Girlhood
Girlhood as something stolen and demanded back - the speaker's childhood innocence, developmental experience, and identity as a girl, taken by an older man and claimed as a possession to be returned.
The innocence and developmental experience of childhood, stolen by exploitation, that the speaker demands returned despite knowing it cannot be.
Appears in 3 songs
“Only when your girlish glow flickers just so Do they let you know”
The 'girlish glow' represents the youthful femininity that fame demands and discards — the requirement that female celebrities remain perpetually young. The glow flickering signals the beginning of the end: when youth fades, the industry reveals its conditional nature.
“Give me back my girlhood, it was mine first”
The demand to return stolen girlhood, childish in tone ('it was mine first') but deadly serious in meaning. The childish phrasing is itself the point: she was a child, and is allowed to be childish in demanding back what was taken.
“When you are young, they assume you know nothing”
The repeated assertion about youth and assumed ignorance represents the speaker's adolescent self, the girl who was underestimated and dismissed, whose knowing was denied by those around her, and who has now grown into an adult who can assert what she knew all along.