girlish

Wittingly or not, Gaines seems to understand that her ability to play the “victim” of these supposedly demonic trans forces depends on presenting herself as girlish.

Katherine LaNasa’s radiant smile is contagious enough, but when she let out that girlish squeal after a clearly unexpected victory, I felt her excitement in my bones.

With a gimlet eye and a surprisingly girlish laugh, Vera is cantankerous, impatient, intensely private, unapologetically disheveled and utterly glorious.

She could be sweet, evil, overbearing, put-upon, thoughtful, impulsive, girlish, vulnerable or manipulative and superimpose selected qualities for extra complexity, always with a compressed energy, obvious or veiled.

She wears mini skirts with girlish ruffles and small kitten heels to begin with, before adopting her distinctive pinup aesthetic as she dives deeper into the music industry and her self-destructive habits.