In Place of Posting, The Girls are Writing
Spanning the localities of my friendships, from coast to coast, school to school, group to group, is one uniting feature: Substack. A couple, if not all, of the girls—myself included—in these disparate friend groups have a profile on this online literary social network platform, driven through personal newsletters. Instead of consistently sharing on Instagram, we share our writing. Though I have not done thorough interviews, I gather that the feeling is mutual among other girls at my elite university. In place of posting, the girls are writing.
I’m interested in delving into a specific type of online writing: the girlhood essay. This form, written by those identifying as a ‘girl,’ is an amorphous collection of coming-of-age, bildungsroman, slightly naive, and perhaps frothy pieces. The writer is typically in her twenties, living in a big city, perhaps attending (or having attended) a school like mine. The content is varied, with some dedicated to poetry, many with critiques of our chronically online lives, and even more that discuss what a “cool girl” life is. Lists have become a staple addition as well: lists of resolutions, of ins and outs, of dreams, of clothing brands, of favorite things, of Halloween costumes, of cafes. I am one of them, writing about my romantic epiphanies and conclusions on the grievous existence of a young woman today. The constant stream of this content is self-selected, yet I grumble about my feed being oversaturated by girlish complaints. Why? Because, like everything else in this, overproduction is making for a lower quality product, a process that gets exacerbated by the ever-demanding online content cycle.
Let me be clear: I am not adding to the unfortunate choir of those who criticize the endless girlhood conversation on this site, slamming authors for harking on this over-written subject, when it is just the natural progression of their lives and identities to be questioning things like girlish love, belonging, desire, style, sex, etc. Let the women speak (thank you Eliza McLamb for her Substack essay bitingly titled “We’re All Whores Here”). This being said, there is something afoot in terms of the over-romanticization and commodification of this internet-ified girlhood. Unlike a Jane Austen novel, a Substack entry is relatively short and easy to produce. The depth and melodrama are performative and not always genuine. In other words, too often the Substacker girl writes to say she wrote, immortalizing in words the same curated lifelessness that glares at us from our Instagram.
To unpack this conflict of superficiality a bit more, I turn to a Substack legend, the original “internet princess”: Rayne Fisher-Quann. To my anecdotal knowledge, she was instrumental in constructing this prima donna writer archetype. For good reason, too. Her writing is long, smart, and pulls from sources that cite powerhouses like Susan Sontag, Joan Didion, Mary McCarthy, Simone Weil, Hannah Arendt, and Diane Arbus. While she doesn’t harp on girlhood, the genre grounds her whole publication—take the titular word “princess” as evidence. She takes the sentiment of essaying seriously: she balances opinions, deconstructs her perspective, and offers well-thought-out advice. Not to mention, she’s a fantastic writer. The last line in one of her most popular articles, “no good alone,” showcases this: “... it’s painful and exhausting and fundamentally terrifying to rip yourself open and leave the guts at the mercy of the people you choose to love. But if I know anything, I know this: It’s better than being alone.” Her powerful imagery makes her bleeding heart not exhausting, but authentically relatable in a deeply human way—not relatability for influencing purposes. She’s tortured, because we all are, and pumps meaning into that connection.
Moving now to the other end of the spectrum, we have the weightless girlhood Substack. I’m not going to cite the exact page I am pulling from, but if you look up “list of hated things” and click on a page that looks girly-poppish, you will find something similar. The post, written without proper punctuation, begins with a brief intro outlining how “boring” the utopian fantasy of things like “radical optimism” and “eternal sunshine” is. To give her page some spunk, she is countering a previous post dedicated to her “list of perfect things” with one of the things she hates. A few of the last items on the list are the following: “...how tiny bikinis these days are (someone please send me a cute suit i can wear in front of my family i’ve been scolded for this one); the idea of skiing; the wellness industrial complex (just sleep and eat a vegetable); the anxiety of being late; my lack of knowledge about wine…” Immediately, I need some explanation. The idea of skiing? The wellness industrial complex? We know what she’s referring to, but she doesn’t walk us through any analytical process of determining her abhorrence. There is a place for silly, goofy writing. Even Rayne posts holiday gift guides (though she unpacks the practice of gift-giving in the process). Performative angst is fun! But is it productive? Is it teaching us to really essay, not just jot down ideas?
I am not out to squash someone's hobby. Many don’t have the hours it takes to write a proper analytical essay. As Eliza McLamb points out, we all have to sell ourselves out as artists. What I am out to do, however, is to urge people towards more thoroughness. To turn the platform into a place for growth, not just surface-level commiseration. Girlies, ask yourselves: Why are you Substacking? For an image? For a creative outlet? Just to be a part of the crowd of knit-wearing, lip gloss-smacking, book-naming, twitchy writer girls? Though brutal, my conjuring of that image points to the ritualistic nature of the platform. No Substack? No sitting at the tortured literary girls' lunch table. I agonize over not posting enough on Substack, over not being popular because of my words. Like any form of social media, the platform is as much a burden as it is a form of expression.
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Blogs are nothing new, but the blog as social media is. Platforms like Substack can be a way forward to more constructive and thoughtful media consumption, as long as we consciously steer away from the same over-aestheticized trend traps. Writing, to me at least, is sacred and, like any art form, takes time and dedication. Though I’m thrilled to see the girlies encouraging others to write more, let's make sure the writing we’re encouraging isn't sacrificing quality and/or only feeding the image. We all want to be an internet princess, but that title needs to be earned—and cherished.
Cover image via (ft. Carrie Bradshaw, the OG writer girlie)
