Girlhood
by Melissa Febos
Hard to call Girlhood readable, though that’s what it is. Consuming, maybe, or consumptive. Troubling, surely; smooth, like a shard of glass that slips through the skin without a flicker of pain. Later, you brush against an idea you’ve passed a dozen times prior, this time noticing a smear of blood. That’s when you’ll realize you failed to keep yourself whole. That something has gotten through. Something has gotten in.
The chapters land their own way. Each essay was adapted from a disparate source, not written together: concepts overlap, are restated; references are reused, the poignancy decohering as singular impact turns staccato. The only concern is one of desire—keep pushing, and the path may look the same. Rest a while, and find an unending desire to crest the next rise. Put aside Girlhood for a day or a week and it allow more breath for each essay to wash and soak and move at its own pace, but good luck to you. The writing is there. It will find its way to your hand. You’ll be drawn back, till deed is done.
The Paris Review previously housed the second full essay, “The Mirror Test”; it comes early enough in the collection that upon its hands lay the blame for my descent. It shoved me headlong into House of Mirth, and for that alone Girlhood has done more for my reader’s soul than any academic instructor since my Lit Theory professor denied me a recommendation letter for law school.
I just want Lily to stop playing along. To step outside the mirror and keep walking…
“How alluring the world outside the cage appeared to Lily, as she heard its door clang on her! In reality, as she knew, the door never clanged: it stood always open; but most of the captives were like flies in a bottle, and having once flown in, could never regain their freedom.”
I find myself thinking, How could she? Though I have known for a long time that while freedom required knowing, knowing does not guarantee freedom. The ability to see that the door is open does not render us able to step though it–perhaps that is the most torturous part, and those who can see most clearly the more tortured people.
Who is reading Girlhood? From where does it come? For me, online, from a past acquaintance who now teaches. It is sodden with syllabus-friendly breaks: the library copy I borrowed has pencil-faint checkmarks and dog-eared bits; signs of assignment or of scholastic engagement. Girlhood presses didactic lessons about the process of writing against the soft angles of puberty until there are no seams. It is excellent. I can’t imagine not assigning it to the college set, were I able.
To be alone in a one-way exchange of intimacy is sometimes a devastatingly lonely place. It has never been expected that a man ask a woman’s consent before using her emotionally.
…
[Women] are socialized from birth not to reject the hands of others, except in the rare case that they emerge from a suspicious van holding a lollypop. It is perfect training for a lifetime of consenting to touch one doesn’t want.
Who is reading Girlhood? You, now, whoever you are, who have seen it gleam online, a flicker of that calls out for touch. Prick your finger on its spindle, fall under its spell.