your 'girlhood' never included me.
how can i be tired of something that doesn't fit me
It’s interesting the conversations I see online about girlhood and that people are tired of it. Tired of the essays, tired of whatever.
So, here’s a bitter black girl’s take on girlhood.
Thinking about her today, pic taken from my first day of 2nd grade.
Firstly, I think people are tired of the consumerized girlhood that’s been sold to us in the past year through Tiktok, fashion trends & Barbie advertising.
For me, I find it hard to be sick of something that rarely included me to begin with.
When I think about girlhood, and what it means to me - I have to go back to my childhood.
I am Black bisexual southern woman hailing from the great states of the Carolinas.
For the first 10 years of my life I grew up an only child in the woods. I wanted to be inside, playing video games or reading mostly.
But you could catch me running outside with my childhood friend, we’ll call her Mina. Mina and I were always outside at her house. She had a trampoline and we would come up with the most imaginative scenarios outside. She always had the best toys and just this large area, all to herself where we could just roam around for hours.
Years later, we would drift apart after I moved more in town. Then, my mom had my two siblings. I didn’t know how to be or do with them for a long time. That time puberty, deliberating & full of challenges. Coupled with losing my close grandmother, I remember being mad at the world constantly.
Not to put all the blame on little me, my parents were not the understanding people that I can talk to now, back then (ex. my sexuality & church).
I think back on my early childhood & experience with girlhood and wish little me had the grace that is afforded to young white girls.
I grew up fast, a common experience of black girls everywhere and I think my internal response to that was anger. I didn’t know how else to react so everything was always a fight with my family.
I think about what my idea of femininity & womanhood would have been like if my grandmother was still alive. Someone my memory reveres and probably retroactively thinks more fonder of. When I think about how I act now as an adult and all the things that little me aspire to be, my grandmother was a central figure of that.
The old school black beauty salons that she was a regular of, the slight shopping addiction she had, the long nails that she always kept. Even her mind as an academic, the fact that she was going for her Doctorate in Education.
My Grandma Hattie was who I aspired to be as a kid. She along with my mother and aunt were all my perception of being a woman.
I say all this to not only give a idea of my childhood but to harken back to my last essay when I talked about how our treatment of kids as an oppressed class and how mainstream children’s media & our education is not reflective of the kids needs & wants today.
When I think about girlhood, there is a great ounce of shame and repression that I think about intrinsically. I can remember the ‘smelling myself’ conversation that many black girls get in order to prevent them from being seen as ‘fast.’
If you haven’t heard about the adultification bias that is held in our society against black girls, here’s a link to the research ongoing from Georgetown Law’s Center on Poverty and Inequality.
In summary, its the ways our perception of young black girls impacts us. We are seen as more mature & independent, that we’re more sexually active than other races which ends up being almost a self-fulfilling prophecy for society to excuse the harsher treatment if we do or even don’t fit those perceptions.
So when you're tired of girlhood, it's funny to me. It's ironic. Because it just really begs the question of who gets to make the markers of girlhood, who gets to decide what is girlhood, and who is afforded the chance of participating in girlhood.
It most certainly is never black girls and black women.
Then we get into the issues of when black girlhood is acknowledged. We get into the territory of what happens anytime Black Culture/diverse culture goes mainstream & how appropriated it gets.
“Blah blah blah - cultural blending and sharing of culture is always going to happen” but people never want to give credit where credit is due. It’s always an argument instead of acknowledgement & move on.
It’s not longer niche & otherizing to have long nails, everyone has nails now. It's no longer a 90s lip style started from Latina & Black women, it's 'brownie lips coined by Hailey Bieber. The Chinese slippers that all the black & brown aunties wore from the beauty supply are apparently next on the appropriation chopping block too.
I get to be bitter about this commercialized girlhood because even the little things that I did get to experience & hold close are either falling out of popularity in my community or have now hit mainstream without credit.
So no, we actually haven’t talked about the topic enough.
Now, getting into the entertainment and media analysis side of things.
I can count on my hands - the depictions of girlhood that have actually captured something similar to what I had growing up and even now as a young adult.
Even our coming of age tv & movies, all the black-female lead stories I’ve seen are always niche. They are never the focus of these girlhood edits on TikTok, no one references movies like BAPS or Selah and the Spades unless you actively search for it.
Search girlhood on Tiktok or Pinterest and let’s keep it straight - its all white girls. Aesthetic pictures of girls at picnics, running around in the streets.
Someone I’ve followed on TikTok for sometime - Aryel, made a great video showcasing this.
(Before anyone argues algorithm, she specifically logged out her Pinterest account to show the default.)
Her caption speaks to the recent outage since Avantika Vandanapu, has become a fan-favorite online amongst women of color to play Rapunzel in a hypothetical Tangled live action.
Let’s not even get into the fact the outrage some of the Disney adults are feeling is over a FAKE fan cast. But this sentiment has risen every time a new live action Disney movie casts a BIPOC actress.
What I will say & how this relates to girlhood. Is that just as white male fantasy fans will say its unrealistic to have BIPOC in say Lord of the Rings because its not ‘realistic,’ its the same logic many white women will have with women of color being casted as Disney Princesses.
The illusion is broken for them. It is not lost on me that white audiences will often find BIPOC characters unrelatable or unrealistic. Yet we are often expected to put up with or find some form of relatability within these white standard roles in Hollywood.
There's also something to be said about this need of relatability within our characters in order to find something compelling in them. I don't need a character to have the same life experiences as me, but what is compelling is seeing a diverse range of character backgrounds and stories. At the end of the day that's all any of these castings aspire to do.
It adds a side to a narrative that most likely was under heard before and I feel like we shouldn't have to be explaining this again in 2024.
Because say we go ahead & create an original character - people will still get upset!
It is the presence of other that is upsetting, something that is not apart of the ‘norm’ and I wish more people would just say that. Instead of trying to fly behind the excuse of ‘forced diversity’ and ‘DEI’, you don’t want black people there period - just say that.
Addressing the clear elephant in the room of what started this recent girlhood craze - Barbie.
We’ve hit enough on that discourse but its really the reactions that came from it that got me riled up. I got more and more angrier at the responses, the way the grand society interpreted this film.
Now part of it - Barbie has a messy third act, enough critics have spoke to this. And I’ve come to realize that people interpret movies so literal.
Barbie, is a film that seeks to deconstruct feminism from so many points but from the perspective of a doll who we impose all the standards & contradictions of femininity to. By trying to tackle so much, I think it left so many things out in the open.
Which then left it open for it to become the poster child for girl dinner, girlboss gaslight gatekeep, and overall white woman feminist shenanigans.
I just wish when I go on #girlhood online, i actually saw black and brown faces. Its not about infiltrating or expecting white people to do it for me. It’s just not always having whiteness be the norm. I’m fed up at this point in society of the default white, skinny girl with brown or blonde hair.
As great as seeing Issa Rae as President Barbie was, I knew walking in that I was never going to enjoy the fun of this film & analyzing it as a black woman, but rather just as a woman. As if I could turn race off for a second.
But as mentioned earlier, white women are never expected to do that because they are the default. There is no turning off of themselves.
Which leads me to our last topic:
There was discourse some time this month after Miley Cyrus was announced to be receiving a Disney Legend award, being the youngest entertainer to get it.
Many black women on my TL brought up that Raven Symone was some one deserving of it, which of course duh.
Imagine my surprise when I saw people actually arguing about it.
Now, I am never too surprised when it comes to awards in Hollywood anymore. There’s a system of politics behind everything and i guarantee the minute Raven does something good enough in their eyes she’ll probably get it.
However, the audacity of people online to act like Raven Symone, one of the few representations of black girls we had back then. The woman who IS and always will be the blueprint of the 2000s Disney Channel Star doesn’t deserve a Disney Legend award is bogus.
One might argue that Raven is someone who we might say is black famous but the Cheetah Girls were a global sensation so that idea that doesn’t fully take.
I didn’t find it wholly surprising when black women spoke up that Raven could win this award that then Disney adults took it upon themselves to showcase their ignorance in how crucial of a star Raven Symone was.
Raven is only a reminder of what happens to any young black female celebrity. There is a plateau of where they can go until people just almost start to turn against you for little reason.
And let me be clear, what I’m getting at is that for all the scrutiny that Miley has gotten, she still has been able to be absolved completely and it truthfully has not stopped her. It has slowed down parts of her career, but she still was able to win a Grammy, and move on past her hip-hop appropriation era.
Yes she was scrutinized but something that is done OFTEN is that young white celebrities are given the pass on ALOT more behaviors and sometimes worse behaviors than their black counterparts.
I’m not saying Raven hasn't said things I haven’t disagree with in the past. But when we compare Miley and Raven trajectories, the things that they've done & said, we give Miley so much more of a pass.
I noticed this even with other black celebrities now like Chloe and Halle, Normani, etc. They are treated so harsher online and offline from not only their core audiences but other people just looking in.
Understanding that, we see how much of a triumph it is that Raven Symone was able to make the impact that she did on Disney Channel.
When we talk about the Disney Channel blueprint, it is Raven. A Disney child star that can act, make people laugh, and a global pop star with a fantastic tv show to back it up. The blueprint that became what was Miley, Selena Gomez, Demi Lovato hell even Olivia Rodrigo.
No one was as successful before Raven. Disney doesn't have a claim to Britney Spears and the rest of those Mickey Mouse Club kids like everybody likes to give them. It was an important starting ground for them but they weren’t Disney Channel stars in the way we think of.
Even stars like Hilary Duff, while popular had a decent level singing career with her show only lasting 2 seasons.
The only reason that people want to treat That’s So Raven as somehow lesser than Hannah in popularity is race. Because you can't say it didn't get the views when That’s So Raven was one of the only Disney Channel shows to go past three seasons and the first to reach 100 episodes. Also one of the only ones to have two spin-offs.
On top of that Raven is not just That’s So Raven, the impact of the Cheetah Girls on black and brown girls is absolutely impossible to ignore.
Every girl’s trip to Barcelona you see online in recent years has been inspired from The Cheetah Girls.
This is the crux & thesis of this essay. That the girlhood of black and brown girls is intrinsically seen as more niche. It does not have the same universal appeal that typical white ‘girlhood’ is given.
Despite the fact that Raven still had an appeal to white audiences, because she was a black girl doing very black girl' things, it will always be seen as other.
Back to little me from the beginning, I would honestly say the girlhood like things I've ever been to experience in my life and cherish as of right now has been through senior year high school & all of college. The friendships I have made in college with my girls is something I am so thankful for.
The stress of finding the right hairstylist to do kinky curly hair, doing spa days together, our movie nights, watching the Bachelorette for the first time because a black woman was picked, helping each other pick the right foundation shade - our girlhood might not be popular but we live it & I hope to be able to share it to whoever wants to hear.
I want us to keep talking about girlhood but I want you to ask yourself - are you actually tired of girlhood or are you tired of hearing it from the same perspectives?
The theme for this week’s Media Recommendations should be obvious :)
Girlhood, dir. Céline Sciamma
Selah and the Spades, dir. Tayarisha Poe
BAPS, dir. Robert Townsend
Alma’s Rainbow, dir. Ayoka Chenzira
Miss Juneteenth, dir. Channing Godfrey Peoples
Pariah, dir. Dee Rees
Real Women Have Curves, dir. Patricia Cardoso
Linda Linda Linda, dir. Nobuhiro Yamashita
Joy Luck Club, dir. Wayne Wang
Derry Girls, created by Lisa McGee
Living Single, created by Yvette Lee Bowser
Boarders, created by Daniel Lawrence Taylor
Have a great day and I hope you all enjoyed the read, please let me know your thoughts & see you all soon!