Girl Up is often cited as one of a list of campaigns that epitomize everything about the girl powering of development, and more broadly, neoliberal appropriations of feminism (for example, Chant, 2016; Desai, 2016: 248; Switzer et al, 2016: 38; Robinson, 2022: 267). Indeed, as will be explored later on, many of the campaign's initial promotional materials leant themselves to this critique, with calls to girls in the Global North to rescue their Southern counterparts through ‘selfie humanitarianism’, in which ‘[s] isterly solidarity with disadvantaged girls is figured less in terms of redistribution or social justice than in terms of a makeover of subjectivity for all concerned’ (Koffman et al, 2015: 158). However, there is much more to the campaign that perhaps immediately meets the eye. This is the first of two chapters exploring the Girl Up discourse in all its complexity, informed by the work on the girl powering of development, but also adding a different perspective. While there is so much about the campaign that resonates with the critiques of girl power discourses, there are also moments of rupture, sometimes in the words of Girl Up members themselves and sometimes even in the materials the campaign produces.

In this chapter, I analyse a series of Girl Up campaign and fundraising materials, both from when it launched in 2010 and from 2016 to 2017, when the bulk of this research was conducted, including a Club Starter Guide (Girl Up, nd d), an impact report on the first five years of the campaign (Girl Up, nd c), documents, posters and photos downloaded from the resources section of the Girl Up website in 2017 (Girl Up, nd f), including fact sheets about five of the countries where the campaign funds girls’ education projects (Ethiopia, Guatemala, Liberia, Malawi and India), and a promotional video explaining what the campaign is about (United Nations Foundation, 2010b).