From our earliest days, girls are taught to find strength in community. We’re encouraged to seek comfort in shared experience, to weave our young lives together with others. Girls grow up in the warmth of connection and learn that our power lies, not just in ourselves, but in the bonds we form. Boys, by contrast, are guided towards independence almost as soon as they can walk. By age four, they are nudged away from the collective, urged to stand alone and be self-sufficient; they become detached to creature comforts like a kiss or warm hug. It’s a subtle, steady push that often leaves them isolated and alone – their requests for validation often falling on deaf ears.
This early divergence fosters a loneliness in boys that grows as they do; a loneliness that many men carry invisibly, silently throughout their lives. It’s in this isolation they become more susceptible to voices that tell them their independence is under threat. That girlhood and the power of women’s communities are not just different, but dangerous. They are told that girlhood is a race to render them obsolete; that they must reclaim what was never truly lost.
It’s a narrative that not only divides, but pits genders against each other. In its less violent, but no less insidious form, it teaches men to see women – not as equals – but as remedies for their own loneliness. Women become something to be used; a means to fill the void left by a lifetime of being told to stand apart. And so the cycle continues. With connection on one side and isolation on the other, there’s a chasm that grows wider with every whisper of division.
Here in the UK, violence against women and girls has seen a worrying increase. According to data released by the ONS, in February 2023, the number of domestic abuse-related crimes had increased by 7% since 2022, reaching over 910,000 incidents. Sexual offences for the year ending March 2023 saw over 199,000 being recorded. That’s a 21% rise compared to the previous year. This includes a rise in recorded rapes and other serious sexual assaults. The Femnice Census – an organisation that tracks the killing of women by men in the UK – noted an increase in deaths too.
Enter Taylor Swift.
The recent Eras tour has become something more than a simple pop event. It has become a pilgrimage; an ode to girlhood in its purest form. Underneath the lights and the glitter, there’s something raw and powerful. Indeed, the Eras tour has become a declaration; an affirmation of existence for those who have, for too long, been told to be quiet and small. But, as these girls and women raise their voices at every show; as they claim their space with pride; the world responds with an all too familiar unease.
Little girls twirling to Taylor at a dance class become lives interrupted; childhoods fractured; families destroyed. Terror threats in Vienna – and subsequently London – highlights an unmistakable pattern: the very idea of girlhood is a provocation, a challenge to a world that prefers its girls to be compliant and contained – or dead. The message is clear, though unspoken: girlhood, in all its messy, unapologetic, silly splendour, is something to be feared. Punished.
Vienna’s response to the cancellation of Taylor Swift highlights the power of girlhood and the fear it evokes. Citing security concerns, her shows were cancelled. But those who had been waiting; the girls and women who had marked their calendars and planned their outfits knew better. They understood that this wasn’t just about safety. It was about control.
The plan was to silence the collective power of girlhood before it could even begin to echo through the streets. Men were threatened by the sheer number of women and girls; by their energy, by the fact that they would be seen and heard in a way that could not be ignored. And so the threat of violence ensued.
There’s something deeply unsettling about the idea that a gathering of girls could be perceived as a threat. It reveals a fundamental truth that is often left unsaid: that girlhood is powerful in ways that makes the world deeply uncomfortable. It’s not just innocence or naivete: it’s a force of nature, capable of unsettling the status quo simply by existing.
And of course, this is why the girls of Vienna gathered anyway; why they sang every word as if they were a mantra. It’s why they showed up, despite the threats against their existence. They didn’t give a damn that the odds were stacked against them. Of course in doing so, it becomes a stark reminder that the joy of girls cannot be ignored or sacrificed in order to keep the peace. While the message of terror was insidious, the girls’ response was powerful. Girlhood is powerful and it cannot be contained; girlhood can and will disrupt the existing order.
For those girls who’d planned to go to the show, the cancellation was more than a disappointment. For them, and the rest of us, it’s a reminder; a lesson in the limits of our freedom. In this way the world will always try to make us smaller, quieter, more manageable.
Girlhood is often treated as a phase, fleeting moment between the innocence of childhood and the responsibilities of womanhood. But it’s so much more than that; it’s a state of becoming. Of learning how to navigate a world in a way that isn’t always kind. It’s finding strength in numbers, of understanding that the very things that make you vulnerable can also make you powerful.
Of course, the simple truth is that men, too, can learn from the power of girlhood. Girlhood is not a passing moment. It’s a lesson. How you show up for yourself and for others. How to face a world that doesn’t always welcome you. Girlhood teaches you to find strength in connection; how to turn vulnerability into power, through the simple act of standing together.
For men, the lesson lies in understanding that independence need not be isolation. That strength does not require toxic solitude. The bonds that girls form, the communities they build, offer a blueprint for a different kind of power. Not one bound by control, but one rooted in shared experiences, in mutual support, in the knowledge that togetherness does not weaken, but fortifies.
The world so often pits us against one another. This world that tells men that their value lies in silent stoicism masking a desperate need for human connection is also a world where there’s a revolution taking place in how girls embrace their togetherness. Embracing this – acknowledging it even – men can learn that vulnerability is not a weakness to be shunned, but a bridge to connection. Loneliness is not a burden to be borne in silence, and vanquished by hurting women, but a call to reach out and to find in others that we might lack in ourselves.
The true power of girlhood lies not in the defeat of one gender by another. But in the understanding that true strength comes from the bonds we form, from the courage to stand with others, rather than apart. In this lesson, there’s a clear way forward; a path that men can walk alongside with women. Where the walls that divide us crumble, and the loneliness that causes men to hurt and haunt so many can finally be left behind.