When first reading Young’s “Throwing Like a Girl”, I often found myself internally wondering who exactly was the “girl” or “feminine body” she’s referring to? I realize this probably seems like a very obvious question—but when you view femininity through an intersectional lens, it is one you have no choice but to ask. I concluded that these experiences of the feminine body highly depend on who that girl is.

Young argues that girls are socialized by their bodies, needing to be fragile and weak. This often can appear through how (and if) girls take up space and use their bodies. While I agree, I can’t help but ask: when we say girls, does this generalization dismiss the clear differences in femininity experiences? I think not, but it does leave room to discuss how these experiences of femininity are extremely context dependent.

Black girls sit at this incredibly complicated and unique intersection of race and gender, and it becomes clear as we have to both battle to reclaim our femininity yet also battle the racialized expectations of our bodies. We are perceived as more mature, stronger, and less vulnerable than our non-Black peers. Drawing back to my title, we aren’t even allowed to “throw like a girl”. We often exist as this weird secret third thing by society, and have to fight to even get the same feminine descriptions.

It’s not a question if Black girls experience femininity differently, but rather what happens when society will not allow us to still experience femininity. If our bodies are shaped by the situations we exist in, it serves as further proof that race cannot be separated from gender. Maybe throwing like a girl is not a completely universal experience. Maybe it depends on who is allowed to even be a girl in the first place.