By: Mars Marte
Just the other day at work.
I was sitting in my office, putting on my makeup, and getting ready for a night out. Suddenly, the rusty school door swung open, and in walked a pair of my tween girls in search of a snack, an endeavor that was short-lived once the girls had noticed I was doing my makeup. Their eyes lit up brighter than the highlighter resting on my cheekbones, their voices overlapping, begging to help me out. How could I refuse? So, we sat in the middle of my office as they vented about the woes of middle school, painting away on my face. As the girls chatted away, I was reminded of my own moments with my ladies, where we sat and sighed about the stresses of life. After this unexpected detour, I couldn’t help but think that, through the years, there is one constant in a woman’s life, whether someone is assigned female at birth (AFAB) or someone who identifies as one.
The power of girlhood: a minuscule string from the web of life that attaches all women.
The meaning of girlhood has taken many forms across centuries and cultures, with some iterations defining it as the period before adulthood, with some cultures using marriage or age as a determinant for when girlhood ends, and womanhood begins, according to curators at I Am Girl Museum. However, I’d argue the two are one and the same, a shared emotional language of connection, resilience, and identity that, like a floaty carries us as we learn to swim in tumultuous waters.
From a young age, children identified as AFABs are subjected to harsher standards starting in school buildings, which hold strict dress code rules that reinforce the sexualization of young girls. While not a unique concept or an unnecessary one, the regulations of student attire have often disappointingly affected AFAB scholars.
Riley O’Keefe details in ACLU that during the end of her freshman year of high school, she had discovered her school’s administrative staff had altered the photos in their school’s yearbook of her and 80 other students, all girls, to cover their chests and any other areas of skin deemed ‘inappropriate’. This ordeal left O’Keefe feeling exposed and embarrassed, knowing “that an adult teacher had looked at my photo and decided to censor my chest”.
While O’Keefe’s experience falls on the extreme, the feeling of being unwantedly sexualized is one all too common and follows female-presenting individuals into adulthood. The impression left by unwelcomed eyes is riddled with the sense of shame often carried by the one who was viewed in a distasteful way, not the one who carried out the act.
This sensation is not sustained alone, however, as there’s a community of others who’ve experienced the same haunting situation.
In fleeting moments with foundational memories, we gather together, whether it be on the floor of one of your girls’ rooms or the bathroom of your favorite dive bar. Connections bloom from these shared experiences, and although it doesn’t make it right, the feeling is no longer carried alone. There is something deeply powerful in realizing that your discomfort, your shame, or your uncertainty is not yours alone to shoulder.
While these conversations do not erase the injustices girls face, it does soften them. Girlhood creates a refuge from the world’s gaze, allowing for a sacred solitude to be built, alleviating the heavy weight of life’s harshest moments.
The safe haven offered by the comfort of our fellow women does not end with the girls sitting beside us now, but extends through the women who once sat where we sit today. One of girlhood’s most remarkable qualities is its ability to transcend age, stretching itself between generations. Women graced with the gift of wisdom from age often become mirrors reflecting both who we are and who we may one day become.
They carry with them proof of survival, the endurance after heartaches, and, in their presence, an unspoken reassurance that life, though heavy, can still be carried. Whether through a grandmother’s quiet wisdom, a mother’s careful hands, or the knowing glance of a woman who understands without explanation, older generations of women preserve girlhood by passing down softness alongside strength. Shaping girlhood from much more than an experience, but something we inherit and will eventually continue to pass down.
Womanhood, then, is not the death of girlhood, but its evolution. A living testament that the little girl within never truly leaves, she simply grows wiser, reaching back to guide the next girl forward.
We may age out of dress codes, awkward crushes, and the particular chaos of middle school, but girlhood itself can never truly be left behind.
Girlhood is soft, but never weak; tender, but never trivial. It is the quiet power women carry and create for one another, a reminder that even as we grow older, wiser, and perhaps a little more tired, there will always be a part of us reaching for connection, laughter, and understanding. The little girl never leaves; she just learns how to carry the weight of being a woman, with her sisters right beside her for the journey.