The 2013 Girl Year in Review

Image via.

From Girls to “Grown Woman” (and more important stuff, too, but I’m here for the peppermint gum and sparkly pencils of girl stuff, OK?), 2013 was a big year for girls. Here is the girl year in review, along with some non-committal predictions for 2014.

SELFIES

Listen, girls were on it from day zero, but in 2013 “Word of the Year” deciders, the think-piece community, and every mom discovered (but maybe didn’t understand? I don’t know) the significance of what has always been a fundament of self-representation and self-expression in girl world. So cute!

EYEBROWS

Big eyebrows are always the answer. If that “eyebrow thickness as economic indicator” theory holds, that means that Cara Delevingne’s nu-Moss influence could be responsible for more than making it just fine-fine to wear a onesie to the airport. In 2013, thick, mega, for-real eyebrows—to be clear, not the “more” version of a clean arch; I mean face-dominating aesthetic pillars—moved from a niche idea to a regular thing.

Related: Kim Kardashian’s baby, North West—who I found out late was a girl; didn’t anyone else see North, the 1994 Elijah Wood fantastamaboringa?—has some legit eyebrows, which meant Kim was accused of waxing them, which is both absurd and mean. Also, I guess Kim is another aspect of the year in girls, so I’ll just wedge her in here.

BEING UNLIKABLE

The ways in which real and fictional women are and are not likeable was a question both asked and sort-of answered in pop culture this year, liiiike when some Breaking Bad watchers decided that Skyler White was unfairly wife-ing up Walter’s final-season menace parade (Anna Gunn, the actress who plays Skyler, wrote a solid op-ed about it), and in “you in danger, girl” movies liiiiike The Bling Ring and Spring Breakers, and in Claire Messud’s book The Woman Upstairs and its “would you be her friend tho” review cycle, aaaaand liiiiike the likability battle between a Jennifer Lawrence and an Anne Hathaway. I just want everyone to be safe and happy, so I think I have pirouetted myself out of this discussion, but it seemed interesting for the rest of you this year.

MONOGRAMS

I guess it was those Clare Vivier bags that really did it? My ancient and beloved ID bracelet precludes me from wearing too many initialized accessories, but this variety of explicit, Instagramable personalization was a rager in 2013. As a sub-head here, I guess I should mention those designer logo riffs on tees and hats, buuuuut they seem a lot more cynical and less on-zeitgeist than “THESE ARE MY LETTERS! THIS IS ME!” so let’s leave it at that.

CHELSEA PERETTI

This is my list, and I will do whatever I want, and I choose Chelmillionaire as my personal Nike Sky Hi-light of the year in girl. Chelsea’s stupid-sounding but deeply funny and perfectly self-indulgent podcast Call Chelsea Peretti started in 2012, but I didn’t get into it until earlier this year, so it counts—plus girl is on Brooklyn Nine-Nine doing more comedy with her iPhone case in the background than exists in total on other shows, plus-plus she has reached the all-caps-y zenith of Twitter. Year of Chelsea.

JUICE

Juicing was correctly identified this year as the quintessential girl food trend, beating out gluten-free everything because gluten-free is still food. Juicing is cute because it’s tasty, expensive, and ostensibly healthy but often very, very, very sugary—thus owning all four food-related Girl Quadrants.

STYLE

Cracking open the style piñata of 2013 girldom reveals a few weird 2012 repeats. We’re still with the “who, me?” ripped jean-knees, the ubiqui arm parties (that’s Man Repeller for a few inches of multi-media bracelets), and the embellished, bejeweled, printed, cropped, and cut-up sweatshirt, which held its post-Kenzo heat steady this year. This was a nice outcome because nothing is more ideally wearable and appealing than a sweatshirt, but it was also a little sad because I want sweatshirts with puffy arms and awkward cuts to be available to me as a “visiting my parents” closet choice, and not a replayed, overdone fashion thing.

Anyways, this year was really about THE POINT: pointy nails, pointy rings, and pointy bracelets, necklaces, and earrings, in zigzag, lightning, diamond, and spike formations—delicate and gold and tiny in scope but jutting every which way. I guess pointy-toed pumps were also back, but D’Orsay flats easily overwhelmed them, at least in my vision. Also, on the issue of 2013 rings, I’m not so sure about the ones that ride way up above the knuckle. What do you think? They’re weird, right?

LORDE, MILEY, TAYLOR

And HAIM too, but they fit in my subtitle less neatly. Much of the serious music and music-industry discussion in 2013 swung around those three girls like ribbons on a maypole, between “Royals” (actually 2012 but you know what I mean), the Sinead stuff, the beige latex panties, “Wrecking Ball,” and the kitty-cat and birthday party Instagrams, and even considering the concern-trolling, beauty standards, pop wars, something, something, something, they seemed to just… handle it.

BEYONCÉ

If I had written this last week when I was really supposed to (my schedule is on a three-to-seven day delay because I got so, so sick), Queen B would have been the pink-on-black flag planted firmly on Girl Mountain. But now it feels weird to end on something so obviously the pinnacle of the year in girl, so how about I put Bey second to last? Sure.

Related: WASN’T THAT CRAZY THOUGH?

COZY

This month sometime Hello Giggles boss @sofifii tweeted, “I think a 2014 trend is going be grown women sleeping with teddy bears and childhood blankets.” This is also my prediction for 2014. I recently discovered that I have a blankie that I not only sleep with but also bring with me to my desk in the morning to make my 5 AM wake-up feel a lot better. I’m pretty sure that a renewed (or new, I guess, either way) sense of self-care and self-reliance—which includes a commitment to basic tactile comfort in order to generate the mind and body energies required of a 2014-style, self-sufficient, independent, cool-customer “Grown Woman” (callback!)—will be important. I mean maybe not with actual teddy bears, but let’s take an opportunity to be alone with ourselves and our soft things once in a while (I recommend Friday nights), so next year’s girl in review will be about how we all did amazing stuff at work, were kind to each other, had fun, and went to bed all exhausted but done.

@KateCarraway