejection, of womanhood as we know it.
We are socialized to believe that younger almost always equals better. Skincare products are advertised to “reverse” aging, and older men in movies are coupled with younger women a majority of the time.
It is not surprising that women perform these battle cries to show and claim their value as an individual, or to escape their destined womanhood. “Woman dinner” has far less of a ring to it than “girl dinner.”
If you lose power as you age, then to claim eternal girlhood is a blip in the system, right?
I cannot write this without admitting that I do the same — I make Pinterest boards of clothing and jewelry I hope to own. I listen to certain music I think I should like and post photo dumps of my life to show people what I’m doing. I’m easily convinced and change my hobbies based on who I aspire to be. However, girl-coding these activities makes it way too easy for companies to use them as marketing tactics.
Nobody is born wanting a curated collection of items that explain who you are. It has become very common for women to rely on these commodities, whether they already own them or purely aspire to own them. It’s tough to decipher if we can even know what it is like not to exist as something to be either marketed to or sold.
I’m tired of being told I need to buy something to attain the meaning of girlhood.
I would like to exist in a world where my life isn’t a marketing campaign, and I would like to scroll on social media without an influencer telling me I need x, y or z. I don’t want my value as a female person to be reduced to the things I own, but there aren’t many other options.
Trends come and go. Soon, the internet will surpass “girl”-labeled trends and move on to something hopefully more interesting. It will likely be marketed to girls, once again, because it is easier to sell something to someone who has been raised to care about how they are perceived. Let’s just make sure we all buy the right makeup so when we cry in the mirror, we look pretty in the moment.
