I Don’t Want to Be a Girl, I Want to Rule Genovia

I'm back!!

Hi. I disappeared because I was busy doing the only thing that made sense: streaming Lorde’s new song on a loop and pretending walking like a bitch in a New York City sidewalk. And also (referencing my last post), writing and putting myself out there can be overwhelming!!

Anyway, I’m back. Let’s talk about girlhood, power, and the fictional women who taught me to treat ambition like a tiara.

Some kids had Harry Potter. I had The Princess Diaries. Not just the movies (although Anne Hathaway’s portrayal of Mia was iconic), but the books. All fifteen of them. I read them (or like my parents like to tell the story, I inhaled them). Whilst some kids dreamed of spells and boarding schools, I was convinced my long-lost royal grandmother would one day appear to rescue me from math class(especially math class) and tell me I was the heir to a small nation.

Mia Thermopolis was my first and forever girlboss. Not the Brussels Bubble LinkedIn type but the chaotic, diary-writing, pop-culture-referencing, climate-change-ranting teenager who ruled Genovia with anxiety and a sense of duty. She cried constantly, tried (and failed) to fix the world, and treated footnotes like a second language. She was dramatic, SO cool (to little old me), and trying so hard, which made her everything.

After that, there was Blair Waldorf. Queen of the Upper East Side. Where Mia was sincerity and spiral notebooks, Blair was ambition and headbands. She showed me how to weaponise femininity, how to make an entrance, how to deliver a cutting insult like it was Shakespeare. Blair didn’t have a moral compass and I loved that about her. She wanted Yale, a crown, and Chuck Bass (unfortunately), and she almost got all three.

When I was 13 or 14, I decided I would stop sending emoticons, just full stops from then on, because I wanted to type like Blair Waldorf. Cold. Composed. Commanding. I even started wearing headbands and collared shirts in a way trying to avoid the fact that I was being severely bullied (but that is a story for another time).

Together, these characters helped shape my understanding of womanhood: you could want power and cry a lot. You could fail and still try again ad nauseum. You could believe in love, world peace, and your right to be dramatic.

Then came Tumblr. And suddenly, Mia and Blair weren’t just characters, they were aesthetics. Quotes lifted out of context became gospel. “Don’t let anyone tell you you’re not powerful and beautiful and deserving of every chance in the world to pursue your dreams,” said Mia, now in pink cursive over a photo of rose petals. Blair’s threats were repurposed as motivational mantras. I wasn’t just a teenage girl anymore, I was a girlboss in training.

The girlboss era didn’t start in tech or in TED Talks. It started on Tumblr dashboards in 2011, sandwiched between glitter cat gifs and Skins black-and-white edits. It was messy, overly curated, and sometimes wildly misguided, but it made girlhood feel like power.

And believe me, I totally fell for it. I was reblogging quotes from The Princess Diaries about Gwen Stefani, quotes from shows I had yet to see and movies that were still in my watchlist to prove myself as a powerful-woman-in-training. I’d sit in IT class reblogging my little heart out, convinced that curating the right dashboard made me more Blair, more Mia, more me.

This was before “girlboss” became a slur. Before the memes and the takedowns. Back when being a girl who wanted things, not just love or softness, but power, prestige, revenge, was radical. Even if it was performed in Jeffrey Campbell heels and wrapped in a peplum top.

And then, slowly, it all got flattened. Ironized. Killed off by the discourse.

We are now in the “I’m just a girl” era.

Hyper-feminine aesthetics are back, but this time they’re bleached of ambition. Instead of world domination, we get crying selfies with the caption “no thoughts, just vibes.” The new version of girlhood is submissive, sad, lip-oiled, and unbothered in the most performative way possible. It’s all about not caring. About shrinking. About wanting to be held instead of wanting to be heard.

And look, I get it. We’re burnt out. The girlboss dream was exhausting. Hustle culture lied to us. Capitalism (shockingly!!!) did not save us. But there’s something so disheartening about this new softness-as-resistance trend. As if wanting things loudly, messily, unapologetically is somehow passé.

I miss the girls who tried. Who plotted. Who ruled tiny nations with imposter syndrome and badly applied eyeliner.

When I was 13 or maybe 14, I started a fashion blog with my best friend at the time. We used pseudonyms, posed in our living rooms like they were runway backdrops, and truly believed we were destined to become the Portuguese Tavi Gevinson. We weren’t just playing dress-up, we were performing power, curating identity, turning girlhood into content before we even had the language for it.

Then our classmates found the blog. And teased us for months? Years? Online performance always comes with a risk, especially when you’re a teenage girl trying out loud. But even then, I didn’t stop trying. I couldn’t. Mia and Blair wouldn’t have let me. They taught me that effort, even when it’s cringe, even when it’s mocked, is a kind of power and I held onto that.

In the end, I don’t want to be “just a girl.” I want to be Mia Thermopolis with a crown on my head, a manifesto in my pocket, and a whole world to save. I want to be Blair Waldorf, scheming my way through life with a fierce determination, wearing pearls and plotting revenge with my best friends by my side. They were messy, they were flawed, and they were ambitious, and that’s what made them real.

Maybe I’ll never rule Genovia, and maybe I’ll never throw a Manhattan socialite-style tantrum. But I know one thing: I’ll keep wanting things. I’ll keep caring about things. I’ll keep being dramatic and messy and sometimes a little too much, because that’s what Mia and Blair taught me. That, in the chaos of girlhood, there’s power. There’s beauty. And, most of all, there’s freedom to fail, try again, and when necessary, burn it all down.

So, let’s retire the “I’m just a girl” trend. Let’s bring back the girlbosses who were too much. The ones who wore their ambition like armor and their emotions like a badge of honor. The ones who didn’t just want love. They wanted everything. And they were willing to fight for it.