ABSTRACT
In the relationship described in “You Should Have Seen the Way He Looked at Me,” the girl celebrates above all the fact that her boyfriend is pleased with the way she looks—as in so many girl group songs, we learn nothing about the boy’s character or his own powers of attraction. What is important about him is the way that he looks at her and that he has selected her as the prettiest girl, and his approval is worth all the more because the girl has done nothing out of the ordinary to elicit his love-struck gaze. Still, a girl listener impressed by the narrator’s achievement would know the hard work that went into being so (apparently) unselfconsciously adorable, because she herself would carry it out and accept it as a normal part of being a girl. This disingenuous façade is as much a part of the veil of girlness as any of the other bodily practices I have discussed. An equally important aspect of this mask in girl group performances is the matching costumes worn by singers as they enacted the approved gestures and stances of girlhood and sang of its experiences.
