Growing Into My Girlhood
An essay on coming-of-age in the 90's.
Images in this essay are sourced from Pinterest.
I remember bike rides to garage sales with two dollars in my pocket. Enough to buy stuffed pound puppies and barbie fashion outfits. I wore clear sparkly jelly shoes and was very into magical make-believe, book fair books, and writing in my diary. I regularly listened to my favorite jazz radio station and was scared to play basketball with the neighborhood boys; I wasn’t very good and their laughter would bite me with cruelty. There are scars on my knees from those years. There are scars in my memory as well.
Like a time capsule buried in my backyard, my childhood in the 1990’s is hidden just below the surface of my life. The years between third grade and freshman year of high school shaped so much of who I am today: the years of growing into my girlhood.
And the truth is, girlhood didn’t come easily for me. I was born and raised by an immigrant mother who worked full-time. A mother who, despite loving me, had completely different Indian customs than American culture in the 90’s and wasn’t an emotionally close or empathic person.
So when it came to learning the ins and outs of growing up, I was on my own. There was no one to help me navigate the rocky waters of becoming a tween girl in a quintessential midwestern town.
Learning to pick out clothes, applying my first lip gloss, trying out a hairstyle, or tweezing my eyebrows, I turned to the flashy and promising magazines that were a staple in every 90’s tween room. The girls in each Limited Too catalogue became my mentors; the smiling faces of Lip Smackers ads were my guides. The models made it look so natural, so fun. “Look at us,” they’d say. “We’ve got it all together. We’re everything that you need to be happy.”
But my thick Indian hair was frizzy and wouldn’t cooperate with any advertised hairstyle. My eyebrows, no matter how much I tweezed them, always looked freakish to me. I would look at the racks of clothes at JCPenney in bewilderment, never knowing what would look good together. I was utterly clueless, completely miserable when looking at my reflection, and most of all, embarrassed in my own skin.
At some point, most of us learn that how we feel directly affects how we carry ourselves day-to-day. And in those younger years, I was ashamed by how I looked and felt most days. What should have been joy filled moments of braiding hair and choosing makeup and making new friends were instead fearful and anxious moments of trying to fit in. (I wrote more about this feeling in a previous essay on childhood friendship.) I didn’t know how the other girls were doing it so seamlessly. Was I the only one in the world who felt awkward and out of place all of the time?
I spent many hours studying everyone that I admired and every movie heroine from that era. I longed for a twin like Mary-Kate, a long-lost Lindsay Lohan at summer camp. I wanted the guidance of a Miss Honey to my Matilda, a Golly to my Harriet the Spy. Where was my sisterhood like the Baby-Sitter’s Club? Each of these characters were an example of the freedom and boldness in girlhood that I so deeply craved.
But time flew by. Girlhood quickly turned into the teen years of high school. Then again into my young adulthood of college and early twenties. And while time stole away those important childhood years, time was also my most powerful ally. Two decades of life and growing and introspection has produced a self-confidence in my womanhood that eleven-year-old Lish could only dream about. I now love trying new things with my friends, thrift shopping for cute outfits, writing and publishing poetry, and putting on blush and lipstick. All of the things that younger me would have loved to do, but didn’t really know how to do.
Sometimes when I go back home to my parent’s house in that small town, I look through old photographs of my small self and start to tear up. I think:
“She was so beautiful. She was so full of life. She just needed someone to tell her that. I wish I could tell her that now. I would hug her so hard. I would show her how to blow-dry and style her hair with joy. I would laugh with her and teach her how to put on lip gloss and that shooting a basketball isn’t so scary. I would hold her hand and tell her how pretty she was while picking out clothes. I would encourage her love of florals and writing and music and magical sparkly things. I would tell her to trust herself, that she’s got great instincts and a killer sense of humor for a kid.”
And because I can, I tell myself those things now. And I lean into the music that I loved, the fashion that I admired, and the magic that was once so alive in my mind. There was a time when I thought it was lost forever, but that’s simply not true. At thirty-seven years old, it’s coming back to me, and I am growing into my girlhood once again.
Loved how you completed the circle with wisdom and compassion to your younger self.
absolutely felt the nostalgia + relatable feelings throughout ur article! loved it💙