Draft:If Every Girl Had a Diary (1990)

If Every Girl Had a Diary (1990)

If Every Girl Had a Diary is a short experimental video created by American artist Sadie Benning in 1990. Running just over nine minutes, the work was shot on a Fisher-Price PixelVision camera, a toy marketed to children in the late 1980s that became an influential tool for low-budget and alternative video artists due to its grainy, black-and-white aesthetic. Benning, who began making videos as a teenager, uses the camera’s intimacy and immediacy to deliver a diaristic monologue that reflects on adolescence, gender, queerness, desire, and isolation.

Content and Stylistic Choices

The video blends spoken word, handwritten text, and close-ups to create a fragmented yet emotionally resonant portrait of teenage life. Benning appears onscreen in extreme close-up or obliquely—sometimes just a hand or an eye—using the PixelVision's limitations to evoke a sense of constrained subjectivity. The narrative voice, confessional and poetic, is marked by vulnerability and self-awareness as Benning describes experiences of being a young lesbian growing up in a hostile or uncomprehending environment. This personal narrative is intercut with drawings, phrases scrawled on notebook paper, and other handmade visuals, underscoring the DIY aesthetic and emotional honesty of the piece.

The video’s form echoes the structure of a diary: nonlinear, private, and intimate. Rather than following a traditional storyline, it weaves a series of visual and verbal fragments, allowing viewers to inhabit an internal world of the speaker. Benning’s approach aligns with feminist and queer critiques of dominant media forms, challenging the polished, heteronormative imagery of mainstream television and film.

Context and Production

If Every Girl Had a Diary was created during a time when access to media production tools were expanding, which allowed new voices to enter the art world. Benning was part of a generation of artists who embraced alternative media formats to explore identity politics and marginalized subjectivities. At just 16 years old, Benning began working with the PixelVision camera in her bedroom, making work that was deeply introspective and politically resonant.

This video builds on Benning’s earlier pieces, such as A New Year (1989) and Living Inside (1989), and was followed by Me and Rubyfruit (1990), another piece that explicitly references queer literature and sexual identity. These early works were later recognized for their contribution to queer video art and for giving voice to underrepresented experiences.

Reception and Legacy

If Every Girl Had a Diary has been widely exhibited in galleries and museums and is part of the permanent collections of institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. Critics and scholars have praised the work for its formal innovation and political urgency. It is frequently cited in academic writing on queer media, feminist art, and autobiographical video.

Benning’s use of the PixelVision camera has since become emblematic of a broader aesthetic shift toward lo-fi and self-produced media, anticipating later developments in webcam art, YouTube vlogging, and other digital forms of self-documentation. The video’s influence can also be traced in the work of artists exploring personal narrative as a mode of resistance or critique.

See Also

• Sadie Benning
• Queer video art
• Feminist video art
• PixelVision
• Diary film
• Experimental video

References

Category:1990 films Category:Short films Category:American experimental films Category:Queer cinema Category:Feminist art Category:Video art