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An It girl is a young woman famed for her good looks, charm and sexual magnetism, but in recent years has come to describe a young starlet who has recently broken into mainstream cinema.
Clara Bow and It (1927)
The term was coined by British romance novelist and screenwriter Elinor Glyn to describe actress Clara Bow when she appeared with success in the Hollywood silent film It in 1927. Based on Glyn's novella of the same title, the movie was planned as a special showcase for the popular Paramount Studios star. Owing to Glyn's widely publicized pronouncement, the term "It," a euphemism for sex-appeal, not only catapulted Bow to fame but became the nation's latest catch phrase, eventually entering the cultural lexicon. Bow's contemporary and friend, the actress Louise Brooks, who popularised the bobbed hairstyle of the 1920s, was also widely described as an "It girl", especially retrospectively. Some feminist critics have characterized the use of a third person pronoun to describe a human being as sexual objectification.
Bow's film was turned into a musical called The It Girl in 2001, which opened at the York Theatre Company off-Broadway starring Jean Louisa Kelly *.
Modern "It girls"
Since 1927 the term has been extended beyond the world of film, referring to whoever in society, fashion or the performing arts was in vogue at the time, including, from the 1960s onwards, singer and Rolling Stones' muse Marianne Faithfull; Talitha Getty, second wife of John Paul Getty; actress and comedienne Goldie Hawn; 1980s "wild child" Amanda de Cadenet (christened by Compton Miller as "patron saint of It Girls": Who's Really! Who, 1997); socialite Tara Palmer-Tomkinson; fashion writers Plum and Lucy Sykes; fashion icon and actress Chloe Sevigny; actress and "boho"-queen Sienna Miller; and broadcaster and actress Ksenia Sobchak (described by the Guardian as "Moscow's answer to Paris Hilton heiress and Russia's chief "it" girl": 3 June 2006).
The writer William Donaldson obseved that, having initially been coined in the 1920s, the term was applied in the 1990s to describe "a young woman of noticable 'sex appeal' who occupied heself by shoe shopping and party-going" (Brewer's Rogues, Villains and Eccentrics, 2002). At around the same time the term "posh tart" was coined as a broad equivalent, though this tended to be reserved for those, such as Palmer-Tomkinson and Lady Victoria Hervey, daughter of the 6th Marquess of Bristol, who came from the "higher" echelons of society.
The reign of an "It girl" usually lasts around a year, when they will either become a full-fledged celebrity or their popularity will fade. This term usually has a wide appeal, as compared to a teen idol, which is usually a niche audience.
See also
External link
"It girl"