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E . L . S . O . L . R E . E D . . L . S . K O R..OC.E. .L D . U . K O . . SM S.U.C E H T F IRL” O S DG E R O T TO U O S S N G IGH E E C R N A F STA P RIC E E TH AME D TH SUB N ER L A L “A AGE OV X N Y M I I E S STORY BY: JACOB BRUMBERG T L E I L PHOTOS BY : LAUREN GREENFIELD SE LAYOUT BY: CHRIS DENSMORE SOC
(top) softball players show off their painted nails at a game in Naples, Florida (middle) A playboy bunny tans at the playboy mansion (bottom) Lily, then 5, shops at Rachel London’s garden, where Britney Spears has some of her clothes designed, Los Angeles, California.
A A
merican girlhood ain’t what it used to be.
A gentle warning: this is not a book for par-
Maybe there are pockets of girls out there
ents desperate to maintain their naivete about
who still revel in the “Little House on the
what’s happening in their daughters’ lives:
Prairie” books or dress up their dolls or
these accounts show you more than you’ve
run lemonade stands. But they aren’t catching the eyes
ever imagined about the sexual and social
of sociologists, who seem to agree that girls today are
habits of girls. No matter how well you think
growing up in a hyper-sexualized peer pressure-cook-
you understand what goes on in adolescent
er — and they don’t show up in “Girl Culture,” a new
life, it can be shocking to read first-hand ac-
book from photographer Lauren Greenfield (Chronicle
counts of the jealousy, pettiness, meanness
Books; $40.00). Even the youngest girls in Greenfield’s
and general anxiety that characterize female
gritty, gorgeous portraits are far too busy dressing up
adolescence.
like Barbie dolls to play with them.
Girl culture is the key to understanding what
“
In this business, beauty helps. But if all it took was a killerand great hair, everyone would have their own tv show.
longer carry a great deal of emotional weight. Instead, they involve frenetic forays into the marketplace, worries about what to wear, and a preoccupation with the pictures that will docu-
it means to be a young woman today or in
ment the event.
the past. In every historical epoch, girls have
Young women flocked to the Girl Scouts and
formed a unique set of activities and concerns
the Camp Fire Girls, only two of many national
generated by their developmental needs as
and local single-sex groups in which they could
well as the adult society in which they live. What girls do, how they think, what they write, whisper, and dream, all reveal a great deal about them and about us. Lauren Greenfield’s photographic vision of contemporary girl culture is both a revealing documentary record and a disquieting personal commentary, infused with a distinctly sympathetic but biting point of view. A century ago, the culture of girls was still rooted in family, school, and community. When they were not in school or helping Mother, middleclass American girls were reading, writing, and
31
Allegra, 4, plays dress-up, Malibu, California
learn critical skills under the close supervision Cindy Margolis, the world’s most downloaded woman according to the Guiness Book of World Records, in her bathroom, Studio City, California.
of older women. When girls were together on their own, they chattered about new hair rib-
drawing, as well as playing with their dolls. Many young bons and dress styles and inscribed sentimengirls knew how to sew, knit, crochet, and embroider, gen- tal rhymes in one another’s autograph books. erating homemade crafts to decorate their rooms or give In private, many prayed and wrote earnestly in to friends as they sipped hot chocolate and read aloud to their diaries about how they wanted to improve one another.
themselves by helping others or becoming more
In a girl culture dominated by concerns about the body serious people. Celebrated for their purity, innorather than mind or spirit, familiar rites of passage—such cence, and all-around spunk, American adolesas Bat Mitzvah, quinceañera, graduation, and prom—are cent girls in 1900 were considered a great na-
31
also transformed into shallow commercial events domi- tional resource. (Some continued to believe the nated by visions of Hollywood and celebrity magazines. old Mother Goose rhyme that girls were made of These rituals are deeply important to girls, yet they no “sugar and spice and everything nice.”)
“
I wanna be a topless dancer or a showgirl. If I can accomplish that, then I can be anything.
A hundred years later, the lives
ligan and Reviving Ophelia by
environment is especially “toxic”
can also threaten mental and
of girls have changed
Mary Pipher. These powerful
for adolescent girls because
physical health.
enormously,
discussions alerted the na-
of the anxieties it generates
As the influence of Eastern reli-
along with
tion to the psychological dif-
about the developing female
gions and philosophy increase
our percep-
ficulties of growing up female
body and sexuality. On the
in mainstream American culture,
tion of them.
in a society that silences and
basis of my reading over one
we are recovering the classical
Girl culture
stifles girls even in social and
hundred personal diaries writ-
ethos that the mind and body
today is driven
educational settings thought to
ten by adolescent girls between
are one. The clear interdepen-
largely by commer-
be enlightened. Other studies
1830 and l980, I concluded that
dence of the mental and physi-
cial forces outside the family
of self-expression, including
confirmed that women really
as the twentieth century pro-
and local community. Peers
sexual, we have a sense of dis-
are the “stronger sex”—that is,
gressed, more and more young
seem to supplant parents as
quiet about what has happened
until puberty, when their vulner-
women grew up believing that
a source of authority; anxiety
to our girls.
ability to physical and mental
“good looks”—rather than “good
has replaced innocence. De-
In the l990s, a warning about
health problems increases. In
works”—were the highest form
spite the important and satisfy-
girls was sounded by some
The Body Project: An Intimate
of female perfection. The body
ing gains women have made
best-selling books such as
History of American Girls, I
projects that currently absorb
in achieving greater access to
Meeting at the Crossroads by
argued that our current cultural
the attention of girls not only
education, power, and all forms
Lyn Mikel Brown and Carol Gil-
33
constitute a “brain drain,” but
(left) Danielle, 13, gets measured as Michelle, 13, waits for the final weigh-in on the last day of the weight-loss camp, Catskills, New York. (right) a. Sheena tries on clothes with Amber, 15, in a department store dressing room, San Jose, Calif.) b. Beverly, 18, at the Crenshaw High School prom, Sony Studios, Culver City, California) c. Kristine, 20, poses for a lingerie shoot for Ocean Drive magazine, Miami Beach, Fl.)
Do not use this page for design. This is a fractional page for advertising, not the spread layout.
cal means that their conditions are linked: when one
worlds of the girlish [characteristic or befitting a girl
is in crisis, under attack, or otherwise compromised,
or girlhood] and the girlie [featuring scantily clothed
the other responds. While they are taught about the
women] in today’s popular culture? And if that di-
importance of individualism, the value of self, the
vide is narrowing, how do real girls sort out this di-
potential of each person to make unique contributions
chotomy as they gauge their behavior by prevailing
to the world, girls of all ages are at the same time
standards, girls who are often too young to fully un-
required to conform to the preeminently important yet
derstand the implications and motivations of what
narrow ideals of outward beauty and sexual desir-
they are shaped by? How does a contemporary fe-
ability. This situation may sound like tired rhetoric, but
male rectify her inner emotional life, her physiologi-
the photographs and interviews presented here vividly
cal instincts, and her intellectual grasp of herself in
represent the actual, inarguably familiar, and widely
society—evolved from earliest childhood—with the
pervasive experience itself.
powerful tides of today’s commodified womanhood
Girl Culture asks the question, how different are the
and its host of fantasies and mixed messages?
35
STORY CONTINUED ON PAGE 47