I remember lying in bed at night when I was young thinking about how lucky I am to be a girl, and to experience life as a girl. I've always thought that girls know more, feel more, and understand more. I think that comes from the way we girls grew up: being too aware of how we’re perceived, of what is expected of us and of all the women around us.
We were born as wild dogs, creatures with wants and needs who make their presence known, in a society trying to tame us. We see the world through a different lens due to this, and that’s what makes us so special, that’s what makes girlhood so sacred.

I say “girl” throughout because there is no end to being a girl. When referring to their future selves, you hear little girls saying, “when I get older…” For boys, it's more commonly heard for them to say “when I become a man…” How we were conditioned to be when we were little carries into womanhood. There wasn't a time to act freely, there wasn’t a time to be irresponsible, there wasn’t a chance to explore who we could’ve been without the various forces present to contain us.

When we talk about manhood, it’s this shift of a boy gaining responsibilities, becoming serious. When we talk about womanhood, it is purely biological: when a girl gets her period, because the responsibilities and expectations were already put onto her before then, and she was obedient.

Girls are born with the expectation to give, to undertake, to put others before themselves. This stays with us for the rest of our lives. In a class I took my freshman year called “What’s the Big Idea About Death?” I learned that while men's biggest concern when they die is their career and finances, the main concern for women is the well-being of their family. Who is going to take care of everyone? She knows that no one else will sacrifice themselves to put as much care, time, and love into her people as she does.

In “Sacrifice is a valuable quality of Vietnamese women” – an outdated way of thinking, Nhà Có Hai Người writes:

“When I asked my mother, ‘After all these years, are you happy?’ She did not hesitate to say, ‘My happiness is to see you happy.’ (Oh, that thought has penetrated deeply into my mother since she was at the age of eighteen or twenty. And she no longer had her own concept of happiness.) I asked, ‘So if you didn’t meet my father, and not give birth to me, you had your own life, what would you do?’ She thought for a moment and then said, ‘I used to wish I could do many things: learn piano, learn to make cookies, learn to swim, learn to dance, learn English, work as a ticket agent at the cinema to watch free movies, take note of some good poems in my notebooks to read occasionally, travel, do not miss any Women newspaper …’. (Yes, my mother also had such naive dreams, and did we take them away from her? What do I have to do to return her all those years of her life to make those dreams happen?)”

In a video essay titled “Why Selfish Women Heal Society,” Anna Howard says:

“One of the most prevalent compliments that mothers receive are how selfless they are, and of course no one wants to be qualified as ‘selfish’, but also if I turn that word over in my head over and over again it doesn’t sound like a compliment. Selfless? She doesn't have a self? and that’s supposed to be the thing to strive for.”

I had never questioned why selflessness was such a highly regarded trait. Instead, I felt like a monster at seven years old for being unable to be someone who could be described as selfless; for being “selfish” when I wanted to keep things to myself, and when I vocalized how I felt when things were unfair.

Salomé Sol gives a snippet of her childhood in “This Body of Words Is A Girl”

“No aspect of the feminine I’d seen felt natural to me, but I wanted it to be desperately. As a messy child, such grace felt out of reach.”

Even as children, when we hadn't even lived enough to understand who we were, we already felt as if we were lacking. This sense of guilt and inferiority instilled in us for not meeting an ideal is a mechanism to tame us.

Salomé Sol continues to say:

“The first examples of femininity presented to me were through my upbringing in a household of extraordinarily beautiful women. The women in my family; my grandmother, aunts, cousins, and my very own mother, were all known for their beauty in their time, it glowed out of them. On top of that, they were extremely well dressed and mannered. They never spoke out of turn, expressing emotion in glances, and rage in backhanded compliments, always hiding the depths of what they felt in smiles. They were shining jewels for the powerful men in my family to assert their wealth and power with. My mother once told me that it is looked down upon for a man in Colombia to have an ugly wife, because if he had money he’d provide her the necessary cosmetic procedures to make her beautiful.”

Instilling a need to present beautifully, as if we were dolls, is another attempt at taming us. Dolls are beautiful, they are standardized, they are there to entertain others and to be shown off. They are there solely to be displayed on a shelf.

Dictating appearances and ways of being, attempting to turn us into dolls, seeps its way into the modern day online world by presenting desirable aesthetics and archetypes: the clean girl, the cool girl, the manic pixie dream girl, and more recently, the candid girlfriend.

In a viral TikTok uploaded by @subwaytakes, Kareem Rahma interviews Stef Dag:

“@kareemrahma: So what’s your take?

@stefdag: My take is that all guys think they want to date the cool, hot, artsy, baddie girlfriend with, like, baby bangs and a bad father, but that’s actually not the case at all. What all guys in New York want is to date the ‘Candid Girlfriend.’ You can trademark that. Candid Girlfriend™ is a girl who’s like 5’5” and a half, naturally thin, has mousy brown hair no longer than shoulder length. She’s like, from New Hampshire, maybe studied art history? And I would say the biggest part of her personality is that she ‘loves pomegranate,’ and her boyfriend thinks that’s so quirky and adorable.

@kareemrahma: 100% agree.

@stefdag: She’s never the overt center of attention, but her boyfriend is always posting film of her #35mm on his Instagram story. And she’s always just kind of like… [tilts head poses]. The Candid Girl™ is the patient zero of The Pick-Me-Girl. She’s not even trying to be pick-me, she just authentically has nothing going on in her brain.

@kareemrahma: What is Pick-Me Girl?

@stefdag: Pick-Me-Girl is a girl who pretends to be interesting and unique to get attention. This girl just has nothing going on in her brain. She, like, ‘likes good pottery.’

@kareemrahma: And so all guys want that?

@stefdag: All guys want that because they can make a muse out of her. Also this girl is always referred to as “this one” in the caption of the photo. “Happy birthday to ‘this one.’” And it’s always like a photo of the back of her head. They’re, like, in Tokyo on vacation in the spring. Do you know what I’m talking about? They, like, both love Japanese culture, but they’re both white. I’ve really only seen her on the third slide of an IG photo dump on her boyfriend’s Instagram. I would love to meet one of them. I’m a girl’s girl. I want to see you up close. I want to touch your skin… Her name’s ‘Emily.’”

The candid girl does not exist, and neither do any of the other archetypes. They are simply concepts used to dismiss girls as complex beings, attempting to contain us in a digestible form. They are roles for us to play, turning us into vessels for projections and ideals. When we refuse to conform, when we question the expectations put on us and take up space, we are then met with villainization, another attempt at taming us.

Salomé Sol writes:

“...I watched many of my friends during their teenage years lock their inner whores deep inside of themselves after being publicly shamed for daring to explore the sexuality they’d been gifted in growing adolescence [...] They were messy, but they were brave. When one is given the power that is sexual desire without method or context, what else can one expect? More so in a society that will find a way to villainize you for it regardless of the way it’s used.”

The world is so quick to ridicule us when we express ourselves in ways that aren’t doll-like, when we use our bodies and emotions to their fullest capacities. Just like the Candid Girl, the Crazy Girl does not exist; she is the product of society dismissing the nuances of her personhood, scrutinizing the stripped version of her they’ve projected for their own entertainment.

Sarah Mann (@sixxstarrr) shares her thoughts on the differences between the societal view of men vs women when it comes to expressing radical emotions through a poem she shared on her TikTok:

“a man cries and it is seen as a release
a build up of anguish he’s finally let run rampant
an accomplishment to scream and melt
for how could such a distinguished figure let himself work up such a state of despair
he must have needed this
he must be passionate about this
he couldn’t even take the time to compose himself
he must be heartfelt about this
it must really mean something deeply to him
a woman cries and it is still seen as hysterics
a dramatic outburst consisting of irrational thought
a turning point in conversation where she is no longer taken seriously
she’s letting her emotion get the best of her
for how could such a posed figure let herself get to such a state of wrath
what day of the month is it
she must not care about this
she would have taken the time to compose herself
she must be wishy washy about this
it must really mean something superficial to her
why has there been made such a sterile divide in such human reaction”

The short film Who's Right - Marriage for Moderns (1954) opens up with a narrator describing the woman on screen:

“Spoiled, selfish, self-centered. This woman believes the sun should rise and set according to her needs. Her uncontrollable temper flares up at the slightest imagined provocation. Heartless, scheming, always ready to attack the unsuspecting male. Her weapons are her looks, her personality, her youth. Deadly mortal weapons which never cease to fascinate her. She spends most of her time and thought keeping and fighting trim. Her vanity is beyond belief. This is the only person in the world she really loves. Everyone else is either an admirer or a slave. She’s a megalomaniac. She’s a gold digger. Or so she seems to her husband, Frank Carson, who is a tyrant of medieval mold.”

Although the short film was made in 1954, it still is relevant today. Girls are making TikToks today using that exact audio clip and adding words:

@splayerddh: “How my brother explains my personality”
@joannbitar: “how my family describes me”
@iselinhui: “How my family describes me:”
@adrixnalima: how i’m described by my family:”
@xxmiasaeee: “How I’m described by my father’s family”
@meli2sleepy: “how my dads side of the family sees me”
@bracefaceessy: “What my dad’s family think of me when I arrive to the party”
@breswardrobe: “How my dad talks about me but he raised me to be this way”
@starlittbae: “How my parents describe me while I’m literally just existing”
@user167849763: “parents when their daughter finally grows into a mature independent woman who stands up for herself and isn’t that easily manipulated child anymore parenting her parents”
@ashteasstea: “Pov: your the first daughter, first niece, first granddaughter”
@charkive: “pov: ure the eldest”
@bonnievictoriaa: “oldest daughter core”
@arina.pl5: “Only daughter core.”
@notnekdaw: “pov: u’re the youngest daugter”
@starbluv: “how people start to describe you when you put yourself first:”
@reinne1: “how they describe you once you know your worth”
@niko0sh: “how men see women when they respectfully set 1 ONE boundary”
@itsrealllylola: “how every man in my life sees me”

A collection of writing from girls recognizing the taming and sacrifice of the women before them, and deciding to take autonomy over their own lives:

I should be starving Sarah Mann (@sixxstarrr):

“i have listened to all of the women around me
ponder who they may have been if they hadn’t married him
I’ve watched it linger
I’ve watched it burn over them
the nuclear family ideal that umbrellas over us all
that sold to us in blue and pink packaging
with childlike amusements on the cover
and when i feel the need to buy in
when i feel less than womanly
for not having a partner
when I feel barely female
for not having a baby
I feel the sheet tug at my feet
my grandmother telling me “no no”
I feel the propaganda slipping through my fingers
my great aunt wincing
as I rewind a children’s infomercial
through an hourglass television frame
and it reminds me of all of them before me
who spent all of their currencies on this package
who had to bet their bottom dollar on an ideal
an ideal that a partnership must be eternal to be precious
that my life must procreate to be worthy
I should be starving for this life of freedom that I have for there have been so so many before me
who died so so hungry for it”

This Body of Words is a Girl by Salomé Sol, an excerpt from a prayer for her ancestors:

“I ask now for your guidance and strength,
so that I may carry your lessons and wisdom with me well,
as I pave a new way for us all.
I will not follow the path you wish me to take
but I will honor you by walking my own.
One in which you are invited to come along.”

“Sacrifice is a valuable quality of Vietnamese women” – an outdated way of thinking by Nhà Có Hai Người

“When I think of my women, sometimes I have to cry because of love, sometimes I think I’m inferior because I am not as generous as them. But I never wanted to be them.”

I leave you with a speech from Lorde given to DC on October 4, 2025, that I was lucky enough to hear and experience in person. I remember standing in the audience and feeling the crowd captivated by her every word. I started researching and writing much before hearing this speech, and I believe it wraps everything up in a way better than I ever could:

“It's cool being here, and a few years having passed, I feel like this is probably the period where I've changed the most in my adult life. I don’t know who here is sort of in, or has been in, their mid-20s, but I found that it was a period of great self-discovery. And for me, it's been as much about gaining things as it has been throwing things away; things that are of no real value to you, that maybe you were taught should be of value to you. And that is the incredible thing about our beautiful, lucky lives that we lead, there's so much that we can choose. We can say “no, that's not my vibe, not gonna do it.” Maybe there's something you used to do that felt really, really important to you, but now you're like ‘nope.’ For me, actually, that was thinking I had to be a certain size. My whole life, I thought that's what being a woman is, it's this smallness, it's containment of the self. And that was really difficult for me, I always felt I was too much. And it wasn't until I let go of that that I really became someone. All of a sudden I was like “here she is, the woman that I hoped would emerge.” So you know if there's anything that you feel you grip tight to and you're like, ‘I don't even know why I do this thing, it doesn't help me,’ I invite you to say a little something and flick it out, let it go, because my life has gotten so much richer the more layers I peel back. I don't want there to be anything between us; the less there is between us, the bigger this feels. Here I am in all my, I don't know, gore and glory.”