GRWM

an love letter to the most sacred ritual of girlhood

2007: i’m watching my mom get ready to go out dancing with her friends. she sits at her vanity, putting on mascara and her red chanel lipstick. there’s something different about her—her eyes sparkle with something secretive, some adult mystery i long to unravel. when she kisses me goodnight, her long hair smells like roses and incense.

2010: my sister and her friends are getting ready for a school disco in her room. my best friend and i watch them through the haze of perfume and hairspray, hearts bursting with jealousy. they look so exotic with their smoky eyes and lined lips. once they’re gone, we sneak into her room and inhale the intoxicating scent of powdery make-up and cheap perfume. we dig through dirty make-up bags with greedy fingers and smear blue eyeshadow over our eyelids. we try on sparkly dresses and platform heels, savoring these stolen fragments of the girlhood we’ve been promised. that glittering mirage revealed to us in magazines. in movie montages of girls trying on clothes and doing each other’s makeup to a soundtrack of bubblegum pop songs. we’ve memorized every line and practiced all the steps. we’re ready for the real thing.

2013: it’s saturday night and everything is happening. a girl in our grade’s celebrating her 12th birthday in her uncle’s nightclub. my best friend and i have been locked in her bathroom for hours, getting ready in front of the mirror. rihanna’s “birthday cake” plays from my iphone, precariously placed on the edge of the sink. our eyelids are glazed in glittery eyeshadow; our lips sticky with so much strawberry-flavored lipgloss you could see your reflection in them. we smell like the frosting on top of the cake, sugary and sticky sweet. we’ve been preparing for this moment for years—with barbie dolls as our avatars and in front of the bulbed mirrors of our pink plastic vanities.

my stomach swoops when i imagine the wonders the night will hold, playing it like a movie scene inside my head: the cute boys we’ll flirt with, the dj playing our favorite songs, the disco ball scattering us in sequined light as we dance with our arms stretched into the air. i have no idea that this—the two of us laughing and singing in the bathroom, breathless with excitement—is the best part. in a few hours she’ll be crying on my shoulder because the boy she likes kissed another girl, black mascara tears streaming down her pretty face, ruining her makeup. i’ll be nauseous after taking too many sips from the bottle the birthday girl’s older brother kept offering to me on the dance floor. i couldn’t taste the alcohol through all that deceptive sweetness.

2016: we’re older, but still not old enough to get into the clubs without fake ids. we’re six girls sprawled in one bedroom in various states of undress. i’m lying on the bed in a leather mini skirt and a pink lace bra, texting the boy all my friends think is too old for me except when he’s buying our alcohol. like tonight. my best friend, dia, is sitting cross-legged in front of the mirror leaning against the wall, straightening her dark, curly hair. camilla’s doing maja’s make-up, contouring her face until her cheekbones glisten like weapons. heidi and charlotte are arguing over who gets to borrow my thrift store loubotins. the floor is covered in debris— high heels, dresses, makeup bags spilling crushed eyeshadows and dirty brushes. we pass a bottle around, vodka mixed with juice. it tastes as sweet as the scent of our signature perfumes mixing in the air—all cotton candy, vanilla and strawberry. we play girly pop songs and dance like we’d never dance at the club. wilder. goofier. sexier. when we hear it’s britney bitch we toss our hair and pop our hips as we sing along, as if we’re lizzy mcguire or britney herself, dancing around her room in pink underwear in crossroads. it’s a canon girl event—but there are no anthems for this feeling. every song we dance to is about what happens next. on the dancefloor, in the club. no one writes songs about getting ready with your friends. even in the chick flicks we were raised on this part is always a montage, a prelude. i think we’re the chorus, the part you never get sick of singing along to.

2019: the girls arrive one by one, looking like off-duty models with their hair in messy buns and their clothes stuffed into their oversized bags. we have scars from that time we dropped the straightener on our bare thigh and make-up routines that feel more like sacred rituals. i kneel in front of the mirror that’s still leaning against the wall, gluing tiny rhinestones along my lash line with the precision of someone dismantling landmines. it’s giving maddy perez, heidi says. please, my best friend rolls her eyes, she’s so cassie-coded. i throw my lighter at her and she flips me off. she’s lying on her bed, scrolling through her messages, trying to decide which party we should go to. by now we all know it doesn’t really matter. this is the part that we’ll remember. the part when we look flawless in every photo and every song that comes on is someone’s favorite. the part when the night’s potential is still as untouched as our makeup. we‘ve all seen this film before. we all know the night never keeps its promises, but we still let ourselves get high on the sweet anticipation—talking about who’s going to be there and what’s going to happen. between these pink walls, where we used to play with barbies, everything seems possible. we still believe anything could happen.

xoxo, aurora