Money Power and Girlhood
on consumerism and femininity and more (an old debate speech that i'd figure i'd publish here)
In 2009, female icon, legend, and the current moment Taylor Swift succinctly described the two types of girls - we’re either wearing short skirts and being cheer captains or t-shirts and sitting on the bleachers. When I first heard this song, I felt stuck because I’m the girl wearing the short skirts AND t-shirts. Was I wrong? It made me start asking myself what does it mean to be a girl in our society? According to the Organization of American Historians; across history people have believed that “girls are naturally passive and compliant, and that girlhood is transhistorical, homogeneous, static, and frivolous.”We can still see this today. Let’s look at stereotypical boy hobbies: sports, hunting, and fishing. As for toys: dinosaurs, toy cars…sports equipment. On the other hand, stereotypical girl hobbies include things like shopping, makeup, and dance, as for toys, toy kitchens, dress-up, and of course the generational staple Barbie dolls. Now, you may think we’ve made progress after all, women’s sports are more popular than ever - to the point that WNBA Sabrina Ionescu’s 3-point competition against Steph Curry was a hi-light of the NBA All Star Game. And our female pop icons like Lana del Rey proclaim our ability to achieve money, power, and glory. However, don’t be fooled by progress in two areas - girlhood remains a commodity that has to be purchased, and the prices just keep climbing. So let’s look for guidance from our female pop icons starting with Madonna as we explore commodified girlhood, before channeling Britney to look at its impact, and finally taking a cue from Ariana as we move forward in society.
Madonna told us 20 years ago that we are living in a “material world.” Well, I hate to break it to Madonna but we’re actually living in a “girl” world. From hot girl walks, girl math, and it girls like Taylor Swift, Beyonce and Barbie, girl trends seem to be everywhere these days and it’s not limited to pre-pubescence or even adolescence. In her 2016 essay, “What Does it Mean When We Call Women Girls,” Robin Wasserman explains that narratives regarding girls focus less on age and more on the status of a female character, namely whether or not they are married and have children. Wasserman further explains that while women are defined by their relationships, girls can define themselves. They are not someone else’s mother, wife, girlfriend, friend - girls are the somebody. So, it’s no surprise when women choose to identify as girls and participate in these girl trends, despite the fact that they’re grown up, it’s viewed as a form of liberation and self-reclamation. And companies capitalize on this as a 2023 Vox News article tells us “girls’ sell” [because] ‘Girls are more available for consumption,” and so have more marketed towards them. In a society where youth is synonymous with beauty, society tells women that girls and young women have far more social capital than older women ever will. Making girlhood the freedom from the obligations of traditional femininity associated with being a wife and mother. Girlhood is fun, free, and something to romanticize and celebrate, thus making “girl” trends and the products associated with them so popular. In fact, “Girl” trends have replaced pink items as the latest form of gender marketing and since our bodies, behaviors, and identities have long been seen as representative of cultural and societal values and norms these trends are representations of our modern views on consumerism and femininity. Vox further explains that for many people “girl” trends serve as a way to celebrate their identities while Merryanna Salem adds that others reclaim their girlhood. For example, instead of pink items being seen as symbols of the patriarchy, trends such as “Barbie girls” or “pink pilates princesses” have been reclaimed as something fun and aesthetic. However the BBC tells us while these “trends can build community and drive conversation, they can also be infantilising and reinforce harmful gender stereotypes.”
Making us say “Oops, we’ve done it again” and the society we live in is not that innocent. In fact, Merryana Salem writes “The underlying consumerism built into girl trends needs acknowledgement, for instance. To be ‘that girl’ requires expensive gym memberships, fresh foods, athleisure wear, and beauty products that most can’t afford. Girl math is literally the act of rationalizing consumerism under capitalism, rebranded as a cutesy girl activity.” Participating in these trends requires a degree of privilege to be able to buy into the lifestyle and be able to purchase the next “girl” identity once the current one goes out of style. In fact, since I wrote this speech the clean girls have gone out of style and the mob wives are now in style. Despite the inaccessibility of these trends, many people still equate the purchases associated with them as something positive. Take the example of Taylor Swift the Eras Tour, Beyoncé’s Renaissance Tour and the Barbie movie, which contributed a combined $8.5 billion dollars to the US economy in just 3 months according to Forbes magazine. For many people this is seen as the ultimate representation of girl power and women’s spending power. And for anywhere from $13 for the average Barbie movie ticket to $3,801 for the average Eras Tour Resale Ticket you too could have participated in which many online dubbed the “summer of the girls”. Or, if T-Swift is too pricey, you could join the Bee Hive at Club Renaissance for only $500. While this spending phenomena seems new, Lauren Rosewarne, Associate Professor at the University of Melbourne, tells us “The idea of using…language of feminism [such as] ideas of equality and empowerment—have been harnessed by capitalism for several decades already to convince women that acts of consumerism can have political meaning”. This trend underscores larger economic tendencies in the United States, in which according to the Joint Economic Committee in the US Congress, women “make 85 percent of all consumer purchases in the United States.” which parallels the persistent challenges posed by the pink tax. The pink tax is a proven phenomena when products and services marketed towards women face higher prices than the same products marketed towards men. This price disparity is well known in regards to hygiene products - most notably razors, shampoos, and soaps, but can be seen in almost every consumer category. A study conducted by the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs in 2015 found girls were charged 4% more in children’s clothing and 7% more in toys and accessories. If that wasn’t bad enough, the clothing doubles to 8% when we grow up and start shopping in the women’s department. Additionally, the Joint Economic Committee found that services such as haircuts and dry cleaning cost over 50% more for females. In other words, while the girl trends entice us to BUY more products, we are then up-charged for the sole fact that we are girls. This is compounded by the gender pay gap in which women earn on average 82% of what men earn for the same jobs. So, women not only earn less than men, but we buy more, pay more, and get less for what we spend.
And quite frankly, It’s exhausting and all I want to say is “Thank U, Next.” Thankfully there is hope for relief from the double-standard pricing. According to CBS News, New York became the first state to ban the pink tax in 2020, and several other states have followed suit. CBS News continues that the federal government introduced the “Pink Tax Repeal Act” in 2021 and earlier this October Texas eliminated sales taxes on feminine hygiene products and family care items. Hopefully these legislative trends will continue and one day the “pink tax” and gender pay gap will become things of the past. But that’s only one consumerist issue for women so what can you and I do to tackle the OTHER consumer issues related to girl trends? Well the answer- quite simply - is to be more selective. We can choose not to buy into these trends that make girl hood inaccessible. Instead of paying __15 dollars__ for the friendship bracelet, DIY it for a unit cost of _31 cents____. Want to stock up on books for your feral girl era? Check out second hand stores like Half-Price Books for all your bookish needs. By beginning to purchase consciously we can utilize our power as consumers to change the ways that brands and companies market to different genders. That doesn’t mean we have to stop enjoying these trends, after all the Reputation Stadium Tour did permanently alter my brain for the better. But, by looking at the trends with a critical eye and prioritizing our tastes rather than those of an algorithm we determine what it means to be women and stop promoting exclusivity and the commodification of girlhood.
Which answers our question for today: what does it mean to be a girl? To reach our answer we corrected Madonna and explored the ways in which gendered marketing has been rebranded as “girl trends,” then we acknowledged the cycle Britney warned us about as we considered its impacts, before we finally queued Ariana’s vibe and curated OUR selections because we’ve realized women CAN be anything - and we don’t need Barbie, or Taylor, or Beyonce, or any other trend as proof.