THE WEIGHT OF DESIRE | GIRLHOOD
Girlhood
Give it back
Midnights by Taylor Swift has been the soundtrack of my life since its release date on October 21, 2022. It’s not even close to being my favorite of Swift’s albums (shoutout to Folklore and Speak Now), and yet for some reason I can’t turn it off.
I’ve been a fan of Taylor Swift for as long as I can remember, so as you can imagine, I have a thing for lyrics — all Taylor Swift fans do. Many of her lyrics have latched onto my brain with talons or warmed my heart in a sweet embrace over the years, but there’s one line on the album that “Hits Different” than all the rest.
The lyric in question comes from a song that depicts a relationship with a thirteen-year age gap when Swift was just nineteen years old (technically legal, morally dicey). It’s a powerful song composed of driving vocals and gut-punching lyrics, but there’s one line in particular from the bridge that I can’t seem to shake.
If you have already listened to the song “Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve” off of the 3 A.M version of Midnights, then you already know which line I’m talking about. It’s one that has shaken you to your core if you are a woman.
“Living for the thrill of hitting you where it hurts / Give me back my girlhood, it was mine first.”
Oh, girlhood. What a comforting, fleeting, harrowing word. I can feel it in my bones, and yet it’s something from which I feel so far removed.
If you asked me what girlhood was five years ago, I may have told you that it was the rose-colored innocence that only a young girl can possess. A purity of heart and mind. A belief that everyone is trustworthy and good.
If you ask me what girlhood is now that I’m halfway through the budding age of twenty-one, I think I’d say something closer to this:
Girlhood is pain. Girlhood is fear. Girlhood is constant vigilance, constant disappointment, and constant metamorphosis.
Always constant but never steady. Perhaps relentless is a better word.
Girlhood is relentless.
The schoolrooms of girlhood take many forms: the grown man following you into the bra section of Kohl’s, asking questions about your sexual endeavors before you could even fill an A cup. The pack of men at the gas station miming masturbation before you and your sister could even park her car at the nearest pump. The middle school boys cornering you in history class, enthusiasm lacing their voices as they tell you that women are inferior.
That you are inferior.
One of them pulls out a pocket bible and flips effortlessly to a verse that denies women their personhood. His voice is shrill as he reads out each derogatory fragment of text, as if every word written in that ancient book is a binding spell of truth and wisdom. His hands flip to each new page with so much speed and agility that you wonder how many hours he has spent alone in his room practicing these maneuvers, training for this very moment he seems to have been waiting for his entire life.
His pointer finger bounces off of the pages so hard that you can hear as it ricochets off the loaded words. He shakes the same finger in your face, daring you to question his imagined authority.
Those fingers must have been itching to point and deflect and degrade.
You stand with your arms crossed as the boys sneer, laugh, and raise their voices. You’re defending your worth as a person, they think they’re having a fun little debate.
Your voice is a lone ship in a sea of misogyny, your girlhood a fading north star in the sky. Your rose-colored glasses darken a few shades deeper as each word escapes from their snarled lips.
My sister and I possess the same memory from our preschool days, even though we are three years apart. I’m still not sure who the memory truly belongs to.
She (I) found a tiny purple flower on the lawn during recess. She (I) plucked it from the grass and carried it inside. She (I) presented the gift to her (my) teacher with pride, only to be told that it wasn’t a flower, but it was a weed.
Later that afternoon before mom picked her (me) up from school, she (I) found the flower (weed) lying in the trash can with the other scraps destined for the landfill.
Maybe the memory truly does belong to my sister and I’ve just heard her tell the story enough times that my brain has absorbed and adopted it as my own, filling in the gaps quite convincingly.
Or perhaps that’s just a shared experience of girlhood — to see something beautiful, to give something beautiful, to be something beautiful, and to have it taken away.
To learn that not everything beautiful is good. To realize that not everything good is beautiful.
To be shared — willingly or not — is another puzzle piece.
Your body belongs to everyone but yourself: a politician, a baby, a boy. Wandering hands and wandering eyes. All unwelcome, all who step over the welcome mat and show themselves inside anyway.
Sleepovers with your friends turn into recounting all of the ways you have been assaulted. One story from one of us sparks a memory in the other. A girls-night-in turns into a trauma dump out.
And sure, I’ve never had anything particularly traumatic happen to me. But I’ve had my fair share of simple violations, light assaults that you brush off as you walk away unscathed (forever tainted). Eventually, the memories add up and wear you down. You wish to trade your soft skin for a sheath of armor. Your heart no longer flutters — it only plummets.
I think back to “Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve,” to Midnights, and I feel an inescapable sadness. I think, instinctively, somehow, we all understand Swift’s sentiments of girlhood. They’re buried within all of us.
If you get lost and can’t find mommy, ask a nice woman for help. The boy on the playground is only hurting you because he likes you. Cover up your knees/shoulders/arms/ankles/legs/chest/thoughts/opinions around the men, your identity/body/mind is too much/little/distracting.
I’ve lived by the endless rules of “girl code” since I was a little girl. And for those who haven’t figured it out yet: “girl code” is just a code word for survival.
Even as a child, I knew to be wary.
If girlhood is a childlike innocence, then I’m afraid it was taken from us a long time ago.
Thank you to Kelley Murphy for allowing me to join this wonderful publication, to everyone reading, and to Terry Barr for the encouragement to write in the first place.
