Girlhood
Girlhood treated as something other people act on, deny, take, or demand back, rather than something the speaker simply has. In Would've, Could've, Should've it is stolen and screamed for, "give me back my girlhood, it was mine first", the childish phrasing the point because she was a child. In cardigan it is the young self assumed to know nothing who turns out to have known everything. In Clara Bow it is the "girlish glow" fame insists on and then discards, youth made the condition of being let in. The thread is girlhood held hostage to other people's judgement, whether dismissed, exploited, or required.
The experience and standing of being a girl, made conditional by the people around her, underestimated, taken, or demanded as the price of belonging. The loss is felt as something owed back even when it cannot be returned.
Appears in 6 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.
The entire song is read as a girlhood narrative: the speaker's journey from adolescent passivity through the female experience of body comparison, romantic yearning, and eventual self-empowerment.
“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.
“The girl in the dress cried the whole way home”
The speaker deliberately calls herself a 'girl' rather than a 'woman', infantilising herself and emphasising her youth and vulnerability in the relationship.
“Don't call me "kid," don't call me "baby”
The speaker rejects being diminished to a child or an infant. She entered the affair young enough to be dazzled by its glamour, but the affair has aged her past that innocence. The labels are refused because they belong to the version of herself that no longer exists.