Teen Girls: Pop Culture Powerhouses
One way to quickly and effectively mock someone’s favorite piece of art is to say it was made for girls. Knocking what young women enjoy—disparaging boy bands, scoffing at romance books, and dismissing groundbreaking films as “chick flicks,” has been commonplace as far back as the 18th century, when young women first popularized dime novels.
Despite being society’s ultimate insult, teenage girls consistently remain powerhouses of pop culture, setting trends in fashion and beauty, single-handedly creating music icons, and shaping what will be “the next big thing.” Before The Beatles were considered musical legends, they were just some silly boy band that girls lost their minds over. Beatlemania was driven by young women who understood The Beatles’ value and talent long before the rest of the world, and they were mocked for it.
Constance Grady, in an article for Vox, put it best: “They [teen girls] are revered and dreaded as arbiters of all that is cool. And amid all this reviling and revering, they are fetishized as the ultimate audience for advertisers. To be a teenage girl is to simultaneously be pop culture’s ultimate punching bag, cash cow, and gatekeeper.”
Girls occupy a liminal space where they hold immense cultural power, are sexualized as adults, and most of the time given more domestic responsibility than their male counterparts—but not taken seriously. Every move is scrutinized. Young women are hyper aware of how limited this window of power and influence can be. Studies from online dating sites show that a woman’s desirability peaks and declines after 18, while a man’s doesn’t peak until after 50. It can feel like women never get to be in their “prime” per se—that is, never get to exist where they are considered both an adult with agency and “relevant” at the same time. Our so-called “prime” slips by in childhood before we realize what is happening.
Fragile Positions
Superstar Taylor Swift provides an excellent case study. Rising to fame in girlhood, her music is often criticized as “basic” or “cringy,” and many of her most infamous incidents are of people publicly telling her that she doesn’t deserve her achievements. Her work is a raw and open archive of female experiences moving from adolescence into young adulthood and beyond. She sings of pressures to act older and being taken advantage of by older men, while simultaneously reckoning with the idea that her girlish charm won’t last forever. In “The Man” Taylor underscores the double standards women face when it comes to success. The song critique show assertive behaviors are praised and rewarded in men but seen as negative qualities in women. At 34, Taylor is often slammed in public discourse for being “old,” unmarried, and child-free. She acknowledges her fragile position in the documentary Miss Americana saying, “I want to work really hard while society is still tolerating me being successful.”
“The Menopause”
After a few decades of chronic scrutiny, spotlight, and cultural influence, many middle aged women begin feeling as if they are invisible. Artist Deborah Wood describes this experience for The Guardian:
“My friends and I, from our late 50s onwards, were gobsmacked then increasingly enraged at being talked over, not served, not replied to, brushed aside, and not taken seriously. Small accretions of casual insult that eroded our hard-earned sense of self and agency.”
This kind of baffling, yet common act of disrespect, is portrayed in season one of Grace and Frankie starring Jane Fonda (Grace) and Lily Tomlin (Frankie). The scene begins with the two women waiting in a checkout line to buy cigarettes for Frankie. Workers walk by as if the women aren’t there. Growing frustrated, Grace attempts several “Excuse me’s” before a staff member finally comes over—only to bypass her to chat with a young blonde woman at another checkout station.
Grace, understandably, explodes, shouting: “Hello! Hello? What kind of animal treats people like this?! Do you not see me?! Do I not exist?! You think it’s alright to ignore us?! Just because she’s got gray hair? This poor woman needs a pack of cigarettes, and she doesn’t have a lot of time left!”
A study by menopause supplement company Vogel of more than 2,000 women over age 45 found that more than two-thirds of them felt completely unseen, especially by the opposite sex. For some, this change is a relief.
In Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s television series Fleabag, the main character is having a drink with a 58-year-old woman who just won a prestigious “Woman in Business” award.
“How old are you?” the woman asks. The main character responds,“33.” “Oh God,” the woman says. “It gets better. We have pain on a cycle for years and years then, just when you feel you are making peace with it all, what happens? The menopause comes. The f*cking menopause comes and it is the most wonderful thing in the world! And, yes, your entire pelvic floor crumbles and you get f*cking hot and no one cares, but then you’re free. No longer a slave, no longer a machine, with parts. You’re just a person in business.”
The main character responds, “Oh. I was told it was horrendous.”
“It is horrendous, but then it’s magnificent.”
Rage
At the end of the Grace and Frankie scene, the women leave the store without getting checked out. Outside, Frankie lights up a cigarette and says: “It’s okay. I learned something. We’ve got a superpower!”
“You stole those?!”
“You can’t see me; you can’t stop me. Let’s hit Citibank next.”
Artist Deborah Wood uses her invisibility to get away with things other people could not, like creating rogue street art. Her work includes murals of women shouting phrases like “Enough! Make good trouble! Be difficult! I matter! More respect! Hear me, see me! Older women count! Be outrageous! I am not invisible! Rage!”
The Pro-Aging Movement
One study published in Dataclysm showed that regardless of age, men reported that women in their 20s (younger than 24 to be specific) are the most attractive to them. Women, by contrast, always selected men within three to five years of their own age. We might ask ourselves, “How could this be? Are men inherently creepy? Are women older than 24 somehow different than men over 24?”
We are immersed in a culture that has conditioned us to believe that women can’t age. Men are allowed to age in the limelight, while women are booted or relegated to grandmotherly roles. While filming Casablanca, lead actress Ingrid Bergman was just 26, while Humphrey Bogart was 43. In The Graduate Dustin Hoffman was 29, portraying a 21-year-old, while Anne Bancroft was only 35 playing “middle aged” cougar Mrs. Robinson. Anne was only nine years older than Katherine Ross, who played her teenage daughter Elaine.
Routinely older women’s images are photoshopped to erase any signs of growing older, like wrinkles or extra weight. Men, on the other hand, get to sport their wrinkles and gray as a sign of distinguished sexiness.
Today, women are the driving force of the “pro-aging” movement, railing against media that doesn’t include them authentically. The “Ageism is Never in Style” campaigns uplift inclusive media and call beauty brands, public figures, and big-time corporations on their sexist and ageist tactics. This movement encourages women, who are the most powerful consumers, to use their economic positioning to force companies to embrace growing older.
In short, women are taking back power.
Activist Heidi Clements, known for her vehement pro-aging stance, has garnered an Instagram following of over 700,000 by posting “Get Ready with Me” videos about her life in her 60s that focus on fashion, self-development, relationships, and growing older as a woman. She openly resists invisibility, screaming into the void:
“You are not too old. You are not past your prime. The only age limit is death.”
Fighting Back
In the face of intersectional-isms, like sexism and ageism, we are not powerless. There is no such thing as too old. Push back against invisibility. Amplify your older female friends’ voices. Follow older content creators and artists. Wear outrageous outfits, steal cigarettes, and make rebellious street art. Wage war against invisibility—do not let menopause scare or stop you.
