the esoteric world of girlblogging
lana del rey, nina sayers and pink, oh my!
“Cool girl. Men always use that, don’t they? As their defining compliment. She’s a Cool girl.” - Gone Girl (David Fincher, 2014)
This past year or so, I have delved into the world of girlblogging. What is girlblogging, I hear you asking? Well, dear reader, a girlblogger (which, in all honesty, I am) according to the article “Intimacy and the Machine: Slouching towards Girlblogging” is defined thusly. “A girlblogger is a girl who blogs about being a girl, a girl’s girl, a girly girl who looks like she dances ballet, weighs little, wears lip products from Dior, and is tightly wound but loosely tied together with silk ribbon.” Yet, being a part of this community myself, this definition feels lacking in certain ways. It is true that being girly and having (or aspiring to) this appearance is the surface level description of a girlblogger, but many leave out some of the intellectual pursuits of such a girl, a girl such as myself. An interest in film and literature for one, I was introduced to several very good books I have read recently through people I knew in the girlblogger community, My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh, one of my new favourites and the inspiration behind the name of this blog, to name one.
My main point remains that this community is a lot more than what it appears to be on the surface. I have discovered a great place to express my interests and (often pretentious and a tad controversial) opinions with like-minded people. Films such as Black Swan, Gone Girl, the works of Sofia Coppola (one of my favourite directors of all time) and Ladybird are key watches for girlbloggers, as more often than not they explore the female experience and what it means to be a woman. It is a sense of sisterhood that embraces the positive and the negative. It was not until I entered this community that I understood that a very specific kind of rage (the female sort) that I experienced almost daily was in fact a shared experience with a lot of other women. This ferocity and anger that we are often expected to hide away and tuck behind a polite smile is, in fact, perfectly natural to many girls, it almost seems woven into the fabric of our very being. To be a woman is to rage, to seethe and to long to spill blood (in a metaphorical sense, of course). Of course, as well as this, to be a woman is to perform, to conceal this away. We are both beauty and beast, in every sense of the phrase. To further emphasise my point, in the words of the book The Secret History, “Beauty is terror”.
There is a great deal of criticism towards the girlblogging community, most notably its occasional crossover with pro-anorexic content. To those, I say, two things may have a crossover of those who consume it, however, that does not mean they are permanently linked. One can enjoy the work of Sylvia Plath and pictures of girls in ballet outfits without wishing to starve oneself, they are capable of being mutually exclusive. Speaking, once again, as a part of that community, I am in the process of recovering from my own disordered eating and being able to talk with girls who have similar experiences has made me feel accepted and less alone. Sometimes, it’s easier to recover when you don’t think everyone else is doing well and you’re the only one with a problem, solidarity and shared trauma isn’t always harmful.
Ultimately, being a part of this community has allowed me to re-spark interest into my previously abandoned hobbies and habits. Good eating, consuming the arts, researching, listening to podcasts, reading and writing are all things I have been encouraged to take up again after becoming a part of girlblogging. Even making it easier to set these habits too. It may seem strange but being able to romanticise one's interests and hobbies can assist in wanting to engage in them more. Especially if, like me, you spent the later half of your teenage years suffering with all hellish kinds of intellectual burn out. I found my passions easier to pursue because I could find girls who were also interested in similar things. One of the bigger problems when I was younger was how my interests wouldn’t last because I didn’t have any friends in real life who shared them, therefore I didn’t really have anyone to discuss them with, especially when occasionally they were met with eyes rolling and extreme disinterest or boredom. Now, I have an outlet for some of my more obscure interests if I don’t have any people to discuss them with in person.
As well as this, girlbloggers are often big advocates for embracing one’s femininity and allowing that to intertwine with feminism and experiencing rage as a woman. As women, I feel like we want to write sad poetry about our lack of will to live and then decorate it with pink bows, ballet slippers and pictures of Lana Del Rey. Sometimes we attempt to relate to figures such as Marilyn Monroe, Jackie Kennedy, or Marie Antoinette in order to make our own suffering more beautiful within our own minds. It's an obscure and also kind of common phenomenon. Many who would enjoy this community are often put off by its bad sides, however, to those people I say: If the men of this world can enjoy sports, despite their common association with misogyny, violence and toxicity, why should we as women only be interested in things that are completely without controversy? If it interests you, then get involved!
To conclude, this community, although not for everyone, has ultimately helped me in many ways. It’s ultimately become one of the best outlets for my somewhat niche sense of creativity and imagination. I’ve found a new love for things I didn’t know I was interested in and things I thought I couldn’t like anymore. In a strange way, it allows me to be understood and therefore, allows me to be weird and girly at the same time, allows me to both beauty and beast, without apology. Like Jekyll and Hyde, the duality of man lives within us all. I simply ask that you don’t let the opinions of others become too restrictive on how you decide to live your life.
Until next time, mes amours.