Good morning, Broadsheet readers! The NCAA and ESPN ink a new deal that ups the broadcast value of women’s basketball, New York could be the first state to offer prenatal paid leave, and senior writer Alicia Adamczyk reflects on 2023’s many “girl” trends.
– Girl power. From Barbie and Taylor Swift to lazy girl jobs and girl math, 2023 was the Year of the Girl, at least according to the media. Just ask the New York Times, The Cut, ELLE, and countless other outlets highlighting the ubiquity of “girl” trends last year. We had girl dinners, lucky girl syndrome, and snail girls. Bows and the coquette aesthetic reigned supreme; the girlies were ubiquitous. “Embracing girlhood is really a cultural phenomenon right now,” said NPR’s Juana Summers.
But 2023 is over now. What comes next?
I largely tried to stay out of the “girl” conversations last year. Girl math annoyed me at first, as the trend seemed to play into the stereotype that women are bad with money (even if I’ve done some of my own creative accounting from time to time). Then the backlash to girl math came, and that grated as well. What, girls can’t joke around about budgeting? Surely the TikToks and tweets were meant to be lighthearted, not indicative of an entire gender’s financial prowess.
Girl dinner made me laugh, then cringe; when opinion writers said women were infantilizing themselves by playing into the trends, I cringed harder. (I’m not convinced silly videos are an insidious ploy to reverse feminism.) And while I personally enjoyed the magic and camaraderie of the Eras Tour and found it satisfying to see Taylor Swift and Beyoncé dominating the pop culture landscape, I wasn’t particularly shocked, as many seemed to be, that women spend money on things they like. If two male artists put on the top tours of the year, would it be newsworthy? The avalanche of articles about women’s interests driving the economy almost felt condescending. The framing was also far too simplistic. Plenty of women could not relate to the trends at all; we don’t all want to wear pink and see Barbie, or listen to pop music. There are many types of girlhood.
Still, there was a lot of collective joy to be found in the trends. So many women relished them; I loved hearing about my friends’ versions of girl dinner, and liked all of their Instagram stories about their hot girl walks. In many ways, the trends were a reminder that, indeed, not everything needs to be so serious. Take a walk, make some boxed mac and cheese—it’ll be okay.
But because I’m a financial journalist, I can’t help but be a little serious (see: my reaction to girl math). All of the girlhood revelry reminded me of the lipstick index, or the economic theory that sales of affordable luxuries like lipstick rise when times are bad. Though the economy, broadly, is doing well, between the pandemic, political unrest, and inflation, it’s been a challenging few years; it makes sense that we’d all want to embrace the things that bring us unfettered joy; that make us feel youthful and hopeful. (And that inclination isn’t reserved just for women; men splurge too, but there seem to be fewer marketing gimmicks made out of it.) Housing might be unattainable, but my ticket to see Swift was only $100. It was the best money I spent all year.
This year promises to be another challenging one. I am thinking about the presidential election, about conflicts around the world, about climate change and what it all means for the health and safety of the women—and girls—around me. I’m also thinking about whether I can pull off the bow trend and what kind of girl math I need to employ to see Swift again on the international leg of her tour. Girls: We’re full of complexities.
Alicia Adamczyk
alicia.adamczyk@fortune.com
@AliciaAdamczyk
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