Lauren Greenfield

Starting in the mid-nineties, Lauren Greenfield embarked on a project to photograph a broad spectrum of modern American girlhood. She documented girls in states of deep imagination: a four-year-old playing princess, an anoxeric teen who only saw fat. She captured girls getting ready for the big dance, toiling at the fat farm, and primping at the strip club. These images were compiled in the book Girl Culture, published in 2002, and a selection of them is now a traveling exhibit, opening at the Minnesota Center for Photography on January 15 (see page 26).

THE RAKE: Several of these photos were taken in Edina. What brought you to the Twin Cities?
In 1998 I was working on a photo essay for the New York Times Magazine about being thirteen. [The Times nominated the project for a Pulitzer Prize.] My mission was to find out what it was like to be thirteen in Edina, Minnesota. In a way, the choice of the place was a little bit random. They were looking for a city that could show the influence of consumerism on kids, but without it being New York or Los Angeles. They wanted something that was more representative of America.

One of your subjects is a young girl who wants to be a stripper. The kids you met in Edina seem pretty healthy by comparison.
But they looked very precocious. They looked older than they were. That’s a result of direct marketing to kids. In the case of some of those girls, there’s an innocence, but also they are dressing, talking, and behaving in a way to get a reaction from the outside world. My first book, Fast Forward, is about how kids grow up quickly and how they are influenced by the media—specifically by the culture of materialism. This isn’t just some phenomenon happening to Hollywood kids, or “those crazy people in California.” The way that kids are in Beverly Hills is not that different from how they are in Edina. Kids in Edina are buying the same clothes as kids on the coasts. Kids in Edina were having their first outing to Starbucks with each other, without parents, or going to dinner at TGI Fridays. That kind of youth culture, where some of the signposts are chain stores or restaurants, is shared by kids all over the country.

What kind of pressures do you see affecting girls?
My passion for this project came from my own memories of growing up. I felt the pressures to have designer clothes, I was always on a diet, that kind of thing. But I think the bar has been raised for girls. Not only do they have to look good in jeans, but their stomach is showing because the jeans are low-riding and the top is a crop top, and so it’s not just about the clothes, but about the body. I think thirteen-year-olds have always been worried about clothes and fitting in, but it seems much more intense, and starts at a much younger age.

You have a four-year-old son. Do you think it’s easier to be a boy than a girl?
I think the pressures are slightly less for boys. They are encouraged more toward self-expression and creativity, while girls learn that their appearance makes a big difference. So they start putting some of their creative energy there. But I think that instead of things getting better for girls, they are getting worse for boys. Eating disorders are increasing for boysÑso is steroid abuse and plastic surgery.

Have you revisited any of the subjects of your photos?
I was doing a lecture in Florida, and Erin, who is the anorexic in the book, came to it. Then she was interviewed by the Orlando Sentinal about how her life was affected by being in the book. She said that it actually helped her recovery. Anorexics don’t know how to use their voices, she said, so they use their bodies instead. Being in the book gave her a voice. I’ve reconnected with several other girls from the book. And I think for the most part it’s just a moment in their life, and they forget about it and move on to boyfriends and school and everything else. It’s just a blip on the screen. But sometimes there’s a connection from the moment our paths cross, and we find each other again in different ways afterward.