The girls girl sulks in the corner of a dimly lit club, appearing to cloak the room in a shroud of comparison.
Her oozing lips, fat with filler, whisper irreverent gossip to her fellow girls’ girls, their seedy eyes darting back and forth at me- a giveaway, a terrible tell, as they try to assemble my character into a cliche. I am an inconsolable map, a non-sequitor, an irritating exception.
Her allegiances to other girls is an involuntary reflex, as she must build a steady army of alliances, an assembly line of buxom bullies ready to tear down any potential competition with seething glances. But tonight, I am armed. An evil eye bracelet hangs from my sweating hand, my bag is weighed down with chiming religious trinkets- and I’m wearing the full armor of god.
The girls girl gives me the side-eye, running her fingers through the tired strands of her limp hair. She’s dressed in something borrowed from a Pinterest board, disposable and cheap. Not memorable or jarring, but vague- exactly how she likes it. This way, she can pander to ladyboys, offering solidarity with her mediocrity, never stealing the limelight.
The girls girls aesthetic is exalted in pubescence, including but not limited to: pink, bows, tiny dogs, Sofia Coppola, linen, Lisa Frank, ballet slippers, kids-meals, bird portions, lip gloss, pastel colors, mood-boards, being flat-chested, tile bathrooms, beaded jewelry, American apparel, twin beds, stuffed animals, knee high socks, children’s clothes, stickers, soda, kawaii band aids and Taylor swift- for she is as sentimental as she is evil. She exists as a constant stream of seamless feminine content, promoting her shiny new shoes and shiny new acquaintances, equally curated. It’s so maniacal, so mechanical, you wonder if she was assembled by a secret AI weapon, sent here as an alt Erika Kirke honeypot to subdue the revolution.
And while you want to hate her, and while she definitely hates you, you can’t help but wonder if these impulses derive from some asphyxiation of trauma. As if she’s stuck at the age of 17, screaming at you beyond the tunneled vortex of time, begging to be set free.
But in the present moment, you are her adversary. The topic of conversation, dissected and ingested like a colorful trifle. You are no girl’s girl. You are a champion of the underdog, a patron saint of the great beyond. Shining like a starry monstrosity, defective, messy, leaking all of your open pain onto everyone else. You are the fat-breasted breakthrough, obscuring her bird body from the corner of the room she is pining to be a part of. Drowning out her gossip soliloquies in hot, unwarranted truth. You wear your wounds like a billboard. Feigning apathy is not your strong suit, and why would you, in such a good outfit.