Dolphin Girls, A Blog

Eee! Eee eee EeeeEEE! That’s dolphin for nothing at all. Books and media for young girls teach them the language, personalities and facts they need to memorise in order to be categorised for their obsession for the tween*-early teen years. Who makes these decisions? Does it matter? Everyone talks about horse girls, they get all the press. Mermaid girls and fairy girls are the next most popular, but there are so many others that go under the radar. There are history girls, book girls, science girls, tv girls, I know it sounds like I’m just listing things and the word girls after it but it’s true. There are probably more different types of girls even since I was a girl.

An environment girl. She loves the environment so much she’s trying to like save it? Or something wild like that.

The obsession paints the walls of your bedroom and your life, defines your friend groups and becomes the weird facts you spew out when you are drunk in your early twenties. But there is one group of girls I don’t think gets paid enough attention to. Dolphin girls. Because really, what the fuck?


Dolphins, the horses of the sea. Smooth bois that slip through the ways and into the hearts and minds of many young girls. Dolphins have gotten their own branded products, films, tv shows, books, probably other stuff that I don’t want to delve into right now. And it’s still really weird. Unlike horses you can’t own or ride a dolphin no matter what Hollywood tells you. For one thing they just have entirely too many teeth. I found this out to my terror as a child. Unlike fairies or mermaids they aren’t mythical, they don’t necessarily speak to a sense of magic or adventure. And while dolphins are good at swimming and jumping real high they cannot braid your hair and their voices are shrill above or below the water.


But I didn’t come here to share a bunch of dolphin hatred. Honestly I’d forgotten dolphin girls existed, or that I kind of was one for a hot minute I remembered about dolphins when I stumbled onto a mid 2000’s book called The Music of Dolphins.

This book combines the 2000’s obsession with weird science concepts and categorising girlhood. A young girl has been raised by dolphins is caught by scientists studying feral children. For a while it seems like she will be able to rejoin human society but she reverts and is sent back to live with her dolphin family. It’s interesting to see these books now that National Geographic has taught me what I know now about dolphins and their social behaviour which I am kindly not sharing today. This book, and all others of its ilk create and intimate relationship between girlhood and its subject. Being a girl is inseparable from being a part of the world of categorisation and doom to any attempt to separate the girls. Choice is often a factor in these stories as well. While the girls may have an evil stepfamily, or a prophecy, or a stolen friend bringing them into the world they want to be there. The girls have a point where they could walk away and they never do. Instead while the world remakes them in their image, they remake the world in their image.

I wasn’t as into dolphins as I was into other things like mermaids and obscure facts. I watched some movies, I read some books but they never really caught my heart. Except for these fat fuckers who I think are actually porpoises:

But I guess dolphin girls are just like the rest of us, just trying to figure out what we like and what really means something to us. The deep defining obsession of girlhood is really to figure out who you are as for the first time of your life one stage ends and another one begins.




*Does anyone even use the word tween anymore?