The genre I am working with is headlines from magazines for teenage girls. They can be toxic, and overly appearance focused at worst, but give genuine advice about topics teenage girls might be too afraid to ask at best. This genre seems perfect for random text generation, because slight changes in language can turn helpful to toxic, and also these headlines follow really specific grammatical structures.

I’m exploring this concept I’m calling “girl-world building” for my thesis project. Dissecting the the language of teen magazines deepens my understanding of “girlhood” as I personally experienced it. One of the resources I’ve been finding myself revisiting is “gurl.com.” A project from the late 90s, early 2000s by ITP alums Rebecca Odes, Esther Drill, and Heather McDonald. Everything about it feels like my style. Here’s a snapshot from March 2000 from Wayback:

The second I saw this, I started trying to transition my portfolio to having more of this style because I realized the bland, sterile, squarespace templates were zapping my personality out of my website and gurl.com was everything I was missing. But yes, my site is in a serious transitional phase right now, going through reverse puberty in a way :)

Anyways, gurl.com is also linguistically inspirational to me. The tone is so sincere, the articles nailing topics that teen girls might benefit from thinking about. On the toxic, beneficial scale, I find the content of this site beautiful and poignant. When I think about why I relate to this style, it goes much deeper than just the aesthetics. I’ve been doing a lot of digging to figure out what that essence is, because that will help me understand my style as an artist better.

A lot of media created for girls and women fall on the extremes of a spectrum. Either it’s focused on only what people think is stereotypically girly (and capitalistically based) so just about makeup, about the male gaze and tricks on how to be perceived as valuable in your looks, socially, etc… On the other hand we have media pushing against this capitalism based stereotype, while depicting girls and women’s desires as resembling the capitalism based stereotyping of men. What I feel about my style

And below you’ll see an image that was going around a few years ago which points out issues on the other, more toxic, side

The headlines I based my grammatical structures on are as follows:

Ten ways to get your crush to notice you

Should you shave your legs every day?

Are you addicted to your cellphone?

How to shrink your pores overnight

17 dresses to make you the cutest girl in high school.

I just made these up but they’re pretty in line with what I saw on seventeen.com and the old gurl.com.

My first attempt with attempting different grammatical structures went like this:

Instant skincare products to hydrate your reputation.
Proven times to add shine to your mascara.
7 fool-proof methods to, ways to add dump to your shoes.
8 fun hacks to dump your makeup.
Everyday times to add shrink to your relationships.
Surprising times to add tone to your mascara.
10 instant things to add freshen up  to your fat.
Easy-to-use methods to, ways to add grow to your nose.
4 ancient hacks to add boost to your eyeliner.
8 instant times to straighten your belly.

This might have been my favorite one despite all of the changes I made to get better grammatical structure. It’s definitely the funniest and highlights the absurdity of these headlines.

I decided to add more things like “is it normal to,” “should you,” and “the risks of” because that felt like it might add that non-toxic element to some of the headlines. Fixed some grammatical things.

Ancient methods to clarify your legs.
7 low-maintenance beauty products to defrizz your stretch marks.
Unexpected ingredients that add straighten to your workout.
7 instant hacks to plump your fat.
10 unexpected reasons to hydrate your grades.
Can you define your belly.
Unexpected ingredients that add tighten to your curls.
Unexpected advice for add enhance to your legs.
4 instant ways to brighten your personality.
Should you add tone to your hair.

Not sure why at this point it started to get a little more boring and monotonous. I didn’t change much, just tried to make the possible sentence structure more diverse and read more cleanly.

Surprising things that hide your stretch marks.
Simple ideas to dump to your friendships.
Can you make your sexuality enhance.
Is it normal to conceal blemishes.
10 fool-proof hacks to get your lips.
Easy methods to make your waist remove.
The best times to make your stomach define.
10 doctor-approved advice to make your blemishes banish.
4 new items that freshen up  your teeth.
Should you banish clothes.

Added some structure options that allowed for multiple nouns or multiple verbs.

8 instant things that wash your nose with butt.
Is it normal to fake your face with stomach.
8 shocking things that smooth and improve your breasts.
5 proven ways to cleanse your face with hair.
5 cool-girl exercises to smooth butt.
10 inexpensive skincare products to define and lighten your legs.
10 holy-grail things to lighten your clothes with workout.
Cool-girl reasons to thicken to your social media.
Should you banish your lips.
4 inexpensive methods to straighten to your stretch marks.

Then I used the .ed function to add some more variation which got me things like":

Doctor-approved things that get thickened breasts.

Is it cool to get your dreams tightened.

In addition to those, some of my other final favorites are:

8 instant things that remove your legs. 

Top ten cool-girl hacks to conceal and remove your hobbies. 

Best items that defrizz personality. 

Is it normal to eliminate your butt.

10 holy-grail exercises to shrink and hydrate your brain.

4 doctor-approved advice to remove and hydrate your teeth.

8 life changing things that revamp to your nose.

The best times to fake your friendships.

What you risk when you thicken and fluff up your self.

4 mature reasons to fake your eyes.

10 inexpensive ways to banish your free time.

Is it normal to get your waist removed.

I also got some totally normal sounding outputs like:

Should you get your hair washed.

4 cheap things that enhance your lips.

Here’s my code:

And my lists of nouns and verbs: