Written by Shane Pacheco

The worst part about girlhood in society is the expectations and standards. Girlhood is the feeling of shame when you start to enjoy typically feminine things. Girlhood is the sinking gut drop when you feel like you’re only a girl and nothing beyond that. Girlhood is doing anything you can to disassociate yourself from other girls, the idea that you can only be the best by being different.

Girlhood can also be the aggressive urge to fall into the feminine stereotype—the quickly forming obsession with how the men around you look at you. Girlhood is the urge to change everything about yourself to make the people around you give you the time of day.

As much as girlhood can present itself in anything, it is commonly associated with pettiness and shallowness. Popular and well-loved movies even perpetuate these stereotypes. The Twilight series is a perfect example of the demonization of women.

Bella Swan, our hometown girl protagonist, is the hero of Twilight. She’s shown as special because she’s “normal”. The others girls at her school are shallow and materialistic, but Bella wasn’t. She was rewarded for putting other women down throughout the entire book because she didn’t wear makeup. Bella Swan was an example of what a girl should be.

We as a society must help fix these stereotypes around anyone born female. Girlhood was associated with shame for so long, but now, it can also mean community. Girlhood can be something as simple as a sign of solidarity between anyone born female.

Unity is something that sticks with you. We can use the unity found in girlhood to lift each other instead of using it to tear each other down. The Arts Academy of Benjamin Rush is a place that fosters unity and helps us answer the titular question; what is girlhood? To Rush, girlhood is love.

Girlhood is the loving embrace between two people born female. It is the woman in the next stall handing you a tampon when you ask for one. Girlhood is a woman looking you in the eye and telling you that you finally have someone who believes you. Girlhood is love.