1. i am not an it girl

and i'm no longer afraid to admit it

I’m getting heartily sick of the girls on my feed copying XYZ’s writing routine and reposting annotated Joan Didion. I’m beginning to roll my eyes at this girl I know who religiously carries an embossed, mossy green copy of Wuthering Heights without ever having read the book. I hate pretentiousness and this feels like the epitome of it.

On the other hand, I’m embarrassed of judging readers and intellectuals on suspicions that they don’t actually know what they’re talking about. Which is highly hypocritical of me.

I’m cursed to never know what anyone is talking about. The intellectual it girls in the back of my class always reference Sally Rooney books in conversation, assuming I know what they mean. Someone once made a joke about The Secret History, which prompted me to go out and actually read it so I could know what they meant. It was quite a good joke, and I’m upset I didn’t appreciate it in the moment.

For a time, I wanted to be intellectual and cultured and refined. I missed the crucial step in this new rebrand, however, of checking what was actually considered tasteful. Instead I found a list of “100 books to read before you die” and checked off 33 in six months. I did not find this enlightenment entirely worth it.

I still find myself getting caught up in what I’m “supposed to know”. The latest intellectual it girl I met could quote Plato and Dostoevsky and name dropped Sartre in conversation. The girls I’m deeply envious of in my class are all Gilmore Girls and Normal People obsessed. The girl I follow on Instagram enjoys posting Sylvia Plath quotes. Which is “the right way” to become cultured? What demonstrates I have taste, and poise, and sophistication? What pieces of media are actually considered intellectual at the moment?

Being that kind of person feels like a full time job. Listening to the right music profile - niche, but not too niche. Meaningful, but not poetic. Reading the right books - ones everyone’s heard of, but only “the right kind of people” have read. Watching witty shows with deep “metaphors”. Going out and looking through vintage stores and farmers markets and drinking interesting coffees. A style that’s clean and simple but nevertheless says you stand out in some key way.

So, here’s the deal.

Those things where “I knew *artist* before *big famous work*? Not me. I knew Sabrina Carpenter with emails i can’t send. I knew Noah Kahan with Stick Season. I knew Taylor Swift when… I don’t know what “made Taylor Swift famous” (spoiler: not K*nye). I get into everyone and everything six months after they go viral. I have a long list of movies to watch because everyone else has and I don’t know if I’m missing out.

The deepest movie I’ve seen is probably Lady Bird. I can’t afford to go out and buy classics and then take a year to read them. Hell, I barely read these days. I’m not an it girl. I never will be.

But maybe no one should be. I have a fundamental issue with the idea of “it girls” in general, but “intellectual it girls” really twists the knife.

It girls promote the idea that girls have to be something. It’s not enough anymore to be pretty. You have to be witty, and in the right way. You have to be well-read, but only among these nine authors. You have to be “cultured” - as in, keep up with internet discourse and take an interest - but not an obsessive, fangirly one - in a celebrity like Emma Chamberlain. You have to appeal to the masses without seeming to appeal to the masses.

The idea of the intellectual it girl is smart because on the surface, it seems aloof. It appears to be the kind of “it girl” that isn’t concerned with being the it girl. It’s the kind of girl that seems different. But just as a regular it girl is dismissed as vapid because she “only cares about her looks”, the intellectual it girl does the same thing - she doesn’t read the things she enjoys, she reads the things society says she should enjoy.

The intellectual it girl thing is a furtheration of pushing girls to “be more” under the pretext of empowerment, but really it only adds something else to live up to.

I’m exhausted. I want to watch my shitty shows and not know all the deep references without being judged for it. I want to keep carrying a book around without it becoming the new “oh you like the band? name five songs” of attacking women. I want to be able to consume media I enjoy without it becoming an aesthetic. Since when is reading a damn book an aesthetic? What even is the aesthetic?

We’ve all been taught that the internet is fake - everyone’s curating an aesthetic feed, it’s a highlight reel, the photos are edited. But I didn’t realise that everyone’s tastes and personas are just as faked for content too.

So, here’s the deal. I want to read Kafka and Sylvia Plath and keep a journal of deep, wondrous thoughts. But I haven’t read them yet and I’m not good at deep thoughts. Hand on my heart, I might be writing under a pseudonym and I might be hyper aware of how I’m perceived, but I’m not going to pretend to be cultured and deep.