What’s Happening: Behind the cutesy moniker that 30-somethings masquerading as “girlies” have clung to this year, cultural blockbusters and dark undercurrents abound.

The Download: The so-called “year of the girl” emerged out of nowhere this year with an ironclad grip on American culture. Much like her erstwhile cringe cousin, the girlboss, this infantilizing phenomenon has thoroughly saturated every corner of pop culture, from the compelling to the mundane. For clues as to why, look no further than Pantone’s 2024 Color of the Year, Peach Fuzz. Laurie Pressman, VP of the Pantone Color Institute, cited this past year’s “ongoing turmoil” as one of the catalysts for the almost-millennial-pink hue. “Our need for nurturing empathy and compassion has grown ever stronger.” Girl culture, for its part, elevated idealized versions of those attributes and made them attainable—for a price.

Consider the hype that propelled Hill House Home, with its viral polyester “Nap Dresses,” into a $20 million round of funding last year. They feature prominently in May December—the film’s antagonist dons them to evoke innocence and naiveté. Audrey Gelman, former girlboss incarnate, re-emerged with a country store hawking ruffled throw pillows and mugs printed with bows in Brooklyn’s grown-up Cobble Hill. A single still of Margot Robbie in a pink Corvette, deployed with strategic acumen by the brains at Warner Bros, lit the fuse for Barbie-mania, a marketing blitz spurring collaborations with Gap, Backdrop, and HGTV. A 151-page architectural survey of her Dream House was published last year and sold out immediately. Taylor Swift’s Midnights was the year’s top-selling vinyl. More recently, Miu Miu’s $5,600 crystal-embellished wool panties took Milan Fashion Week by storm.

Adults have been the ones to propel “girlishness”—a cultural phenomenon whose identity is defined as a “female child”—into the realms of capitalist dystopia. Concert tickets, sold for the price of a used car, buoyed the Fed as fans skipped rent payments to see Swift’s Eras Tour: a three-hour-long unapologetic “acknowledgment of girls as people.” Barbie, directed by girl’s girl Greta Gerwig of Lady Bird and Little Women fame, broke 17 box office records. Girl dinner robbed us of $120 per person at restaurants that did away with hearty mains in favor of six to eight sharable small plates. (Anyone who has been victimized by this menu structure will know to add $40 for the takeout pizza ordered afterward in pursuit of actually feeling full.)

While 30-somethings were busy dressing up for Barbie and calling themselves girlies on the archaic depths of Instagram, things got pretty bleak for actual girls. A recent feature by The Cut gave non-parents a peek into the nuance of prescribing GLP-1 agonists, a class of medications that includes semaglutide (the generic formulation of Ozempic) to kids as young as 12. In a post-Roe world, where access to gender-affirming care is also increasingly under threat, that means generations of kids will come of age with more access to boundary-breaking healthcare—with some major exceptions. It’s a dark reality that the “privilege” of buying co-branded pink paint, or frilly frocks, can never make up for.

In Their Own Words: Earlier this year, novelist Delia Cai declared we had reached “Peak Girl” and summed up the paradigm’s enduring appeal most aptly: “The Young-Girl [archetype] of today relies on the romanticization of an imagined past where personal responsibility for the greater state of the world does not exist. Life, therefore, cannot be all that disappointing. We crave our girlification as a coping mechanism. Adults have to worry about rent, student loans, climate change, political demagogues, bodily autonomy; ‘girls’ don’t. At the heart of this imagined girlhood is an expression of femininity without consequence. Barbie doesn’t need birth control, anyway.”

Surface Says: At least we got some laughs in at the “girl math” clips on TikTok.

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In 2021, Cecilie Manz let the world in on her creative process during the “Needle in a Haystack” exhibition at the Danish Architecture Center. The then-newly minted honoree of the Danmarks Nationalbanks Jubilæumsfonds Hæderspris—or, the Danish national bank’s center for architecture and design—award was invited to showcase her templates, prototypes, references of inspiration, and one-off works. From among the one-offs, her stool caught the attention of Fritz Hansen’s design director, Marie-Louise Høstbo, and the rest was history. This past fall, the Danish furniture brand released Manz’s Taburet, a stool and side table based on the original all-in-one she exhibited at “Needle in a Haystack,” anchored by a “freewheeling approach, working based on her personal preferences rather than a specific design brief,” Høstbo says.

The stool’s concave form makes it easy to imagine multiple uses: as an understated side chair, a resting place for one’s daily read, a nook under which to keep a cozy pair of house shoes, and a sturdy perch on which to sit and put them on.

New & Notable is a cultural catchall that highlights interesting new products and projects from our brilliantly creative members of The List. With new releases, events, and goings-on, the below moments indicate the power they have to move the needle in realms like design, architecture, fashion, art, and more.

On Dec. 1, the designer and maker of some of the industry’s most respected awards for the likes of the CFDA, Costume Designers Guild, and Emmys, hosted the opening night party for “Beyond the Red Carpet,” an exhibition of awards including the NAACP Image Award, the National Magazine Awards, and more at the Mint Museum in North Carolina. Guests donned their best white tie attire for a red carpet-inspired party to toast the exhibition. Faux paparazzi captured their entrances, while a wall of roses at the step and repeat channeled the floral magic of the Tony Awards’ own red carpet. Inside, the Society Awards team, along with friends and colleagues, sipped Möet and Chandon to mark the occasion.

Performance art pioneer Marina Abramović has pushed the limits of her body and mind for the past 50 years. She now applies body to paper through an intimate triptych carefully outlining her hands and silhouette to create a striking new portrait. Expelling red pastel swirls of energy, the prints center on handwritten words taken from her Unconditional Love manifesto that’s all about, as it goes, “inviting positivity.” Catch them exclusively on circa.art until Valentine’s Day. £360 ($456)

Based in California since 2008, Cuff Studio layers form, density, and texture to produce furniture and lighting inspired by geometry, architecture, and lifestyle. All pieces are conceived to occupy a shared space in a way that feels evolved and dimensional without appearing matched, and are created in Los Angeles.

Surface Says: Both online and from their Melrose Ave. gallery, Cuff Studio presents an updated edit of future classics in collectible design. Dusty pinks, warm beiges, and burnt orange hues channel the distinct sense of place at play in Southern California’s topography.

American crosswords seldom reflect the linguistic changes immigration brings.

One writer recounts her lively overnight stay at a student-run hotel in Colorado.

Resin-filled transparent wood is being used for windows and phone screens.

Richard Mille and Ferrari’s new timepiece is barely thicker than a credit card.