“Girl” trends and the repackaging of womanhood – By Rebecca Jennings (VOX) / Aug 16, 2023
Online, women eat “girl dinners” and go on “hot girl walks.” Welcome to the girlouboros.
Rebecca Jennings is a senior correspondent covering social platforms and the creator economy. Since joining Vox in 2018, her work has explored the rise of TikTok, internet aesthetics, and the pursuit of money and fame online. You can sign up for her biweekly Vox Culture newsletter here.
“What kind of insufferable girl are you?” my TikTok algorithm asked me the other day. The options were “femcel,” as in someone who’s pathologically unlovable because she’s a radical feminist; “coquette,” as in, someone who wears bows and listens to Lana Del Rey, or “blogger,” as in me. The original video appears to have been deleted (too insufferable, perhaps), but it stayed with me not because it was particularly insightful or laden with meaning but because it offered yet another “girl” on the internet for me to be, and maybe the only accurate one.
It’s the summer — or the year, or maybe the decade — of mostly made-up microtrends involving the word “girl.” People on TikTok and everywhere else on the internet are talking about their “girl dinners,” which amount to thrown-together plates of whatever happens to be in the fridge. They’re going on “hot girl walks” (a.k.a. walks). They’re having “feral girl summers.” They attempt to determine via viral Pinterest mood boards whether they’re “strawberry girls” or “cherry girls” or “vanilla girls” or “tomato girls” or “coconut girls” or “coastal cowgirls” or “rat girls” or “downtown girls” or “okokok girls” or “lalala girls” (don’t worry about those last two, it was part of a TikTok thing that lasted approximately five minutes). They girlboss and do girl math with their gorgeous gorgeous girlies during hot girl summer. They buy viral pink paste and powdered greens in efforts to become “clean girls” or “That Girls,” and when they fail, they become, evidently, “insufferable girls.”
eating my girl dinner, taking my hot girl walk, listening to my sad girl music, reading my feral girl books, going out dancing with my girlianas, getting bevvies with my girlipops, every day a slow march towards death (Womanhood)…
— ezra kupor (@ezra_kupor) July 10, 2023
CONTINUE > https://www.vox.com/culture/23831903/girl-dinner-tiktok-trends-hot-girl-walk
