How to be a Girl in the World
An ode to the forgotten wisdom of girlhood
When I see young girls at the beach, I stare.
And already I feel the need to acknowledge the perverse implications that dominate this statement. I wish it weren’t so. I state it so blatantly so as to bring it some sort of redemption. Because the statement itself is absolutely true to me and wholly unperverse. I love watching girls in the world!
I watch how they move. Their bodies, their autonomy. I watch how they play. I marvel at the space they take, at the bigness of their presence. Every movement is wild and uninhibited. They laugh loudly as they swipe the hair from their salty faces. They crouch down over their castles and run with their empty buckets down to the frothy, wet earth. They wade into the water and jump over the waves with their small, strong legs. They are lost in their own moments. They gather seashells and rocks. They wander. They shriek for all the pleasure and delight their sun and sand offer.
A girl body is a vessel for life. It’s almost an unawareness of the body altogether. Though I, too, was once a young girl, I don’t really remember how it felt. I don’t remember how it felt to exist in such body neutrality — the physicality of myself free from morality altogether.
Having made it through the baptismal metamorphosis of female puberty and all the trials and tribulations therein, the “developed” body emerges now ultimately moral. Now it means something (good) to be beautiful, and it means something (bad) to not be. The nose by which you smelled cookies and flowers now is seen through a lens where it’s seen somehow more than it was seen before. It’s a delicate, pretty nose, or it’s too big or its somewhere in-between. It loses some invisible autonomy it once had.
Though I, too, was once a young girl, I don’t really remember how it felt. I don’t remember how it felt to exist in such body neutrality — the physicality of myself free from morality altogether.
Likewise, it means something if your breasts get looked at or your legs are hairy. It means something to be tall or short or round-faced or gap-toothed. It means something for your vagina to smell like a vagina — maybe too much like a vagina, you worry. It means something to not be visibly feminine at all. Even the colour of your hair, it now means something! It also means something to not be noticed. And there’s no point in time where we get to detach ourselves from all this fucking meaning!
As an adult woman, I lust for girlhood. I lust for that uninhibited movement to be reborn in my body. I want her voice, her heartbeat, her laugh, her spirit . . . There is some sort of knowing in girlhood that we seem to lose as we become women. It’s like we’re born with all this inherent goodness and it’s so blatantly obvious, but the second we enter womanhood, everything changes. Now we need to prove that we still have that essence of worthiness. You’re valuable — but you’re valuable alongside your 10-step skincare routine, your toned arms, education, career, authenticity, gentility, supplements, clothes, and of course, your youth. If you’re fat, you have to also be funny and smart. If you’re skinny, you still should also be funny and smart. If you’re funny and smart, you should still also have hobbies and passions. And all of these labels come to exist and stick onto us through some invisible (male) onlooker.
When you lived as a girl, it didn’t matter who was watching. It only mattered that you were living (smelling!). To come home to your girlhood is so much more than inner child healing. To come home to girlhood is to return to the embodied experience of simplicity in a body. To live our lives through no other lens but our own and to take (take!) the pleasures of our own skin and make them our own.
As an adult woman, I lust for girlhood. I lust for that uninhibited movement to be reborn in my body. I want her voice, her heartbeat, her laugh, her spirit . . .
And we can’t return to the embodied experience of simplicity in a body unless we create our own sense of safety. Because if anything is for certain, it’s that men cannot offer us safety. Men can sometimes offer us morsels of some goodness or pleasure, but they certainly cannot create for us a felt sense of safety wherever we are.
So how do we do that? We practice it.
And the meat of this practice is this eternal truth: there is absolutely no part of you — no matter how much you dig — that doesn’t belong. Every part of your experience belongs, and no part of you is attached to morality. And I think that’s the secret we all knew as girls — the secret none of us knew we knew! Every part of us belongs in every space we find ourselves in. The second we become a woman (and to be quite honest, it probably starts much before then), we start an unconscious fight to belong and be seen as if we can’t be the ones to see our own selves. To be seen as beautiful, to be seen as intelligent, to be seen as sexy, whatever it is you long for, you already are. You can just be it! You are the one who gets to validate your own experience and “see” yourself.
To “channel girlhood” is not to become a girl again or regress to a childlike version of ourselves in an attempt to be freer. After all, it’s dangerous to romanticize girlhood too much. Girls are special because most living things are special. (And women just happen to be really really special and therefore they can’t not be seen.)
To come home to girlhood is to return to the embodied experience of simplicity in a body. To live our lives through no other lens but our own and to take (take!) the pleasures of our own skin and make them our own.
Womanhood is the integration of that pure, girlish wisdom. To channel girlhood in an adult body is just to integrate the wisdom we knew as girls and forgot: our experiences belong.
So how do we do this, really?
To integrate the autonomy of my girlhood as an adult, I give myself permission to dictate my embodied experience. How would I like to experience the luxurious pleasure of lying on a beach today?
Whatever experience I want belongs. When I want to be a “sexy goddess,” onlookers gaping at me don’t make that true. The point is that it’s true because it’s the experience I am having. I am a beautiful, gorgeous, sexy thing lying here on the beach, my toes in the warm sand, my skin feeling the warmth of the sun. Or I’m lying on the beach, in my body, not experiencing my body as anything at all. I am creating the space consciously for bodily neutrality, and no third party gets to dictate if that’s true or not. We can quite literally play with this and ultimately enhance our lived, embodied experience. It just takes a whole lot of unlearning and practice.
And this is why wisdom is also necessary — because society inherently has limitations to safety when you are a woman. And it’s important to play with safety and embodied experience when you are truly safe. When you practice this, it’s best to start in the comfort and safety of your own home. Being a woman, having a woman-body, feeling gender euphoria in whatever way that looks for you . . . can be really fun.
Whatever experience I want belongs. When I want to be a “sexy goddess,” onlookers gaping at me don’t make that true. The point is that it’s true because it’s the experience I am having.
Creating safety for us to collectively integrate this wisdom also ushers in a readiness to receive our diversity. Womanhood is queer. Womanhood is masculine. It is nurturing and soft, and it’s raging and loud. Let every woman find their authentic expression in their own bodies.
Women’s bodies have a history. For centuries, they have been the target for blame and punishment, the scapegoat for broader societal issues. To take back our embodied autonomy and experience, even in micro-decisions or small moments, matters. Part of the process of healing the generational trauma associated with womanhood involves recognizing that even these simple moments — relishing the pleasure of lying on a beach — contribute to that collective healing.
This is girl wisdom. And it is truly transformational.
For more stories about experiencing girl wisdom in a woman’s body, follow Fourth Wave. Have you got a story or poem that focuses on women or other disempowered groups? Submit to the Wave!
