In the past decade “girlhood” has gone from a developmental process to a brandable identity. From fashion lines to empowerment campaigns and social media aesthetics, marketers have latched on to the idea of girlhood as profitable, aspirational and relatable. However, what does this actually mean? Is there a line between exploiting it and celebrating girlhood?
Today’s culture sells through every channel, such as fashion with branded accessories, patterns and pastel trends, making it shout girl culture. Beauty products, such as skin care make up lines, making it targeting young women and teens to make their message more powerful for women. Social media influencers are making their content evolve around everyday life such as get-ready-with-me’s , aesthetic routines and girl problems as more shareable and relatable content. Lastly, entertainment through shows and movies has a girlhood experience, making it consumable and a visual narrative. Based on just selling the product, they see the vision of what it means to be a girl and what it means to have a girlhood making women more expressive, rebellious, confident, but still in a stylish aesthetic way. They often use hashtags like self-love, women empowerment or “it girl”.Â
On this content, since your girlhood feels positive, it celebrates sisterhood, self-expression and confidence to align with social progress campaigns, which can then make girls feel more lifted up and represent feeling more appreciated. That can then be affirming and inspiring. These values that you should be seeing in yourself rather than being reflected on advertisement, social media and film. The tension between commodification and authenticity when girlhood becomes more strategic, makes it more risky, turning identity into products, rather than having a real experience or being repackaged as trends. Emotional labor gets packed as engagement and empowerment become more of a slogan than a structural change within society. For example, marketing a slogan like “be your best self” is still promoting unrealistic standards of beauty and imperfection, but then also contradicts the empowerment to lift women up.Â
When marketing strategies celebrate a positive self-image, foster communities and encourage diversity, they can make a more meaningful impact on cultural advancement. However, when moving the focus to selling products over promoting well-being repackaging girlhood without adjusting real challenges, shaping identity around consumption it becomes less about empowerment and more about profit.Â
Girlhood should not be a marketing strategy. It should be lived in and the supported phase of life of marketers must tap into girl culture. They should be beyond the aesthetics in the sales for their products and their visions real empowerment meets to then listen to girls voices create a space for self expression, challenging unrealistic standards and then help fund social groups and education for women.Â