For all the glamour represented in sisterhoods and girl-gangs, popular culture has a tendency to represent female friendships as having a raison d’etre, an intrinsic goal of ‘getting in formation,’ often merely focused on “serving up looks,” or having a mandate to organize with a specific objective – one implication being that a woman must get others involved if she wants to achieve her personal goals.
In Hannah Gerber’s latest video, Girl Talk, the simplification of female friendships and their foundations is simultaneously taken up and smashed down. With raw honesty, the song addresses how “pop culture often pits [women] against each other, in order to glorify men’s sexuality”, and visually draws attention to the value of female mutual support outside of an ‘instrumental’ purpose.
The video for Girl Talk shows Gerber with her (actual) closest girlfriends, adding a personal layer to the project meant to show appreciation for and inclusion of the meaningful female relationships, which do support women in their creative work. The stunning visuals of Girl Talk were shot at OurHQ studios in Montreal, and directed and executive produced by its Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer Christian Goue.
Through her lyrics, which confront a fading friendship that has succumbed to the jealousies encouraged by the “patriarchal order of popular culture”, Gerber’s personal testimony holds power in and of itself, with no external validation needed. In presenting her friends not as props to help support her message, but as individuals who celebrate each another’s overcoming of struggles by virtue of simply being present for one another. Contemplative and reserved, the interiority of each member in Gerber’s crew is equally visible, while their withdrawal shows a shared mutual understanding that the present moment belongs to their friend’s testimony, and knowing that centring her voice does not take away from the ability to raise their own.
Girl Talk is a song about what happens when female friendships go sour, and the video’s inversion of sexist tropes of female friendship is not meant to absolve personal responsibility for falling into the trap. Instead, by focusing on a singular perspective while showing the interiority of other faces, she gives us a much more ‘ideal’ depiction of true sisterhood: that a group of women can better strengthen themselves through recognizing and honouring the value of their individual experiences, rather than performing a glamourous, hyper-toxic, and conflict-ridden collective that popular media, whatever its ends, would have us portray.
Hannah Gerber’s EP ‘Girl Talk’ is available on all streaming platforms
