1. A shifting, unsteady world
On the internet, the teenage girl experience is defined by a certain aesthetic: flash photos of elaborate girls’ nights; the girlhood vocabulary of girl dinner and girl math; 20-second blurry clips of girls running through city streets set to Lorde’s Ribs; and of course, pink everything.
This generation of teenage girls is adept at curating their image. Online, they can exercise control in ways the rapidly changing world around them doesn’t allow.
That world, for them, has been defined by large, and often contradictory, cultural shifts. The #MeToo movement exploded into mainstream media when they were in elementary school. As they entered their teens, they witnessed a surge of media celebrating girl power, from Barbie (2023) to Hidden Figures (2017). Meanwhile, the toxic subcultures like the “manosphere” and “bro-culture” have only grown in influence, alongside other misogynistic hate campaigns.
On the political level, these girls are coming of age under an administration that’s rolled back protections for issues like abortion and reproductive rights, workplace harassment, and gender pay disparity. Their country is helmed by a president accused multiple times of sexual harassment and has verbally attacked female reporters on live television.
For Emma F., it’s been difficult to watch it all play out in the news. Her gut response has been defined by apprehension.
“We have an administration [that] doesn’t really support women or young girls, and they’ve made that clear through their laws and their policies,” Emma said. “I don’t want to say it’s dangerous, but it’s definitely not a safe place for women right now.”
Danger itself is not unfamiliar to Emma. The worry of seeming too provocative, walking alone, or attracting too much attention remains an unavoidable cornerstone of the female experience. Yet as Elie W. notes, what’s different about this moment in time is that those fears are being augmented in a world where women’s rights are increasingly restricted, and misogyny progressively becomes more commonplace.
“Our political leaders [are] saying women exist to have babies,” Elie said. “I definitely am not at the point of internalizing that, but there’s a fear that this will be other people’s perception of what I exist to do and how I should exist.”
Sakura T. shares these frustrations. For her, it is bad enough to witness misogyny enshrined in policy changes or in political rhetoric. Seeing fellow women rally behind such changes has only made everything seem even worse.
“I feel like generations of work that women have done to gain opportunities have been reversed in a way. I think we’re regressing,” Sakura said. “And it’s confusing to see other women supporting that.”
The growing influence of these conservative women—alongside a presidential administration that is predominantly white and male—has made Izzy H.-H. more wary about the current state of the country. On the national stage, she simply doesn’t feel represented.
“It makes me feel uncertain of where my voice fits in,” Izzy said.
Aurelia F. shared a similar uncertainty.
“It’s the most powerful thing—the idea that I don’t feel like I can see myself in the [current] political climate,” she said.
As it’s only been one year of the second Trump administration, these impacts remain difficult to quantify. Part of this draws from the fact that most effects manifest through cultural shifts: the normalization of backhanded comments, casual disrespect, and objectification online.
Anika A. noted how this difficulty in pointing to a concrete increase, paired with assumptions that gender equality has already been achieved, can prevent girls from speaking up about their own experiences with male peers and friends.
“People think that we are now equal. And so [sexism] feels like something that you have to deal with on your own. If you bring it up, it’s like, oh, well, we already have equality,” Anika said.
The result is a special kind of double burden. Not only do girls face sexism—both the systemically and culturally embedded sort—but they’re also expected to suffer through it quietly. Anika has often found it tiring to try to process it all on her own.
“There’s a lot more going on underneath the surface that anyone sees, [whether it’s] just the perfect facets that are shown via social media or the semi-perfect facets shown through everyday life,” Aurelia said. “There are particular vulnerabilities and issues that girls that have to live under that men would never have to consider.”
2. Fitting the mold
Recently, Xochi S.’s mother showed her a picture of Xochi as a child. In it, Xochi looks into a mirror, content.
“She [said]: I love this picture, because you’re so happy in it—so happy with yourself,” Xochi said.
Online, searching for a similarly posed reference for an art project, Xochi was struck by how different modern photos of teenage girls with mirrors looked. Their hair was perfect, they bore full faces of makeup, and they looked glamorous. Yet, none of them looked confident or joyful. Their beauty caught on camera felt like an expectation, rather than a choice.
For Xochi, her childhood photo now embodies the last tinge of childhood innocence, before beauty standards.
“I want that to last longer for young girls—to not have that self-consciousness I had at a very young age,” Xochi said.
Self-consciousness and insecurity have long been an unavoidable part of adolescence; it is expected for girls to wrestle with their appearance. But for this generation, social media amplifies those pressures in unique ways. Katy W. described how her experiences with ads on Lemon8, an image and lifestyle platform dedicated to all things aesthetic, revealed a detrimental edge to the platform.
“The ads for Lemon8 are all [about] how to glow up. You don’t want acne, you want clear skin. You don’t want oily hair, you want long, luscious hair,” Katy said. “A lot of times that unhealthy kind of influence is hidden under supportive frameworks…Being a girl is having to live with contradictions. Don’t worry about beauty standards, but you still have to be presentable. You should feel pretty, but still need to be pretty.”
These dynamics take on a more sinister edge when compounded by real-life experiences with harassment. Mia B. remembers her first very clearly: she was 12 or 13, outside a theatre with her friends, when she heard a man’s catcall. In the moment, her first reaction was panic. These days, she tries to just ignore it all.
“This has happened around Nueva—I’ll be with my friends, and someone will honk at us or whistle, and we’ll look at each other and be like, oh, this again. I think many teenage girls can relate to this,” Mia said. “I think it’s gotten to a point where it’s not necessarily something that I’ll notice as much because it is really common.”
For Xochi, experiences with similar comments have also been frequent. It’s a change she attributes to trends on the national stage—where men in positions of power consistently make similar comments without consequence.
“In my personal life, I can see that—it feels mean if I say men, but it is mostly men—they feel like it’s more okay to say [these] things. I’ve been given comments on my body with disregard for everything else,” Xochi said. “They’re so confident when they say it, too. There’s not any remorse.”
Elie has noticed a similar lack of remorse in her own experiences with unwanted attention. Towards the end of freshman year, as a part of Quest programming, she recorded a basic FlipGrid video about her project, a final presentation of her work. Woodstone submitted the video, thinking nothing of it. Later, she heard that male upperclassmen had passed around the video and sent messages about her body in group chats.
“There’s always the feeling of self-blame, [especially after] hearing people say, ‘oh yeah, she wore that shirt in her Flipgrid video for attention.’ And then you just feel naive and foolish,” Elie said. “You feel watched when you’re at school and defined by how you present your body.”
Though Elie felt uncomfortable, she wasn’t immediately sure why. She had spent much of freshman year trying to fit into a standard, and had chased after it by straightening her hair, trying to make sure her body looked a certain way, and dressing in clothes that seemed to get a positive reaction. At the time, she wanted to be liked and to receive positive attention—and in a twisted sense, it felt as though she had achieved that goal by being sexualized.
“You want to feel attractive, to feel pretty. We’re taught to value this attention so deeply that even vulgarity and blatant disrespect can register as validation rather than harm,” Elie said. “But then you understand what it feels like to be objectified and to not be seen for who you are as a person.”
Three years on from the experience, Elie has some simple advice for younger girls enduring similar situations. She acknowledged that some attention can genuinely feel good; people are certainly allowed to want to feel attractive. At the same time, she emphasized how unwanted attention or sexualization is never deserved, regardless of how they present themselves.
“It’s not someone’s responsibility to change how they look or dress; it is solely the responsibility of those doing the sexualizing to change their behavior,” Elie said. “[And] I would want to encourage young girls to not put your worth into what anyone, especially a guy, thinks of you. You are so much more than what other people see you as.”
It’s a lesson that Elie has internalized as she’s gotten older, and one that she’s also seen repeated within her female friendships. In a world that can often feel hostile towards teenage girls, these relationships offer a sense of solidarity and support. Even online, girls can form communities that are pockets of resistance, pushing back against misogyny.
“What’s really sweet is [seeing] people using online platforms to share stories about how to feel empowered and protect yourself,” Eva G. said.
Izzy maintains that hope for the future, and continues to view the teenage girl experience with appreciation.
“I would say that it’s a lot less glamorous than it’s portrayed in [social] media, but still… I don’t think I could see myself being anywhere else or feeling anything else than I feel right now,” Izzy said.
