A sample from my essay “In Defense of VSCO Girls”

When the movie Twilight was released in 2008, it took the world by storm. The 2005 book it was based on already had a dedicated cult following, but the movie was a cultural phenomenon. Twilight spoke to audiences with its dramatic yet strangely accurate depiction of teenage ennui and angst. As of today, the entire 5-movie saga has grossed over three billion dollars worldwide. According to a survey from Fandango, 95% of the first film’s audience was women, most of whom were under the age of 25. This demographic of girls was immensely powerful, and are the reason the franchise was as successful as it was. This happens a lot as seen with bands like One Direction, and other franchises like The Hunger Games. And this group of young women, as powerful as they were, were endlessly teased for their love of Twilight.

I know this because I was one of the people making fun of them. I was in middle school during the height of Twilight-mania, around 2012. By this point I was fully entrenched in my “cooler than everyone else” mentality. While other girls were listening to Justin Bieber (another artist whose fame can be almost completely attributed to young girls), I was listening to The Beatles, and exclusively wearing their branded merchandise to prove it. (Little did I know that my favorite band, in its infancy, was no more alternative or creative than a group like One Direction. I was listening to my grandmother’s favorite boy band, and a prime example of a pop culture fixture skyrocketed to fame by young women.) I admonished my friends that were into Twilight, criticizing it for its ludicrous depiction of young love and lack of a strong female character.

Along with just being a bit of a b*tch, I was also suffering from “not-like-other-girls” syndrome, or NLOG. NLOG, for me, was categorized by a rejection of typical pop culture, fashion, makeup, and anything I considered “girly.” For to be girly, as I was led to understand, was to be weak, uninteresting, “basic,” silly, and dumb. I was better than that. NLOG is an insidious disease that has many different forms, and affects all women in some way. Whether it’s a silent judgment of girls who post pictures of themselves wearing “way too much makeup,” or silently making fun of the lilted voice of the girl sitting next to you on a train, or believing that you’re better than another woman because her favorite movie is The Notebook and yours is Amélie, it can all be described as one thing: women putting down other women because we have been conditioned to believe that being a woman is BAD.