A review by literarycrushes
Girlhood by Melissa Febos

3.0

Girlhood, Melissa Febos’s gorgeous collection of essays, reads part-memoir, part-history of the ways women are taught and socialized to inhabit their bodies under the patriarchy / male gaze. Febos weaves her own personal narrative into her extensive research on assault, consent, and trauma. The most memorable part of the memoir for me was when she wrote about her experience growing up in Cape Cod and of the betrayal of feeling othered by her own body. By the age of eleven she had fully developed and everyone from her classmates to fully grown men took this an invitation to talk about and touch her without her consent. She writes from a place of love and empathy about her younger self that I loved to read.
I read this on the beach, which was not necessarily the greatest setting for these essays, and at times I found myself glazing over and losing my place. The backdrop of screaming children, and seals playing (and trying not to think about what else might be chasing the seals) might not necessarily have been the greatest backdrop for some of her heavier subjects. As enlightening as it was difficult at times, it was a beautiful exposition of the challenges of inhabiting the body of a woman in our world and the transition from youth (girlhood) into adulthood.