Halle Robbe was doing something she’d done dozens if not hundreds of times before — hurrying back to her office with her hands full: Two cans of Red Bull, her wallet, and keys. She snapped a photo and shared it on Instagram with text that said something to the effect of, “After hundreds of years of evolution, this is what I can do.” The post caught on, and Robbe’s DMs were flooded with friends who instantly understood what Robbe was trying to say.
At 23, Robbe was working constantly, managing multiple social media accounts as the only female director at a marketing agency and teetering toward burnout. So when the image resonated so deeply with her peers, she knew she was on to something. She started the Instagram account, Girls Carrying Shit (@girlscarryingshit), to celebrate the feminine ability to carry many things at once, both literal and metaphysical.
“When the page started growing from my social circle to include more people, I would get submissions that were like, ‘I’m carrying X, Y and Z and the weight of the world on my shoulders,’” says Robbe. “And I was like, ‘Oh, there is this appetite to be talking about, not just the physical things that we’re carrying, but the sort of emotional weight that we’re carrying and things like that.”
In the years since launching in 2021, Girls Carrying Shit has gained over 300,000 followers. While the majority of posts are contributed by viewers, Robbe says she curates the feed with an artist’s eye for detail. “People sometimes misunderstand how much thought I put into which photos get posted,” says Robbe. “I think some people think I’m posting every photo I get, but I actually put a lot of thought into it. I’m putting thought into what these objects are saying and what is the story when these objects are combined, as well as the composition of the photos themselves. I have a set of stylistic principles I take into account when selecting images, including things like how tightly the photo is cropped, usually obscuring the face, a strong preference for imperfect photos over ‘portrait mode,’ the angle the photos are taken at, and how the items are being carried. I generally post candid-feeling photos, but I don’t know or care whether they’re truly candid or not as long as they appear to be. Performing — for better or worse — is part of being a girl, too, after all.”
In a recent post, Grace grasps a headband, hair straightener, keys, a shot glass, thong, and her phone in one capable hand. In another, Loi Loi balances a bluetooth speaker, a glass of wine, a cell phone, and an unlit cigarette. And then there are the feet posts—a Juul clutched between the toes of a Tabi shoe, four pens lodged between the toes of a pair of Vibram Five Fingers.
“It’s not really just about the ‘girl claw,’” Robbe explains. “It’s using everything available to you. I think that’s sort of part of the deeper message too. It’s like, how resourceful women are and how we’ll use every little crevice of our bodies to get what we need to bring with us to where we need to go.”
While there’s no set formula to what makes a good GCS post, there are some recurring motifs. Everyday essentials like keys, wallet, and phones keep the posts anchored in a kind of utilitarian reality. Items that connect to femininity or domesticity, like groceries and cosmetics, remind the viewer of the feminist angle. Incongruous articles like a string of raffle tickets or a jug of windshield wiper fluid lend a tinge of the absurd. And so-called vices, including joints, bongs, cigarettes, booze, and countless vapes imbue the photos with an edgy subversiveness.
These tableaus are doing a lot; they’re more than just relatable photos of women on the go, they’re an act of resistance and rebellion, Robbe says. “I remember in middle school when people started getting their periods and they would hide their tampons,” Robbe muses. “Carrying things out in the open sort of normalizes them and can be a very small form of empowerment and resistance to what people say we should or shouldn’t be, like sharing about ourselves.”
But there’s also an undeniably girly, even whimsical, side to GCS, and Robbe, who was heavily influenced by Tumblrs like Just Girly Things says that’s by design. “I think so often women think they have to choose: You can either be into these superficial esthetic things, or you can have real conversations. And I’m someone who’s always wanted to do both, and done both, and created spaces for people to do both.”
For Robbe, GCS is a springboard, using collab posts to finance dream projects, including producing a play her best friend from college wrote and a quarterly print magazine called Pinky, for which Robbe serves as Editor-in-Chief. If Girls Carrying Shit is the foyer—open to everyone, Pinky is the salon—the place for deeper discussion and analysis.
In Pinky, Robbe takes a deeper look at the concepts that drive Girls Carrying Shit. It also serves as a community resource. “But it’s also a little bit, again, tongue in cheek, because it’s like, okay, a magazine for, like, ‘girl stuff.’ But, like, what is girl stuff?” says Robbe. “Girl stuff can be anything, so the tagline for the magazine is, ‘for girls that commit to the bit.’ And in my head, the bit is being a girl.”
Like the much-scrutinized girl claw itself, Robbe sees Girls Carrying Shit as a kind of vessel: “I think Girls Carrying Shit as this big container for me to sift through any conversations I want to have,” she says. “I like the shareability element of posting art on social media. That it can become this shared experience, and how it can be a conversation starter.”
