A great read, thank you for sharing. Sometimes I think the infantilization is a good thing, it signals that their world is safe enough that they can afford to indulge in messy, unaccountable, immature behavior (and package it as an aesthetic and then publish online) it means that someone is holding down the more material aspects of safety, shelter, security etc.
There’s no urgency to mature and be a woman, which can be see as a good thing, it’s endearing when girls in the developed western world lean into these vulnerable, delicate archetypes, it’s a luxury really, but also it’s a testimony to the state of the world which is overwhelmingly good.
This is super interesting to me because I basically grew out from being essentially a boy with female form into a woman. I don’t think I ever properly girled. When it was time to girl I wasn’t really getting how to, so boying seemed easier. Boys have way more clear-cut pastimes - fishing, stealing cherries from the neighbors’ tree via garage roof, setting shit on fire. Girls were, like, talking. And I never knew what they were talking about. But once it came to womaning, that suddenly went way better! I think the answer is getting older. You suddenly realize there are no rules and fuck anyone who tries to tell you otherwise.
The perpetual girl thing reminds me a lot of Japanese young women in particular, who have a very specific style that often includes plushies and high school uniform vibe clothes and a general sense of cutification and seeming much younger than they are, but, like, in an ‘owning it’ sort of way. I’m sure there’s some interesting writing out there on the philosophy of it.
A great read, thank you for sharing. Sometimes I think the infantilization is a good thing, it signals that their world is safe enough that they can afford to indulge in messy, unaccountable, immature behavior (and package it as an aesthetic and then publish online) it means that someone is holding down the more material aspects of safety, shelter, security etc.
There’s no urgency to mature and be a woman, which can be see as a good thing, it’s endearing when girls in the developed western world lean into these vulnerable, delicate archetypes, it’s a luxury really, but also it’s a testimony to the state of the world which is overwhelmingly good.
This is super interesting to me because I basically grew out from being essentially a boy with female form into a woman. I don’t think I ever properly girled. When it was time to girl I wasn’t really getting how to, so boying seemed easier. Boys have way more clear-cut pastimes - fishing, stealing cherries from the neighbors’ tree via garage roof, setting shit on fire. Girls were, like, talking. And I never knew what they were talking about. But once it came to womaning, that suddenly went way better! I think the answer is getting older. You suddenly realize there are no rules and fuck anyone who tries to tell you otherwise.
The perpetual girl thing reminds me a lot of Japanese young women in particular, who have a very specific style that often includes plushies and high school uniform vibe clothes and a general sense of cutification and seeming much younger than they are, but, like, in an ‘owning it’ sort of way. I’m sure there’s some interesting writing out there on the philosophy of it.