teenage girls are taking over the world

... by teenage i mean girls from the age of 16-26. lol.

today i was stopped at a red light listening to the tortured poets department, when I saw a girl drive by in a slick back with a macrame car hanging on her rear view mirror. my first thought was i know I’d like her. about two cars later, i saw a blonde girl with her hair in a slick back curled ponytail and a pair of sunglasses i knew i’d seen on an amazon storefront. i thought she looked a little like alix earle. 

i also felt a little like alix earle today, sporting my own slick back, dior lip oil, and l’oréal telescopic. 

at that moment i got to thinking: we’re everywhere. 

heavily influenced, extremely girly, and confident. 

teenage girls are everywhere. 

the other day my best friend was hounding me for never seeing brokeback mountain. she said that it’s something “your genre of girl is obsessed with”. 

like any girl obsessed with the way they’re perceived would do, i flipped my shit and hounded her to describe exactly what “genre of girl” I was. 

she said I was one of the “girls who love jane austen, the little women girls. the book girls but also the cool girls”. 

i can admit, she was right, and I love my genre of girl. because it’s not the “genre of girl” i am, but the fact that there were girls like me already out there that have built a community. a community i was lucky enough to find, and, a community that other girls understand. they give me confidence in myself and my interests that i never would’ve discovered or embraced if i hadn’t stumbled across a space full of women with the same interests.

if i had to tell you what '“genre of girl” my best friend was, i’d tell you she is a pop culture girl, a music girl, a y2k girl, a makeup girl, a movie girl, etc. she has her own genre of girl, completely different from my cohort of wannabe poets, but we are still best friends. through and through. 

as i watched these two random girls drive by, i got to thinking about this.

even though i have no idea what “genre of girl” they are, i caught a glimpse of their soap brows and assumed we would be friends. no hesitation. 

because teenage girls are taking over the world. we speak a language no one else does. if i meet a girl in class who identifies as a “book girl”, we’re immediately hitting it off. if my best friend makes an obscure pop culture reference to another pop culture girl, they’re immediately hitting it off. 

not only are we everywhere, but we have a community. it’s diverse, and it’s beautiful. it’s done wonders to end internalized misogyny among the teenage girls of the world. i can see that just through the past five years of being chronically online. we used to be mean to each other!!! we were not always “girls girls!” but we are now! and we’re stronger together! 

i’m not a huge supporter of social media as a whole (though i am wholly addicted). however, i’ll be the first to admit that it is what is running the world. it is what is running my life, and everyone i know’s life. my friends’ average screen time is probably about eight hours a day. that’s a shit ton of hours, and if the rest of the world is averaging that - of course social media is running the world. what else do people use their phones for? 

with that, i beg the question - who is running social media?

the only answer i can fathom is teenage girls. in all our delusions and all our genres. girls are running the world. 

after i started writing this, my best friend told me that she saw where a mid-twenties (female) influencer bought a house in the hamptons and was bashed for it, because she didn’t have a “real job”. savannah (my best friend; i’m just going to call her by name. she’ll be a recurring character) then said that the bashing of this influencer was ironic to her, because influencing is one of very few women run industries.

naturally, this got more wheels turning in my head. 

she’s right. influencing is an industry, but it’s not just women-run. it’s virtually all women! name a single male influencer. i can’t. name a “genre” of boy that doesn’t stem from a stereotype that’s been around for a millennium. i can’t.

women are running the internet - at least the next generation of us are. we still live in a patriarchal society, but there is a new hope. because not only are we owning all the social media apps, for the most part, we’re getting along. i have my book girls, and savannah has her pop culture girls, but we’re all there together. we’re crossing wires on our social media communication lines, bonding over a traumatizing male, and going about on our way. 

take boysober by hope woodard. we’re learning from each others mistakes. take substack as a whole. we’re opening up about our life experiences. as women. as teenage girls. 

the “girls girl” movement is just that - a movement. the narrative is shifting. i feel more connected to a random teenage girl at red light than i ever have before, because i know she is on the internet. she has a “genre of girl” that i’ve surely crossed paths with.

although we have many more obstacles, the patriarchy lives on, and more rights are getting taken away, the community amongst women is stronger than ever. and it’s obvious. 

at the very least, isn’t it nice to know we’ve built a community where we understand the term “genre of girl”, and strong women are household names to us? isn’t it nice to know that we have a space to help us navigate the gender oppressive world we live in? let’s take a moment and appreciate it. i love our girlhood and all it’s genres. round of applause for all of us!