girls being girls: girl hobbies, consumerism, and the 24-year-old teenager

i'm a 22-year-old teenage girl my girl hobby is little treat and rot in bed guys i can't think about this i'm just a girl who can't work and i need to read my YA romance

i spent my entire childhood and early adolescence with my head buried in a book. i would lay on the couch in my living room for hours, flying through stories of dystopian governments crumbling down, demigods embarking on quests to save the world, and young women fighting to save the world. if you somehow were able to break through the trance i was almost constantly under, you would have to listen to a detailed account of whatever i just read before i could answer a single question. reading was so important to me, it let my imagination grow and roam free, it developed my love of writing (when i was 13, i tried to write a dystopian novel that will always live on a penguin-shaped flash drive buried in the dresser of my childhood bedroom), and opening a new book, not knowing what was to come brought me so much joy. i found such depth in the stories i was reading, and i knew that i somehow wanted to be both author and protagonist.

in high school and the beginning of college, i no longer found comfort in my favorite hobbies. suddenly pleasure turned to pressure and i associated reading new books and writing stories with homework and school and i felt the never-ending stress of AP classes. my mom would always ask me why i stopped reading as much, she would remind me how i would curl up for hours with a book and would completely block out the rest of the world and i missed that. i would often try to dive back into a book or type out a few lines of a short story but that intense pull that i used to feel that would allow me to fully find myself in my old world was gone.

i know social media is to blame for this. i would spend the time i used to spend reading, scrolling through my instagram feed of sickeningly skinny models, influencers with seemingly endless packages to unbox, and my friends and acquaintances partying and traveling filling in the gaps. social media became my new hobby, i still played soccer and loved learning about fashion and spending time with my friends, but the huge part of myself that for so long was dedicated to reading a new book and feeling inspired to write felt dormant.

something changed for me a few years ago, my mental health was deteriorating, i felt very out of place in the world, and i found myself gravitating back toward books. maybe it was the simple comfort and the memories of childhood, but regardless, i found myself back in that familiar space. i bought a copy of sally rooney’s normal people and i read the entire book in one sitting, and as cliche or silly as it seems, i knew that i once again had room in my life to let myself get sucked into a book.

of course, i’m so grateful to have found my way back into reading, but i also have noticed that recently (and by recently i mean the last few months since graduation) i’ve noticed a pattern of other people my age getting back into reading and finding themselves regressing to the media they consumed as a tween. and i want to make it blatantly clear that i see nothing wrong with finding a sense of nostalgia and comfort in the books you read at a point in your life when things felt much simpler, but because of this renaissance, there has been a disturbingly infantilized mindset circulating the internet. people are exclusively reading romance novels written with 12-year-olds in mind, or exclusively watching tv shows meant for children and commenting on them like the intended audience is adults (spoiler: percy jackson is a middle-grade book, it’s not adult fiction)

i’m sure if you’re active on tiktok or twitter, i’m sure you’ve seen the “i’m just a girl” trend, where women well into their late 20s have said something along the lines of “i can’t do xyz skill, i’m just a girl.” respectfully, you’re not just a girl, you’re a woman, you are intelligent, you are so capable, so why tell yourself and present yourself like you aren’t. when did society (i.e. the internet) decide that intelligence is not trendy? i’ve seen firsthand in the hellscape that is tiktok comment sections when creators post intellectual content or use academic language, the users in the comments will begin to turn on them, to call them inaccessible, and talk about how they’re no longer “relatable”. not everything is meant to be relatable, some content is informative, and people aren’t using their intelligence to purposefully isolate members of their audience who might not have sat around reading theory in the same way they have. maybe talking about the intrinsically capitalistic nature of our society isn’t trendy in the same way that mashing drunk elephant smoothies into your face while talking about the best makeup to buy is, but why is one looked at as ideal while the other is viewed as an outlier?

people around my age seem to have become trapped in this mind space of their 12-year-old selves, which is only enhanced by the content they’re consuming. you’re not a teenager anymore, maturing is integral to your personal growth, and when you’re projecting the image of being a “25-year-old teenage girl” it’s incredibly infantilizing to yourself. why do we even want to be teenagers right now? i have no desire to ever relive my teenage years, and my mindset then was so naive and horrific that the thought of being back there sends a shiver down my spine. yes, of course, the thought of getting older is vaguely terrifying to me, but every single day i’m learning more and collecting new opportunities. i love to learn and grow and become a generally more awesome version of myself, and it just eats at me a little bit to see the influx of “25-year-old teenagers.”

in the same sense, there’s a lack of people demonstrating their general interests. i saw a tiktok a few days ago that drove me insane to the point where i had to put my phone away for a little bit and take calming breaths, but essentially, the creator was proposing a new concept: the “girl hobby.” now you might be wondering “sarah, what’s so bad about a girl hobby? what even is a girl hobby? are you actually that insane that you needed to take a social media break after seeing this tiktok” and let me tell you, girl hobby is a perfect example to demonstrate the upward curve of anti-intellectualism and our society’s interest in consumerism as a hobby.

in the tiktok video i saw, the creator talks about how boy hobbies include fantasy football, working out, video games, etc., all actual activities and all those that society has determined are “masculine” (obviously they are not, how many women also share these hobbies). she then went on to say that girls need to have their own hobbies, and made a list of what she determined are “girl hobbies” including:

• buy little treat

• rot in bed

• go on walk

• shopping from bed

• social media

  

  this is the second part because people in the comments were screaming for more examples of girl hobbies they could get involved in

now i would like to read that list and ask yourself, how can some of these be considered hobbies? when someone asks about your hobby are you going to say “hi i’m sarah, i’m 22, and my hobbies are social media and little treat?” if i said that in a work meeting, i would have to quit the next day and i’m dead serious. i find it so fascinating that so many people (over 300k at this point) have liked that video, seemingly relating to or agreeing with that concept. it would be hypocritical of me to go on without acknowledging that yes, i am a girl, i love to shop, i love a little treat after a bad day of work, and yes, all of the “girl hobbies” listed are things that i do probably daily, but i would never!!!!! say that any of these are my hobbies. it’s so insane to me, yet not a surprise at all, that many of the so-called girl hobbies are rooted in consumerism. in the age of tiktok, consumerism is encouraged in every aspect, you need to buy this mascara because this influencer said so, the current aesthetic is “mob wife” so you need to go out and buy a fur coat and a brand new wardrobe, stanley cup, drunk elephant, little treat, dyson air wrap, lana del rey coquette necklace, dior saddle bag dupe, it’s a constant stream of products being thrown in our faces from every direction. i could write a full other essay about the commodification of aesthetics and the direct effect this has on the mindset of young women (edit: i did and you can read it here) that perfectly encapsulates how i feel, but all i can say right now is if this continues, things look bleak.

the idea of girl hobbies also highlights how women in a social media-dominant society are encouraged to behave. girl hobbies don’t include reading, anything related to surrounding yourself with arts and culture or doing anything to personally develop yourself. social media encourages women to be more domestic, partake in “bimboification,” and remain in a stasis period in the mindset of a 17-year-old. this social medialized version of girlhood feels so dire and feels so far removed from the joyful and beautiful version of womanhood that i like to think i experienced. girlhood isn’t buying items to fit in with whatever is trendy on tiktok. it’s late nights up laughing with your friends. it’s finding books and movies and paintings that you love so much you could talk for years about them. it’s making mistakes and crying and growing from them. it’s the infinite possibilities you have out in the world and realizing the magic and excitement of that.

years from now, social media’s effect on young women’s development and their sense of self will be studied. 12-year-olds should not be grown women and grown women should not be 12-year-olds. having hobbies and interests and personality means breaking from consumerism and truly embracing yourself, taking the time to cultivate your own passions and allow yourself to develop your own individual identity. i love being a girl, but i’m scared of what that could mean in the future.

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check out a similar essay i just wrote if you enjoyed this one, it’s my favorite thing i’ve published so far: