Skinny. Wallpaper. Ethereal. Although these words seem unrelated at first, they embody the majority of images of girls that Collier Meyerson, creator of the popular blog Carefree White Girl (CFWG), showed Conn students during her lecture on February 25 in Shain Library’s Charles Chu room. During her presentation, Meyerson discussed the inspiration for CFWG, her goals for the blog and how she has chosen to bring those goals to reality.
To begin her lecture on identity politics, Meyerson invited audience members to shout out relevant adjectives that described images displayed on the lifestyle Tumblr SuicideBlonde. Meyerson partially argues that—unconsciously or not—these images, many of which have a “vintage feel,” all evoke an underlying sense of a “flighty,” “pretty” and “childlike” girl or, as she has famously coined, a “carefree white girl.”
Following her logic, many of these photos do depict young women in relaxed, “go with the flow” type moods. For example, throughout her talk, Meyerson used the example of the young “carefree white girl” who has spontaneously decided to take a cross-country road trip. Untethered by rules or obligations, she feels free to roam the open fields of the American Midwest and will occasionally stop for gas without any shoes on. (For readers who are less familiar with these Tumblr images, think of alternative singer Lana Del Rey’s music video for “Ride,” in which she swings on a tire swing in the middle of the desert as an expression of ultimate freedom.) These carefree white girls usually have long and flowing straight or wavy hair and are very skinny – traits many teenage girls desire due to the prevalence of these media representations.
Meyerson’s inspiration to create CFWG stems from her upbringing as a woman of color who often became the subject of snide comments with underlying racist tones. Meyerson felt that she lived in a bubble of sorts while attending an elite New York City private school, where her friends’ parents often suspected that she was on scholarship. This type of narrow-minded thinking followed Meyerson as she got older, causing her to feel “not as wanted or accepted” by her white peers. For example, she recounts how her friends would steal from stores, but she would not because of the simple belief that stealing is bad. Despite Meyerson’s good actions, she was always on the radar instead of her less-virtuous friends.
CFWG’s namesake even comes from one of Meyerson’s most symbolic and telling stories from her young adult life. Relaxed and candid, as if speaking to some friends, Meyerson told her audience that while preparing for her first “real” date, she asked her non-carefree-white-girl friend how she should behave during this date. Without thinking twice, Meyerson’s friend said, “Just act like a carefree white girl!”
Although the blog’s title perhaps expresses some comedic elements, its simplicity highlights the essential issues surrounding societal norms about beauty and the “ideal” image of women. In creating CFWG, Meyerson wanted to address why society so openly and submissively accepts and relates the image of the carefree white girl with the stereotypical image of a “beautiful woman.” Instead of talking to her online followers, she wanted to take a more didactic approach in educating those who clicked on her blog. By using humorous commentary on photos like the ones she showed during her presentation—girls sitting docilely in French teashops sipping tea but never eating the pieces of chocolate cake next to them, drunk girls who chug Four Loko but who are too relaxed to really care and girls whose flowery garments cause them to seem like wallpaper. Meyerson commented that, “We blindly look at these images. No, let’s not look at them blindly.”
Society mindlessly accepts these images as normal because, as Meyerson argued after reading excerpts expressing W.E.B. Du Bois’s idea of “double consciousness,” gender is largely a performance. Unfortunately, such a performance limits those who do not fit the carefree white girl image. For girls like Meyerson who struggled to feel accepted in a society driven by “white power structures,” Du Bois’s concept of “double consciousness,” or the term used to describe individuals who belong to multiple groups, rang very true. In other words, for Meyerson, it was difficult to perform in order to adhere to societal expectations.
As with all forms of media that take a critical (and possibly unfavorable) stance on a social issue, CFWG has faced some scrutiny. Meyerson told Conn students that she once received an email from a reader saying something along the lines of “If you’re white, then it’s okay [to create this blog], but if not, I don’t know what to think.” Another comment I found while scrolling through the site read, “Are you jealous of CFWG? Some of the descriptions on your posts make you sound forever alone.”
At the same time, CFWG has received positive feedback. For every negative comment Meyerson has read, she has also read one that commends her comedic approach to a complex topic that, when discussed, can quickly turn into an angry battle of rasied voices. One anonymous reader praised CFWG by saying, “this tumblr is hilarious I love it.” The majority of Meyerson’s audience in the Chu Room seemed to lean towards this sort of enjoyment of CFWG and her candid opinions.
Meyerson closed her talk by showing the trailer for the 2012 film The Impossible. The movie tells the story of a white family who was separated during the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami. After it ended, Meyerson argued that The Impossible represents how the carefree white girl (in this case, Naomi Watts’ character) has forcefully entered the international stage.
Prior to thanking the audience, she left us with two questions: “Are we looking at the subjects in these photos or the actors in them? Who is the focal point?” Although Meyerson’s claim has been raised before, its relevance and poignancy in relation to the pervasiveness of the media has never been stronger. The blog’s tagline is “Carefree White Girl, where reality goes to die.” While revealing the societal ills of the media, Meyerson has certainly revived an underlying reality against which people are nervous to truly speak out.
