The 12 months of Girlhood

From bows galore to Barbiecore, 2023 was the yr of having fun with historically “girlie” issues. However what precisely does that imply?

Ladies rule! No, critically. Ask anybody who has been listening to popular culture in 2023. In a yr stuffed with fleeting traits, the fantastic thing about girlhood has emerged as an plain through-line.

You’ve seemingly seen the proof. Taylor Swift and Beyoncé are ubiquitous. Everyone seems to be consuming “woman dinner” and doing “woman math.” The summer season was spent witnessing a sea of hot-pink-clad Barbies dominating screens. No matter what you select to imagine, you’ll be able to in all probability be grouped into some kind of food-adjacent woman class — from the tomato to strawberry to vanilla variation.

On the web, plainly everyone seems to be a lady as soon as once more. I, for one, am drunk with energy in claiming this label for myself. “I’m only a woman!” is a standard chorus I pull out after I want to not take care of one thing, like doing the dishes or calling the electrician. It doesn’t have any tangible affect, however saying it feels cathartic.

Just like lots of my contemporaries, I’m merely a 20-something-year-old teenager — and no, I can’t be taking questions presently. You see, this mindset extends far past the algorithm.

As we shut out the yr, an unequivocal embrace of girlish clothes has firmly infiltrated the type zeitgeist. The obvious indication? Bows. Related to saccharine schoolgirl uniforms and healthful dress-up-game rituals, neatly tied ribbons are one of many clearest codes of girlhood. And today, they’re in all places.

Look no additional than the rise of New York Metropolis designer Sandy Liang, whose runways have lengthy been a fête of fanciful ribbons. Establishing the bow as one among her home signatures, she consistently finds methods to reinvent it — most lately, her Spring 2024 present did so by way of belts and baggage.

Past Liang, many 2023 catwalks noticed a flurry of ribbon accoutrements. Simone Rocha launched bows as eye make-up; bows had been tied onto fits at Tanner Fletcher; supersized bows had been introduced as outfit focal factors at legacy labels Balmain and Valentino.

At present, bows have develop into a not-so-secret dialect of web communicate; a approach of signalling that one is reverting to their extra delicate, ingénue self. On TikTok, viral movies — normally set to a mellow soundtrack of Lana Del Rey or Mitski — present bows reworking any mundane picture right into a dreamy tableau. We’ve seen ribbon-adorned toiletries. Behold these coquettish corndogs. There have been gift-wrapped ice cubes. Bow-topped mac and cheese, anybody?

These clips are sometimes labelled with moody messages (“That is me when you even care”) that seize the melancholic essence of rising up and feeling misunderstood. Certain, a feed filled with bow-shaped bacon could also be perplexing out of context — however at its core, this development is about filling points of the on a regular basis with visible callbacks to childhood.

Anybody who partook within the stereotypical delights of girlhood is aware of how they’re generally villainized. However public opinion operates in a cycle; liking Twilight was as soon as embarrassingly low-brow, and now, it dominates a rising subculture of IYKYK coolness. The identical goes for a lot of a “girlie” emblem.

Trend-wise, the expectations of womanhood — that are historically distanced from these of girlhood — can really feel confining. Pink hues, shiny ribbons, sparkles galore and flowery motifs are usually written off as distinctly naive. Dressing as such in maturity is just not solely a technique to bask in childhood nostalgia, however to push again on age-based constraints.

In fact, revelling in the fantastic thing about girlhood is just not with out its critics. In a world adamantly afraid of ageing, what does it imply to be overtly obsessive about tokens of juvenescence? All issues thought-about, it is smart that some see 2023’s glorification of girlie type as infantilizing.

For me although, it’s a approach of reconnecting with a previous model of myself. I don’t keep in mind after I “misplaced” the fantastic thing about girlhood; perhaps it was the primary time I felt insecure about my look or harboured a heart-aching crush. The issues is, rising out of girlhood is commonly rushed and frantic and propelled by an pressing craving to be taken critically.

In distinction, indulging in girlish emblems — affixing bows to every little thing, blasting Taylor Swift and unapologetically loving Barbie — is just not a lot about holding onto youth. It’s about rediscovering a model of me that I in all probability pushed away far too quickly.