This summer was an important one for girls everywhere- in fact, it’s been named the “summer of girlhood” by many. We had Barbie, the first leg of The Eras Tour (and the filmed version coming soon!), and now, we have GUTS, the automatic hit sophomore album from Olivia Rodrigo, among many others. One thing in particular stuck out to me about everything that’s been a hit this year- strong women are no longer biting their tongues. We are hearing what we’ve needed to hear for so long. And with that, there’s been an incredible upsurge of women around the world taking to social media saying that all of this unabashed honesty is making them feel seen. I couldn’t agree more.
In Barbie, Greta Gerwig’s Barbieland held a mirror to society in a way nobody expected. I can’t count the number of TikToks I’ve seen that follow this formula: “[insert part of Barbie] is literally EXACTLY what it feels like to be a girl when [insert scenario that Barbie commented on].” In particular, America Ferrera’s beautifully delivered and now iconic soliloquy struck a nerve.
“Always stand out and always be grateful. But never forget that the system is rigged. So find a way to acknowledge that but also always be grateful… and it turns out in fact that not only are you doing everything wrong, but also everything is your fault.”
America Ferrera in Greta Gerwig’s Barbie (2023)
The world was taken aback by the way Barbie called out the problems with the patriarchy, the economy, and the way women are objectified all over the world. Less than two months later, Olivia Rodrigo seems to call back to a lot of these themes, especially the latter, in her album GUTS. Behind the guise of a fairylike twinkling instrumental spliced into the first track on the album, “all-american b****,” a song with a much more pop-punk sound, she calls out the way young women are expected to act. Other tracks like “ballad of a homeschooled girl” and “love is embarrassing” reflect the adolescent female experience perfectly, with Rodrigo being just twenty years old.
For me, the first time I listened to the album, I immediately thought of Barbie and America Ferrera, especially in the first track.
“All the time, I’m grateful all the time, I’m sexy and I’m kind, I’m pretty when I cry.”
Olivia Rodrigo, “all-american b****,” GUTS (2023)
Among all this, we have Taylor Swift and her Eras Tour, which is arguably the biggest event of 2023. While Taylor has been sharing her life and thoughts with us for many years, the tour is the first time we have been able to have these personal moments face-to-face. Last year, she pointed out the realities of anxiety and depression with the Midnights album and the “Anti-Hero” music video. And now, she spends a fair bit of time during her 3.5-hour set talking to the crowd about other personal issues. She explains the process of what it was like to be an artist making music in a pandemic, talks about her personal journey of growing up in the spotlight, and makes it known that her concerts are a safe space for anyone and everyone. This is fairly uncommon for artists who perform live, but in my opinion, it’s a large part of what makes the Eras Tour such an incredible experience. She also plays two different songs every night in the “surprise song set,” which gives her a chance to talk about all the aspects of her music, her fans, and her life in a quiet setting that changes based on what songs she decides to play.
Other artists like Sabrina Carpenter have taken to having unique parts of their concerts that change night-by-night as well; I can’t be the only one who follows along with her “Nonsense” outros every time she performs. The overall theme of the current media scope is that people, and especially women, are finally being bold enough to say things that some people aren’t ready to hear. And it feels like this is what we as women in society have been waiting ages for. They’re saying what we are too afraid to, and it is absolutely beautiful to see the number of people who are gaining confidence in the fact that they are not alone in their experiences.
By doing something as simple as sitting in a huge group of people dressed in hot pink for Barbie or trading bracelets at The Eras Tour, women this year have been able to find a bolder sense of community in one another, and all of this because some of the biggest names in pop culture have decided to spill their ‘GUTS’ in the spotlight. I hope women in media continue to be loud and brave about the things that matter; the shared experiences of womanhood are bringing young women closer together, and it gives me hope to see this much fierce unity in such a divided world.