With the Y2K resurgence and Barbie‘s inexplicable healing powers, it feels like we’re all just teenage girls in 20 and 30-something year-old bodies. It could be the raw energy we felt singing along to Taylor Swift and Beyoncé this summer, but it’s become clear that we’ve shifted into a Freaky Friday timeline where we are unafraid to be perfectly grown women wearing bows and plaid mini skirts.
With the girls of the early 2000s now coming of age, many of us are looking back and realizing we were robbed of our childhoods. We hid our love for the color pink so no one thought we were stupid. We were rewarded for not being like other girls who cared about dolls and makeup. We were shamed and sexualized for our developing bodies and taught to be responsible for the actions of boys and men by the time we were ten.
Girls were never allowed to just be girls.
The recent rise of girl culture is a reclamation of the girlhood we lost. “I’m just a girl” memes and coquette blogs transform the stereotypes invoked to demean us, indulging in a sickly sweet, all-pink femininity for the pure fun of it. The cheeky humor holds deeper meaning as girl blogs breathe new life into the formats used to harm us.
Before the height of Instagram and TikTok, there was Tumblr. Amidst the fairy lights in jars and Arctic Monkeys’ lyrics, many of us found community, but were also exposed to ultimately detrimental content, whether it be hard-core porn that damaged our sexuality and groomed us or thinspiration that promoted eating disorders.
Blogger Zoe London reminisces on the 2014 Tumblr days sharing, “The artsy, aesthetic side of it was beautiful. A lot of us who felt like weird kids growing up thrived on the platform because it brought together predominantly vulnerable teenagers who couldn’t connect with others in real life, creating this island of misfit toys. However, it had a way of normalizing self-destructive habits. Everything was so in your face, just like Euphoria. You’re not really thinking about the fact that you’re not eating or that you’re smoking cigarettes. It’s initially masked as a secondary part of the subculture and a “f–k” you to your parents, but we don’t really address where the actual self-loathing is coming from and how it’s expressed. There’s this celebration of complete and utter disregard for your health and well-being that is embedded within Tumblr.”
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