A Girl’s Style

Accessories, such as jewelry, belts, hats, scarves, backpacks, purses, bags, and shoes, are a part of girls’ style. Bodily adornments, such as hair color, makeup, piercings, and tattoos, are a part of girls’ style. Accoutrements, such as buttons, iPods, earphones, Discmans, cigarettes, and even books and CDs, are a part of girls’ style. But, beyond these individual items, style and girl culture refers to the way in which all of these elements interact and come together to create an overall “look.”

A girl’s look is the effect she achieves through her style, whether goth, punk, skater, preppy, dressy, sophisticated, sporty, random, gang, Hip Hop, alternative, mainstream, hippy, straight-edge, grunge, club, skid, metal head, or other expressions that girls might use to describe their look, such as “pretty normal,” “just regular,” or “totally average.” But this list is not exhaustive. A complete taxonomy of girls’ style is impossible given the permutations and combinations that exist. Style is ultimately a form of creative expression unique to each girl.

While style is something that exists on the surface of the body, it carries enormous depth. Style functions as an accessible and malleable form of embodied subjectivity and expression for girls, becoming a marker of gender, race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, age, and even nationhood. It is an integral part of how girls insert themselves into the social world as both individuals and members of groups. Style enables girls to signal belonging, friendship, conformity, religious beliefs, politics, resistance, rebellion, ambivalence, anger, desire, cultural and lifestyle affiliations, individuality, image, and personal taste.

As a result of these complex and overlapping articulations, style is always more than “just fashion.” It is a tool for identity construction and negotiation (“Who am I?”). It is a form of power. Style is also a form of bodily discipline or control and is an essential part of how girls engage in and create culture. It is inextricably entwined with global capitalism and constructions of girlhood within the marketplace. It is also one of the primary ways that girls make meaning in their everyday lives.