Who run the world? Now, more than ever, the answer is: “Girls.” Because, for the last few years, girls have been firmly at the forefront of some of our biggest cultural movements. Hot Girl Summer. Barbie mania. The Summer I Turned Pretty. The Devil Wears Prada 2. Hundreds of ‘girl’ trends on TikTok. It's undeniable: young women all want a little bit of their girlhood back.
But wait a minute, you may be thinking. Is this craving to ‘just be girls again’ just a tad… infantilising? Regressive? Anti-feminist? Or could it really be empowering?
These are the questions at the centre of Jess Bacon's new book, I'm Just Girl.
According to Jess, our seemingly endless cultural fascination with the girl goes beyond the pink, the frills and the cute little girl dinners. In fact, the TikTokified aesthetics of girlhood kind of miss the point. For Jess, it's actually all about the feeling of girlhood. The joy of a simple trip to the cinema with your friends on the weekend; of belting out your favourite song during a sleepover; of trying on your first awkward swipe of eyeliner and mismatched foundation in the school loo.
Sex sells? Only when it's dressed to be illegal.
And, perhaps more subconsciously, it's about the joy of blissful ignorance. After all, when we were girls, we didn't exactly understand what was coming, did we? The expectations. The contradictions. The patriarchal structures designed to squeeze us into boxes we never asked to be put into. Perhaps what we're really missing is the freedom that came from being unaware of just how complicated womanhood was going to be.
In her new book, Jess introduces the idea of a “second girlhood” — a way of embracing the joy of youth, while carving out a path as a woman. And we sat down with her to talk about it…
This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
A huge congrats on I’m Just a Girl! What first inspired you to delve into girlhood with this book?
It started when I wrote this piece for Dazed about how it was the Year of the Girl in 2023. We had Barbie summer, Barbie mania, and pink washed the whole world. There were the girl trends taking off online as well. It seemed like girl culture was exploding. Of course, it had been building years before with Megan Thee Stallion’s Hot Girl Summer.
Since then, we’ve also been seeing a growing nostalgia for what we used to love watching, which has led to all of these legacy sequels. And there are all these fun spin-offs that refocus back on young love, whether that's like Off Campus or The Summer I Turned Pretty. We're really revisiting the things millennial and Gen Z women grew up on and romanticising that period of our lives.
In general, it seemed like everyone was identifying more as a girl than a woman, which I thought was a really interesting cultural shift, considering that we've tried to move away from being identified as girls, especially in the context of our careers or our relationships. And it was really interesting to see that the girl was becoming this really big cultural capital while, for instance, women's rights were regressing across the world. We'd seen Roe v. Wade being overturned. I wondered: are we being pacified with these pretty pink things or are we finding comfort and joy and safety in reliving our girlhood again? There are different ways of looking at the rise of the girl: are women infantilising themselves and in turn opening themselves up to being sexualised and fetishised? Or are we actually growing back down in a healthy way, reclaiming a lot of what we lost and trying to have more fun and find more joy? That sparked the idea of what I coined the “second girlhood.”
Yes, you are balancing a real duality in the book. In some ways it can feel like an impossible oxymoron – can you really be a true feminist and embrace girlhood? What have been your experiences of reclaiming girlhood?
My peak girlhood experiences were definitely going to concerts and going to the cinema. Going to the Eras tour with friends I've known for years feels like a perfect example of reclaiming that feeling. Getting ready together – we were all staying in the same place. It was like a big, giant sleepover. We're putting gems in our hair, we're wearing pink dresses on the tube, we're covered in glitter! I think for a lot of people, when you're growing up, you can feel embarrassed about the music you like, or the fandoms you're interested in, and this was just about being really loud and proud about what you're into. This was also when I realised this girlhood phenomenon is actually extending beyond the digital space and becoming a very positive safe space [in the real world] – women are creating these spaces for themselves to provide not only comfort, but I think a lot of joy, and a lot of celebration.
This idea of joy runs throughout your book. I think so often we associate girlhood with puberty and awkwardness and feeling uncomfortable – but actually, in other ways, it's maybe the last time we felt really comfortable in our selves. Unself-conscious is also a really interesting concept you bring up – being unaware of how you're being perceived and therefore free to just exist. How did your experiences of joy inform your concept of the “second girlhood”?
The “second girlhood” is about young adult women buying back into girlhood. But, for me, it has to go beyond capitalism. It’s about redefining your whole identity, your pastimes, your hobbies – reconsidering what your life can look like as an adult. I think when we're girls, we envisage what womanhood will be like. A lot of us probably thought it would be like what we saw in movies and TV shows. We all thought life was going to be like 13 Going on 30! We imagined we were going to have the autonomy and the money to be able to do everything we couldn’t do as children. But when you get there, to womanhood, you suddenly have so many different responsibilities – and there are so many contradictory expectations put on women. Many women feel they lose their authentic selves.
So, I think the second girlhood is when women are picking and choosing bits of themselves that they lost – things that they loved as girls, whether that is crafting, or swimming, or picking up gymnastics again, or doing ballet for the first time. It's about not assuming that anything has an age limit. It’s about picking parts of your identity that you miss and that you want to reconnect with and enjoying it rather than feeling as though you're falling behind or feeling like you're not living up to your parents' generation.
Yes, you bring up the idea of the “extended adolescence” that is so common for our generation of women.
I do think a lot of us are in an extended adolescence at the moment. So many of the milestone moments that our parents had are now coming at least a decade later — because of the housing crisis, the cost of living crisis, the pandemic. We've lived through so much, so financially and feasibly things like having a house, having a baby, getting married are just not possible – or not a top priority anymore. And actually we're starting to reevaluate what we do value. Priorities have shifted.
You mentioned how this second girlhood should go beyond simply consumerism and buying into girly trends. Obviously any cultural movement such as this one will be noticed and repackaged by people who want to profit off of it. That’s the more insidious, more sinister side to the rise of the girlhood trend, isn’t it?
Yeah, there is this underside to it — where businesses are noticing that girls control a lot of the cultural capital. When we’re talking about the capitalist side of it, what we have to be aware of is that we're often being sold a particular type of girlhood. We especially saw that with the girl trends on social media. The algorithm was trying to package girls into separate trends and identities. You were the feral girl, the strawberry girl, the hot girl. It's much easier to market things at people when you've reduced them to a stereotype! That's when it becomes quite problematic, because women are always multifaceted.
And it's worth noting that the capitalist, sellable version of girlhood is often conflated with a very hyper femininity. But femininity and girlhood are not the same entity. The way it’s being marketed, we're expected to – if we want to buy back into girlhood – to wear ruffles and lace and pink. And it's packaged in this very pink, perfect way. And a lot of the time this version of girlhood that we're being sold is conflated with a white slim thin body, so it becomes a lot less inclusive of a space than what I think we all want it to be.
Instead, I think it's important that we try to find ways to embrace girlhood outside of capitalism and not always look for something to buy, but look for something to feel or experience. Whether that is going for walks with friends or watching the Eras Tour concert film at home, or reading books together. It's about being curious and joyful. The core kernels of what we're missing are connection, curiosity, creativity, joy, feeling good in our bodies, feeling less self-conscious of ourselves.
And there’s a political side to all of this too, isn’t there? Once we start talking about how girlhood is kind of being hijacked by big businesses and repackaged and sold to young women, it’s a natural through-line to start talking about how women are sometimes also being sold some quite insidious political ideals, too.
Most women's insecurities are something that the patriarchy has told them to have in order to sell them something – and it’s packaged as a way to make you “better.”
But if all of that external noise wasn't there, then what is it you like about yourself? How would you dress? How would you behave? What would you want your life to look like? What would you want to do after work? How would you want to work? What kind of job would you want to have? I think the hardest thing to do is to distance yourself from the noise, and that has to come with being very selective with who you follow on social media – being mindful of what you're consuming online. And also choosing to follow people that actually align with your values – maybe someone in their 60s or 70s who's showing you a different way of living, or someone who's in their 40s and has the most amazing fashion sense that doesn't follow trends and makes you feel inspired and creative.
I’m curious: do you think men have a similar journey they could or should be going on?
A lot of men still retain some of their boyhood, whether that is through playing football, or coming home from their high-profile job and playing Lego, or trading Pokémon cards at lunchtime. But the difference is, no one thinks any less of them for doing so. They don't lose any of their credibility at work – they're seen as someone who's got interests and hobbies. Women’s interests are still looked down upon – we’re encouraged to focus on things that are productive as opposed to joyful.
That being said, I feel like men definitely still have a lot of work to do in finding joy. And they have their own journey to go on when it comes to toxic masculinity and a lot to work through in relation to what it means to be a man in the 21st century when there is such radicalism and extremism in what is being sold as masculinity.
It's interesting to hear you mentioning expectations in the workplace. So many women still feel the need to over-perform their capabilities and maturity just to be taken seriously.
Research has found that a woman has to be twice as qualified as a man. She has to prove herself twice over in order to be considered for the same role – and probably paid less for privilege. And so, we created the girl boss as this persona who was the professional person that we had to show up as in the office. But the girl boss rose and fell out of popularity very quickly. That movement very much leaned into individualism and was usually about one woman's success. It didn't really raise up other women or create a culture where other women could thrive as well.
More than 20 years after its release, the film that challenged racial and gender stereotypes is as popular as ever.
Do you think embracing a second girlhood could help us free ourselves from some corporate toxicity?
The term “girl” is very contentious in office settings. Some people might not want to express their girlhood in the office. They might worry about it used against them – to be infantilising or weaponised in some way. And that's completely fine. But I do think there is scope to bring your inner girl to your work, whether that is by redefining what your career path looks like, or reconsidering how you structure your time. Maybe you don't want work to be your whole identity anymore and you're reevaluating why it become your whole personality. Equally, it might be about completely pivoting your whole career, because you might have followed the traditional path and followed the shiny titles. Embracing girlhood can be about redefining what career success looks like for you.
And how does the second girlhood have the power to transform how we live our personal lives outside of work? You talk a lot about how our approach to relationships are shifting.
A lot of the time your relationships and friendships at school are based on popularity or proximity. You tend to make friends with people who are in your sphere and doing the same course as you. And when you leave education, you don't really have that structure with friendships anymore. You don't really have a shared purpose, so it can be really difficult to find friends. We're seeing this surge in live communities – run clubs, craft clubs, or paint and sip nights – because people are looking to find their tribe and find their people.
I also think it’s really healthy that millenials and Gen Z have moved away from party culture and big weekends of drinking (as so many people are sober or sober curious now) and that we’re turning to more wholesome activities such as reading, picnics or community-based clubs to fill our cups after a tough week at work.
I think what we're seeing is that platonic love is becoming much more important in women's lives. Not just because dating is a hellscape, especially for heterosexual relationships. We're also seeing a rise in the late blooming lesbian and women re-exploring their sexuality. Because sometimes the thought of being with men in the current political climate can be so difficult. As someone who dated for most of their 20s, I think my most intimate, personal, healthiest relationships during my 20s were definitely with my friends. Meanwhile, relationships [heterosexual, with men] become almost secondary. Take Chanté Joseph’s viral Vogue article [you've probably seen it: Is Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing Now?] Men are almost becoming redundant because women are relying not only on themselves but on each other. And actually everything that men were supposed to provide… the patriarchal idea of men being the providers is an impossible stereotype. No one can promise that in this economical climate. So there's nothing really at this point in time that men can offer women that they can't offer themselves. Women are starting to redefine which relationships serve them and which ones don't, and prioritise the ones that are filling their cup.
When did witches all become flawless clean girls?
It’s such a huge cultural shift! Traditionally male-female relationships were, as you say, completely tied to finances. And I think there has been so much untying and unpicking of those traditions as we all try to figure out how our heterosexual relationships should work. I think it's important that we still love men and include men in our lives. But how do you do that without falling back on those patterns that are built on financial, sexist structures?
Exactly. I think they've 100% got their own challenges to work through. I think what women want is completely different to what the manosphere is selling. We also have the trad wife phenomenon as well, which is kind of suggesting that women would like to be provided for, but almost in quite a childlike way. But at the same time, actual trad wives are usually sharing their content online as well, and making a fortune for their family.
Ultimately, it sounds like the second girlhood isn’t as much about regression as it is about redefining what womanhood can be.
A lot of people would say the second girlhood is not a feminist movement, but I think at the same time there's something so interesting about women prioritising joy.
You can't ever shrug off the political identity of being a woman. And you should never dive into girlhood as a trend and just buy everything capitalism is selling you. But I think it's okay to acknowledge that maybe you've been swept up in the role of a grown-up woman – and actually acknowledging that this isn't what you wanted. Maybe motherhood isn't for you. Maybe you don't actually want to be a girl boss. Maybe you – I don’t know – want to live near the sea!
Aging is such a privilege. It is so exciting to get older and to live a full rich life and have that privilege of growing up with our friends and making experiences and memories. But at the same time, it's okay to crave the carefree lack of self-consciousness we felt as girls.
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