i've been fascinated by the idea of girldhood and as someone who has just come out of their teens, i have observed that a lot of complex media has come to be appreciated at a surface level, often for their aesthetic and visual language than their contextual meaning or their original purpose. one such media is the virgin suicides and it is a beautiful movie, one of my all time favourites. i am aware that one of its legacies has been that of being coopted in tumblr moodboards and other media, contributing the hazy pink girlhood aesthetic that Coppola helped create.
this sort of coopting is also seen with other movies such as Jennifer's Body. but unlike Jennifer's body which is a little more on the nose about its feminine gaze and juxtaposition of gender expectations, Virgin Suicides is little more complex. I don't think it is up to me or anyone from my generation to school the current teenage generation about how they should perceive and consume media but I do hope that they make an effort to understand the larger context of media. this brings me to my main point:
It is disappointing to see the virgin suicides being used as an aspirational aesthetic of girlhood, when if you think about what the story actually says and shows, such a notion would be horrifying, problematic and ignorant. I love Coppola's aesthetic but I love it because of the questions it raises and how it questions me about the inherent performative-ness of girlhood and by doing so, gives me the opportunity to grow beyond and discover the ins and outs of what girlhood means to me and what role beauty and aesthetic play in it. One of the key points Coppola tries to highlight is how much of girlhood is highjacked by performance and external lenses, and how it influences growing girls. I hope as growing girls in the media consumption landscape, this context of the movie, and the history of the aesthetic it helped shape is not forgotten.