Edited by Priyal Mittal
Girlhood is starting to feel like a costume. And honestly, I’m tired. Everywhere I look, it’s the same version of femininity which is perfectly packaged in blush pink, wrapped in soft lighting, polished with dewy skin and ready to post with a caption like “I’m just a girl <3.” The internet has picked up girlhood like it’s a trend, squeezed it into a pastel filtered Pinterest board and sold it back to us like we didn’t already live it. And I guess I wouldn’t be so frustrated if it didn’t feel like this aesthetic is starting to bleed into real life…especially on my campus, where girlhood isn’t just performed online, it’s a full time performance in the corridors, mess and cafe corners of one of the most elite private universities in the country.
You step out here and you’ll think you’re in a Vogue campus issue. Corset tops at 10 AM lectures. Coquette bows on Thursdays. Clean girl slick-backs with perfect make up for a 9:30 AM class. There’s nothing wrong with dressing up…hell, I do it too…but when it starts to feel like you have to, when it becomes less about expression and more about performance, that’s when it gets exhausting. Because if you don’t subscribe to the Look™…if you’re not constantly polished, pretty, slightly ironic or slightly broken in a cool way then you’re not playing the game right. And let’s not pretend like it isn’t a game. Because girlhood as it exists now has rules. Rules that were quietly imported mostly from the West, algorithm approved and influencer packaged and they landed here with a soft pink bow on top and a very specific idea of what being a girl should look like.
The thing is, girlhood in India was never supposed to look like this. It’s not all matcha lattes and meadows and ballet flats. It’s not every day lip oil and satin pillowcases and gym selfies with perfect claw clips. Real girlhood (at least the one we knew growing up) wasn’t this airbrushed nostalgia. It was awkward and slightly chaotic. It was sitting cross legged on the floor eating aloo bhujia while watching Disney Channel. It was sharing Maggi with your girls after playing house and quarreling over who was going to be the Dad this time. It was unfiltered and loud and unbranded. Now, it feels like girlhood has been stripped of all its texture and turned into a mood board…and worse, we’re all expected to follow it.
Even in a campus where girls can technically wear anything: short skirts, ripped jeans, bralettes, sneakers…nothing is “too much”, we’re still quietly pushed toward a narrow kind of aesthetic perfection. Sure, we’ve escaped some of the old rules. There’s no strict dress code breathing down our necks. But the new rules are sneakier. You’re still expected to have your makeup look like no makeup. You’re still expected to “romanticise your life” in a way that’s Instagrammable. You’re still expected to be effortlessly cool but never messy. Feminine but not too bold. Soft but also witty. Basically, a highlight reel in human form. And if you’re not, you get left behind. Or worse, you get pitied.
And don’t get me wrong, it is fun. Dressing up, colour coordinating your earrings with that little detailing on your top, thrifting off Instagram shops, clicking film camera pictures of your friends while holding overpriced coffee. It’s cute, it’s exciting and it can be empowering. But only when it’s on your terms. When you’re doing it because you want to and not because it feels like an unspoken requirement to belong. The problem is when it stops being fun and starts being mandatory. When you feel like you have to perform a curated version of girlhood every day just to keep up. Because the truth is, it’s exhausting to live that way all the time. Sometimes, we just want to exist. To roll out of bed and go to class, eat cup noodles for lunch and be a girl in the most unfiltered, unrushed and unapologetic way. That’s girlhood too. And it deserves space.
What bothers me most is that this version of girlhood is so… flat. It leaves no room for contradiction. For the girl who loves her campus fits but also carries Fair & Lovely trauma. For the girl who’s discovering feminism but still likes Bollywood masala romance. For the girl who’s balancing a family WhatsApp group filled with unsolicited marriage jokes with a 10 page term paper on gender theory. Our girlhood is complicated and layered and desi and real. But instead, we’re constantly being fed this minimalist, Western and vanilla flavored idea of what being a girl should be. It’s all so polished, so aesthetic, so curated…and so far from anything we actually are.
We’re being told that this is what empowerment looks like now. That girlhood is about self love and skincare and documenting your life like a film. But real girlhood was never that gentle. It was moody and confused and at times really, really ugly. And yet, it was ours. And now, it feels like we’re losing it and replacing it with something shinier and safer. We’re trading the real for the romanticized. And the worst part is, we’re applauding ourselves for it. We’re convincing ourselves that this is liberation, when really, it’s just a different kind of pressure.
I don’t want to feel like I’m doing girlhood wrong because I don’t want to get Instagrammable photos every time I wear a cute outfit. I don’t want to feel like I’ve failed some unspoken girlhood quiz because my lipstick smudged and I forgot to match my jewelry with the ‘“vibe” of my outfit. I want to be allowed to just be. Without needing to package it for the feed. I want girlhood to be real again. To be awkward and loud and brave and angry and unsure. To be more than soft lighting and Clairo songs and sundresses. I want it to be mine, not the internet’s.
Because if girlhood is just another trend then we’re all going to age out of it sooner than we think. But if it’s something real…something lived and felt and owned…then we can hold onto it without faking it. And maybe, we can finally stop dressing up for the idea of the girl we think we’re supposed to be and start showing up as the girls we actually are.