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From Legally Blonde to Barbie: My Love Letter to the Girls' Girl Cinema and Its Impact on Pop Culture
In a world full of mainstream media pitting women against each other, today we'll look at movies that dismantled the norm and taught us a thing or two about female friendships.
Get in loser, we're going to give girls' girl cinema its well-deserved flowers. From giving us the most campiest storylines to great aesthetics, there's nothing more satisfying than watching a movie slowly ripping apart a system that benefits from pitying women against each other. Now, I'll try my best to not be preachy, because that's just not how I want this to come off. This is to personally thank movies that shaped my perception of female friendship early on in life, and paving your path in the world. So let's begin.
The Affects of Legally Blonde
Many of you might question why Legally Blonde is getting its own subhead and that is because it's iconic. From the plot to the friendships to her career, and more, the Resse Witherspoon starrer was probably the first movie I saw on television that averted my expectations like no other. I am a true Wattpad Girlie, and while I'll be the first to defend the app that made a good half of my teenage years, I cannot deny that the most famous books on there at one point were pushing the 'pick me' agenda hard.
The moment Reese's character, Elle Woods got dumbed in the movie, I was sure the next 90 minutes of the movie would go over like a romcom blueprint. So you can only imagine my surprise when what started out as a plot to get a man back, turned into a full-fleshed legal career and finding a friend in Vivan, who started out as her 'love rival'. Do not get me wrong, I love myself an old-school rom-com, with the two Greek-God-looking main leads pining for each other. But when a movie like Legally Blonde averts those expectations, one ought to take notice.
This movie made me question what I knew and forced me to unlearn a lot of unhealthy behaviors. You might wonder, how a single film can do this to a person, but I'll argue it's not about just one piece of cinema, but rather the rest of the media that showed me the kind of stereotypes women have been put in forever without a question. I'm sure that many people have already known all this for a long time, and none of what I'm saying here is original. However, it is important to understand that Legally Blonde was one of the first movies I watched that very openly decided to do away with what was expected of its main lead. Keeping Elle in all-pink by the end of the movie instead of belittling her for it; it became something of a revolutionary watch for me as a young adult.
Girls' Girl Cinema's Impact on Pop-Culture
Legally Blonde might be my first experience with a girl's girl movie, but it is far from being the first of its kind. From Louisa May Alcott's Little Women to Barbie, this particular genre has been around forever. The huge impact of it on trends today is undeniable. I like to call it, the girlification of pop culture. From a time when being labeled 'too girly' was seen as an insult to Jacob Elordi being celebrated as baby girl online needs to be studied. Phrases like 'I'm just a girl' and the catch-word of this article 'Girl's Girl', are proof that what we consider cool today has changed 10-fold in the last decade.
However, do not be fooled into thinking for a minute that just because a few phrases online are seen in a positive light solves everything. America Ferrera's monologue in Barbie sums it up best.
None of what I wrote today is revolutionary, it's not going to change lives, and most probably you already knew half the stuff I talked about here. And that's okay. I'm not here to alter your perception of anything or anyone but rather to thank these iconic pieces of cinema for making it a little bit easier for women to exist as themselves in this world.
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