GIRLHOOD STUDIES
How has visual culture shaped ideas of girlhood? In my ongoing practice encompassing a column for AnOther magazine, an Instagram account, and curatorial projects for institutions such as the BFI, I consider the relationship between how girlhood has been depicted, and how it actually feels.
Season 1 (2019)
1) WHAT KIRSTEN DUNST’S SMILE MEANT IN 1999
‘Her grin has a sense of effort. Is she thinking about who might be looking?’
2) TRACING FILM’S OBSESSION WITH CATS AND TEENAGE GIRLS
‘(The) cat – cuteness overload laced with X-Files atmosphere – summarised the antithetical characteristics that the creatures possess the best. Cute, but psycho.’
3) THE 70S FILM THAT’S A LOVE LETTER TO TEENAGE SMOKERS EVERYWHERE
‘Her snotty, heart-wrenching scream is an absolute gut-punch, a magic moment of cinema; and when he comes back to her, he’s riding his moped and – yes – smoking a cigarette.’
4) WHY CHLOË SEVIGNY IS ON A MISSION TO SAVE THE WORK OF LINDA MANZ
‘Like all true-blue punks, Cebe’s voice operates at one volume – loud – like she’s trying to prove she exists.’
5) DO TEENAGE GIRLS’ BEDROOMS MEAN WHAT THEY USED TO MEAN?
‘Much like the aesthetics of old teen movies, the images of my bedroom wall also serve as a time capsule.’
Quarantine edition (2020):
6) WHY BEING IN SELF-ISOLATION FEELS LIKE BEING A TEENAGER AGAIN
‘Quarantine is starting to ache like the six-week holiday, like the view down the street from an open bedroom window. Because didn’t being a teenager always feel a bit like being dressed up with nowhere to go?’
Season 2 (2021-2022):
7) WHY 90S TUNISIAN CULT FILM HONEY AND ASHES IS RELEVANT TO US ALL
‘As film viewers, as so often in real life, we have been culturally trained to blame female characters for putting themselves in danger; rather than to place the fault with the male violence itself, which pollutes so many spaces.’
8) HOW ALICE IN WONDERLAND BECAME VISUAL CULTURE’S PROTO TEENAGE GIRL
‘Noticing the oscillation between small crop tops or miniature kilts and huge baggy sweatshirts on teenagers’ Instagram Reels, I can’t help but think of the anxieties of fit of Alice in Wonderland, which feels like such a girl’s trait.’
9) WHY DO SEX AND MURDER FOLLOW GIRLS TO FLORIDA?
‘The idea of Florida is like a dream that feels so far that trying to achieve it is its own kind of stuckness. In movies, forever isn’t always a good thing.’
10) IN PRAISE OF THE LOW-STAKES TEEN GIRL DRAMA
‘But when Karen applies her make-up in Old Enough, Silver’s close-up shot transmits the feeling of cheap blue eyeshadow on dry eyelids: a friction that belongs to the girls’ world, not that of the professional make-up artist.’
11) HOW FAR CAN TEENAGE GIRLS AUTHOR THEIR OWN STORIES?
‘In a landscape where women directors are still taught they have to push and shout to get to the front, to co-write such stories with a teenage girl seems to me an act of generosity – and one which can reshape how we go about making movies in the first place.’
12) WHO’S AFRAID OF THE TEENAGE FANGIRL?
‘We’re the ones who, watching these films, are taken back to one of the most potent aspects of girlhood: the experience of existing inside yearning itself. To do so is to move through a space where everything is potential, and stays that way.’
Season 3 (2023):
13) HOW WHITE SOCKS BECAME AN ENDURING EMBLEM OF GIRLHOOD
‘Demonised as threatening covens by the mass media, I like how kogals seem to derive their witch-like powers to resist societal norms from the very items – like white socks and school uniforms – that are supposed to keep them stuck in obedient girlhood.’
14) IN TRIBUTE TO THE TRANSFORMATIVE POTENTIAL OF THE KOHL PENCIL
‘These are shows that achieve their own kind of flatness for their heroines: worlds in which ODing, dating girls, shooting a gun, sleeping around, and running away from home are plot points slicked on as smoothly and speedily as applying black eyeliner (or, as in Marissa’s best rock show look, crimping your hair).’
15) THE FRAUGHT RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN GIRLHOOD AND BALLET SHOES
‘The physical architecture of the ballet shoe produces its own metaphor for idealised girlhoods: the expectation to appear shiny and flexible, and to conceal unruly or dysfunctional interiors.’
16) WHAT THE BACKSTORY OF THE GIRLY HAIR ACCESSORY SAYS ABOUT OUR CURRENT MOMENT
‘A barrette has rarely been one thing or another: it takes in contradictory ideas every time it is placed on, scraped through, and clipped into our hair.’
Season 4 (2024):
17) SUMMER HOLIDAYS WEEK ONE: THE LAST DAY OF SCHOOL
‘As depicted in the movies, the final day of the school year offers a concentrated environment in which to explore all the different tenses we associate with coming-of-age: instant nostalgia for an experience which is about to be past, the excitement of a day that you will only experience once in the present, and the feeling of the future being closer than ever before.’
18) SUMMER HOLIDAYS WEEK TWO: SMELLY GIRL SUMMER
‘Thanks to the way Hoard’s interiors are shot, and Maria’s tendency to stick to its surfaces, it’s the kind of film that gives you fresh awareness of the dust particles of your own carpets, the cracks in your own walls.’
19) SUMMER HOLIDAYS WEEK THREE: GIRL OLYMPICS
‘The throughline is the nerves, the intake of breath: and the hairslides, the ponytails, the eyeliner, the shine.’
20) SUMMER HOLIDAYS WEEK FOUR: THE BEACH
‘I recognise these as the details of a faded seaside town’s own projections, and how they match with the projections of a teenage girl: like the way arcade games that offer visions of “Dream Castles” or “New York City” are reflected in the logos of girls’ clothing of this era.’
21) SUMMER HOLIDAYS WEEK FIVE: HURRICANE FRIENDSHIP
‘I realised something in the accumulation of such moments: that Marie is as much in love with the idea of possessing a girl’s body in perfect synchronicity, with every part doing what it should, as she is the girl herself.’
22) SUMMER HOLIDAYS WEEK SIX: SPOOKY SUMMER
‘Hot, swollen and seemingly without end, it’s a time of year, as Plath identifies, that feels like waiting. And much like prom night or your wedding, it’s precisely because the summer is meant to be a time where everybody enjoys themselves that it can warp under the weight of pressure.