The Return of the “Good Girl” Body

If you’re new here, welcome to Girlhood, the group chat we should have had all along — where we talk openly about our bodies, the questions we whisper about, and the everyday moments that make us pause, laugh, or rethink life. It’s everything you’re feeling, but didn’t know how to say. Let’s dive in!

Hi friend,

I’ve been thinking a lot about how diet culture didn’t disappear; it just learned how to blend in. What used to sound like “being good” or “watching your weight” now gets repackaged as “optimizing,” “clean eating,” “hormone balancing,” or “longevity.” The words changed; the pressure didn’t.

And lately, that pressure feels louder than ever. There’s this whole dialogue happening online about how women in Hollywood just keep shrinking — the same unmistakable trend, everywhere you look. And, of course, young girls are seeing it, which makes it hard not to feel like we’re inching back toward those early-2000s beauty standards we all swore we’d outgrown.

Meanwhile, the rest of us are just trying to get through the day while being fed a nonstop scroll of “wellness.” One minute you’re minding your business, and the next you’re mentally tracking glucose, fasting until noon, avoiding seed oils, lifting heavy, healing your gut, sleeping eight hours, keeping cortisol low, hitting 10,000 steps, and drinking a $14 green juice that tastes like regret. And somehow we’re also expected to have opinions about medications none of us had even heard of three years ago.

The wildest part? It’s sold as empowerment.

But honestly, there are days when “wellness” feels less like caring for myself and more like trying to get an A+ in womanhood. Like there’s this quiet, judgmental narrator grading me on a rubric I never agreed to. And I see the same pressure in my friends — smart, steady, wildly capable women — who can handle real-life crises but still feel compelled to manage a forehead line at 35.

Sometimes I wonder what would happen if wellness actually meant feeling at home in our bodies. Not fixing them. Not managing them like projects. Just being in them.

Girls aren’t born worrying about macros or inflammation or whether their breakfast “supports blood sugar.” They learn it. Which means maybe we can learn something different, too.

🔍 Ask Clara: Why is diet culture so toxic?

🧹 For Good: What Wicked Reminds Us About Female Friendship

I took my 7-year-old Wicked-obsessed daughter to see Wicked: For Good, and it was a magical experience (pun very much intended). Longtime readers know I was a full-blown theater kid, the kind who lived for cast recordings and has collected over 50 playbills since high school. So watching both Wicked movies with my daughter, and with my best friend and her daughter, felt like witnessing a core memory in real time.

And the movie did not disappoint. 

I don’t think there was a dry eye in the theater when Glinda and Elphaba (or really, Ari and Cynthia) sang “For Good.” And that final shot with the nod to the original show poster? Jon M. Chu, you win. I can die happy now.

What struck me most, though, was how quickly it transported me back to the girl I was before I became a wife and mom: the girl who loved stories, dreamed big, and didn’t apologize for being dramatic in all the best ways. There’s something about being in your late 30s that makes you want to revisit those early passions — not in a midlife-crisis way, but in a “Wait, that’s still me” kind of way.

And Wicked, for so many of us, was never just a musical. It was an introduction to the idea that female friendship can be messy and transformative. That you can be ambitious and complicated and not always likable... and still be deeply loved. That the people who challenge you aren’t necessarily holding you back; sometimes they’re the ones pushing you forward.

Watching my daughter take it all in reminded me how rare it is to see stories that center on that kind of connection without making it a subplot. Wicked lets women be the whole story: flaws, flying monkeys, and all.

🔍 Ask Clara: Why is genuine human connection good for your health?

🤰🏽 What We Get Wrong About Teen Pregnancy

Curling up with The Girls Who Grew Big, I thought it would be the kind of novel you unwind with at the end of the day. By page twenty, I was already thinking, Oh right… We were never actually taught any of this. Not in a way that made sense for real girls with real bodies in real situations. What I assumed would be a simple coming-of-age story turned into a far more honest conversation about teen pregnancy — one we should’ve had years ago.

And definitely not the version of sex ed many of us grew up with, where the message was basically: “If you have sex, you will get pregnant… and die.” That old script trained us to see teen pregnancy as a moral failure instead of a human experience. This book does the opposite. It refuses to flatten these girls into cautionary tales.

What it captures so beautifully is that complicated in-between space: when a girl is still very much a girl, yet suddenly expected to carry adult responsibilities (and consequences). As I read, I kept thinking about how unprepared most of us were for our own bodies at that age. Fear was handed to us instead of education. Judgment showed up long before support ever did.

So, is it any surprise that teen pregnancy still carries such a heavy stigma? We shame girls for outcomes we never equipped them to navigate. We expect them to protect themselves without giving them the language, context, or confidence to do so, and then act shocked when they’re left piecing together adulthood in the dark.

And honestly? Rescripted’s State of Sex Ed Report backs that up. Only 35% of women said sex ed helped them understand the menstrual cycle and pregnancy prevention. We weren’t misremembering; we were undereducated.

What moved me most in The Girls Who Grew Big were the moments the girls start recognizing their own bigness: the emotional, brave, terrifying kind that arrives way too early. Watching them navigate friendships, family expectations, the healthcare system, and the fragile hope that they’re still allowed to dream is both heartbreaking and profoundly hopeful.

Girlhood doesn’t end the moment a pregnancy test turns positive. Pregnant teens are just as deserving of compassion, options, and possibilities as any other young person still learning who they are… and who they hope to become.

🔍 Ask Clara: Why is there so much stigma around teen pregnancy?

🔒 The Great Lock-In (A Trend I Can Actually Get Behind)

When I first heard about “The Great Lock-In,” I braced for another internet challenge built to make us feel inadequate. But, believe it or not, this one feels… reasonable. The idea is simple: spend the last stretch of the year tightening up the habits that support you — not in a dramatic self-reinvention way, but in a “let’s steady the ship a little” way.

Social media is full of people documenting these micro-shifts:

"I think that the best thing you can do for yourself is to have the audacity to want more than what everyone else around you has settled for." -@audrey_fit

"Please know that it's okay to take three months to lock in on rest, healing, financial savings, and softness." -@twelve21am

And my personal favorite: “If I could stay committed to an oversized mama's boy, I can stay committed to showing up for myself” -@chelseyfromladder

It all feels refreshingly honest, a trend that acknowledges growth doesn’t have to mean pushing harder or becoming a hyper-optimized version of yourself. Healing counts. Rest counts. Choosing a different path for yourself counts.

I get it. During my fertility journey, I learned that the only manageable way forward was one day at a time. Not in a motivational-poster sense, but in a survival sense. You focus on the next right thing, the one step you can actually take, and you let the rest go. In a strange way, The Great Lock-In echoes that mindset: small, steady choices instead of a dramatic overhaul.

And maybe that’s why I’ve slipped into my own version without even realizing it. About a month ago, I committed to Pilates twice a week — not to get smaller, but to get myself out of the house, because working, sleeping, and attempting to exercise in the same four walls was starting to break my brain. It’s not glamorous, but leaving my house for that one hour has made everything feel a little quieter, a little less compressed. It’s one of the few moments in my week where my brain actually gets to be in one place at a time.

What I like most about The Great Lock-In is that it isn’t asking us to reinvent ourselves by January. It’s simply reminding us to look at our lives with a little more honesty. What’s helping? What isn’t? And what tiny shift might make tomorrow feel just a touch more manageable? It’s a reset: quiet, steady, and actually doable.

xo,
Kristyn