Girl Bond Summer

Taylor, Barbie, and the ecstatic power of collective joy.

Photo by Pawel Czerwinski on Unsplash

Two summers ago, I was on one of the writing retreats I host in Italy, walking with a friend under a canopy of Tuscan pines after one of our group writing workshops, and we were talking about the group dynamic — how everyone was generous with their thoughts and time, that this all-female group made space for others’ perspectives, took risks to foster intimacy, and seemed to go out of their way to include everyone. We both noted that it’s not always like this; any group of human beings can be competitive or mean or manipulative or ostracizing, and one common group dynamic is to pick a scapegoat who everyone else marginalizes or makes fun of. But I said that, in my experience on these trips, women coming together for a shared purpose and shared pleasure are pretty great to each other. And my friend said: “girls are just really good.”

I keep thinking of that line — girls are just really good — as I watch this summer’s girl-frenzy over Taylor Swift and the Barbie movie. For the record, I have seen neither. Taylor seems lovely; I am not a detractor and I like some of her songs, but I’m also not a super fan (for me, Beyoncé is the world’s greatest pop star). I have very little interest in seeing the Barbie movie, not for any great political reason, but just because I don’t see a lot of movies in the theater (bed bug fears + the sound of strangers eating, no thank you), and I’m probably not going to start with this one.

But man is it great to see Girl Culture taking over, and to see so many girls jump into group bonding experiences, participating in what Barbara Ehrenreich calls “collective joy.” Girls singing together, dancing together, dressing up together, entering joyful girl-centric spaces guilelessly and unselfconsciously — I’m not a part of it, but I love to see it.

Both Taylor and Barbie are breaking records. The Barbie movie saw the largest-ever North American opening weekend debut from a female director. Taylor Swift has more #1 albums than any female musician in history, and her Eras tour is set to be the highest-grossing tour of all time. The tour is so huge that the Federal Reserve has noted its economic ripple effects. (Beyoncé, too, has been on a record-breaking tour, but as far as I can tell, her audience is largely made up of adult women).

And it’s not just that girls are buying concert and movie tickets. Girls are making the Taylor Swift show and the Barbie movie ecstatic events. They’re going in groups, sometimes getting on airplanes and staying in hotels, spending weeks vibrating with excitement, making a weekend out of a one-night show, carrying that joy with them back home. They’re singing together and crying together and taking over the men’s bathrooms. They’re donning Barbie outfits, usually with copious pink, and getting the whole crew to the theater. These are not solo endeavors. These are girls using these events to strengthen bonds with their friends and often their parents, and to connect with a much larger group of mostly-girls (and some boys) over a shared passion, a shared experience, a shared history, and shared delight. One friend referred to the Eras tour as the “White Girl Super Bowl,” and that sounded about right to me.

Not every girl can afford to attend these events, the Taylor Swift concert in particular. Not every girl is going to feel connected to Swift’s music, or to Margot Robbie as Barbie. Looking at photos of Swift’s concert crowds, the audience looks pretty white. I’m on record as someone who is lightly anti-Barbie (the doll, not the movie); it’s great that Barbie has a bunch of jobs now, but she’s not the feminist icon I would choose. So this is not to say that all of Girl World is perfectly feminist or perfectly represented in this particular girl-centric summer. It is to say, though, that a lot of girls are showing up, they’re shaping popular culture for the better, and their choices tell us something important about friendship, connection, and how to forge joy in this world — and maybe we could learn something from them.

The group dynamics of these events — the sense of solidarity, the rush of the crowd — are central to their appeal. This feels especially powerful as we come out of two years of a pandemic, when being in a crowd felt, to many of us, stressful and unsafe. Young people bore the brunt of this: There is perhaps no time in one’s life when social interactions feel as high stakes, and when the thrill of a concert or a crowd is more intense because it’s such a new experience, as one’s teenage years. We all lost precious time during Covid. Teenagers lost key developmental and social years.

The power of crowds is often discussed in the negative. Crowds can turn into mobs or riots; crowds can bring out the worst in people, giving us social license to engage in acts we otherwise wouldn’t. Sometimes crowds kill.

But crowds have also, throughout nearly all of human history, been spaces for joy, connection, mutual assistance, and tremendously pro-social behavior.