What the Girl Behind Girls Carrying Shit Is Carrying
In convo with your favorite Instagram account's favorite Instagram account.
A jar of peeled garlic, a box of tampons, a snake, the moon, loose CDs, a chopped off ponytail, Sonny Angels doing a host of depraved things — you name it,
has a photo of a girl carrying it.Halle is the brains (and beauty) behind, Girls Carrying Shit, a project dedicated to documenting the weight of girlhood. Her ethos is clear:
“After thousands of years without pockets, non-men have evolved a superior grip to carry our shit.”
She’s also the editor-in-chief of Pinky magazine, author of the newsletter
, and you may have spotted her recently on your favorite gay talk show. I chatted with her to get to the bottom of what we’re all wondering — what shit are you carrying, Halle?
How did GCS start? And what “shit” was the first GCS girl carrying?
Living in NYC, there’s always a convenience store within a block or two of wherever I am. I find myself running down the street to grab something at least once a day, but never bringing a bag because I’m always going for just a few items, if not, literally just one thing. I try not to pay for bags at checkout either because it feels wasteful, so at some point, it became a challenge to see how much I could carry without needing to resort to a bag.
One day I took a break at the office to grab some caffeine and only brought my keys, wallet, and AirPods. There was some kind of deal on Red Bull, so I bought two. I was feeling silly (burnt out) that day and thought it would be funny to post my handful of shit on my personal Instagram story with a caption along the lines of what the bio is now — I think it was, like, “the result of thousands of years of evolution” — and a bunch of my friends slid up being like “I do this too!”
So I made the account later that day and started taking pictures of the girls around me carrying shit. The first picture was my friend (and then-co-worker) Barbara carrying everything on her desk.
What are you carrying at the moment? What do you wish you could take off the load?
I’m carrying the responsibility of running a community for girls/non-men during a time that is really scary for us, especially if you’re not white or not straight or both.
If I wanted to, I could probably hide behind the fact that GCS is a “meme page” and not do anything, as I’ve seen other “girl”-themed pages do. But that’s not the kind of page I’m interested in running or the kind of person that I’m interested in being.
In my opinion, if you’ve built a platform off the support of a certain demographic, it is your responsibility to use that platform to speak up for them. If you only reap the benefits of leading a community, without giving back to it, I think that’s very parasitic.
Not to mention, in the girl-sphere, it’s very ignorant; girlhood can be light, aesthetic, and fun, but it can also be dark, painful, and dangerous. So I think I’m carrying the weight of balancing the two, but it’s a weight I’m honored to carry.
You’ve been open about the political reasons behind this page and the frustration of seeing copycat pages centered around men. Why is it specifically girls who are carrying shit?
God, there are so many reasons. To start, the premise of the page is that girls have evolved a superior grip to carry our shit due to the lack of pockets in women’s clothing, specifically, and to celebrate the innovation that’s occurred because of this. Lack of pockets is not generally an issue for men; if they’re carrying shit, it’s very much a choice or even what is “expected,” which just doesn’t deserve the same recognition. It’s not subversive.
We also just do not need a “boy” version of every “girl” thing, especially when my page is for all non-men and not just cisgender women. It’s very heteronormative to play into this dichotomy of boys v.s. girls in a way that feels almost oppressive. I don’t want to go head-to-head with the boys. I don’t want boys in my sphere at all.
Also, the page was my idea, so I don’t particularly love when people of any gender make their own versions of it. Was it the most original idea in the world? No, but I did it first, which is pretty much the premise of any art project (and I do think of GCS as an art project). My favorite old wive’s tale in the art world is that story about someone pointing at a piece in a modern art museum and being like “I could’ve done that” and the other person being like “but you didn’t.” Men have been doing really simple art techniques and claiming them as their own (the most famous example being Pollack with splatter paint). Why is it any different when I do it?
And anyway, GCS really isn’t as simple as it appears. I made a post about this recently, but every aspect of the page (from the type of images I feature to the spotted series to the caption style) was specifically designed to reflect or reference the girl experience. I don’t expect everyone to be conscious of this — most of the time, I prefer that they aren’t, because I think that’s the mark of good art: that it seems effortless. But when men make their “own” pages based on GCS without changing anything but the pronouns, it doesn’t work. If anything, it feels mocking, like when men do skits “as women” and do nothing but put on a wig/use a high voice. They clearly don’t understand the source material.
Lastly, to go out on a petty note, I saw that one of the copycat accounts run by men hashtag one of their posts as #cofounder. Which implies that it took not one, but two — or maybe more — men to steal a woman’s idea. At that point, it feels like they could’ve put their heads together and thought of something original.
I see comments on your page along the lines of “I knew it couldn’t be a straight girl behind an entire account dedicated to women’s hands.” How does your queer identity impact the way you view this project?
I’ve been an outspoken feminist and borderline-misandrist my whole life, but didn’t connect it to being a lesbian until I was in my early-20s. I mean, I’d known I was interested in women since high school, but it wasn’t until the pandemic, (about a year after I graduated college), that I realized I didn’t fully identify as a woman and that I wasn’t interested in men at all.
I went through a very intentional process of de-centering them, to the point where I wasn’t actively speaking out about them anymore, because I really didn’t think about them. By the time I started GCS, I’d created a life for myself where I was surrounded by queer people, and men (specifically straight, cisgender men) were basically a non-factor in my everyday life, which was incredible. So when I started GCS, I wanted to create a page that reflected that and extended it to people who may not have gotten to that point in their own lives yet, to show them that a life that doesn’t revolve around men is possible.
Granted, I’d chosen “girlscarryingshit” as a handle/title so I knew that I’d have to go out of my way to make it clear that the page is not just for cisgender women. In my head, it was a very tongue-in-cheek name for the page, a reference to the legendary “just girly things” Tumblr page (which I’ve since found out was also run by a lesbian). But I never wanted to even risk the possibility of attracting a TERF-y audience, so I quickly landed on the term “non-men” for the bio, etc. It still puts the page in a bit of a gray area — as some non-men are comfortable being lumped in with the girls, while others are not — but I think that existing in that gray area is inherently very queer.
People are still surprised when I mention I’m a lesbian, though, which is why I loved that comment so much. Like every other aspect of the page that I’ve mentioned, the queerness is kind of one of those things where you either clock it or you don’t. However, after I got another comment asking if I was queer recently, I did add “(lesbian)” next to my name in the bio. It was mostly a joke because of how frequently I’ve been asked, but in the current political climate, it feels empowering to make my queerness unmissable. So I’m leaving it for now.
GCS has recently expanded into merch and collab work. (Gorgeous posters and greeting cards, if I may add my two cents.) Where do you see GCS going this year?
Thank you so much! I’m really proud of the work we released in 2024. We have a couple more ideas for merch in the pipeline which I can’t talk about just yet, but primarily we’re ramping up production on Pinky!
Before this year, we were publishing it bi-annually, but this year we’re increasing it to a quarterly schedule. The first issue of this year will come out in late March and is “code”-themed. As someone whose work has always blurred the line between online and IRL, I’m very excited to release something that addresses this dichotomy head-on.
And how does Pinky fit into the GCS world?
I explain it to people as this: the Instagram page is for the physical shit we carry, and the magazine is for the metaphysical (mental, emotional, spiritual) shit we carry. Pinky was born out of my own desire to engage more deeply with the GCS community, as well as create a space where girls could talk about “girl stuff” (aka, anything) without being censored by social media or a major publication.
The main thing that ties the two together is that the content of both projects is for girls, by girls. But stylistically speaking, I’ve also tried to keep Pinky as true to the aesthetic of the page as possible. Mainly, by continuing the tradition of faceless pics — that isn’t something I’ve seen a magazine do before, and I’ve realized throughout our first four issues some of the reasons why, but I still think it’s an aesthetic worth committing to.
There are so few spaces where women are celebrated for things besides their looks. And the “anonymity” of it goes well with the intimate vibe of the publication, too. I want Pinky to be a place where girls can feel safe to spill their secrets.
You’ve launched a Substack! What can readers expect to find on ?
So, my intention was to write about social media in a deeper way than I feel it’s typically written about. I wanted to write about things like the ethics of posing for “candid” photos (a major topic of debate on the Instagram page), and I still want to write about that.
But with everything that’s happened since the inauguration and the major role that social media (primarily Meta and TikTok) is playing in politics, I’m feeling pulled to write about Dark UX and the major role it plays in our current reality. We’ll see if that becomes an overarching theme, or if I just do a post or two on it, but that’s what’s been on my mind lately.
And for the girls snapping pics and submitting them to GCS… What items do you get sent most often and what do you wish people would submit more?
The most common photos I receive are of peoples’ groceries or of them carrying things to/from the car which, honestly, are rarely what I’m looking for. I don’t think there are specific items I wish I’d receive more of, so much as kinds of framing I’d like to receive.
I get a lot of selfies, which sometimes work, but often don’t because they’re too close up and they lack context. My favorite submissions are the ones where every object in the image is fully in-frame and we can get a sense of what was happening in the photo just by looking at it. Sometimes this can be achieved through the objects alone, but usually it means getting a bit of the background in frame.
Basically, I need the girls to back up. Hand your phone to a friend or put it on self-timer (no one will know). Or, better yet, focus less on getting photos of yourself and more on getting photos of your friends. I love when people send in photos of their friends. I’m like, that’s the spirit.
Keep up with Halle on Instagram @GirlsCarryingShit and @hallerobbe, subscribe to thumbnail gazing, and grab a copy of Pinky online or at McNally Jackson (issue 5 coming soon!) <3
I have never heard of this account and I have obviously been missing out… this is a true masterclass in The Claw™️
wow loved this!