The Irish photographer Eimear Lynch chose the concept of girlhood, particularly the ritual of girls getting ready to go out together, as the subject of her first book. Drawing on her own memories of sharing clothes with her friends and gathering around a single mirror propped up on a bedside table to do makeup, Lynch spent months in 2023 and 2024 travelling around Ireland documenting how this rite of passage has evolved.

Lynch spent time with various groups of girls in their bedrooms and bathrooms as they prepped for a night out. ‘The girls didn’t really understand why I wanted to do this project’ Lynch says. ‘It was their mothers who mainly convinced them to take part. At that age, teenagers hate having their parents take their picture, so I think the mothers were just happy someone was able to document this stage of their life. It’s only when you look back when you’re older that you realise what a special time it is.’’

What surprised Lynch the most was how little the process of getting ready to go to a disco has actually changed. ‘I mostly loved the hours of getting ready with friends beforehand,’ she says. As with the teenagers captured in her book, it took up most of the day. ‘We’d usually go straight to one of the girls’ houses after school on a Friday and spend the following 5-6 hours doing our tan, hair, and makeup together.’

Lynch visited various community halls that regularly host teenage discos in the south west and east of Ireland and in Northern Ireland finding a predominantly white crowd. Some discos were held in rural areas such as Toome in County Antrim. Others were in more urban areas such as Dublin. At the venue in Toome, many of the girls wore jerseys and shorts from their local GAA team (the Gaelic Athletic Association), a sporting organisation that promotes Irish traditional sports including football, camogie and hurling. At the city discos, most girls chose to wear brightly coloured mini-dresses.

Lynch’s images capture that unique sense of expectancy about the night ahead when the boundaries between adolescence and adulthood are beginning to blur. ‘The transition from child to teenager comes about so fast and suddenly you’re completely consumed by your appearance and the first signs of womanhood,’ Lynch says. ‘Amidst the insecurities and pressures that accompany this transition, there’s also an undeniable thrill in the anticipation of growing up.’

Looking through Lynch’s images it becomes clear that a synthetic bodycon style mini dress has almost become the default option for dressing for a teenage disco. It’s a style that is also popular on reality TV shows such as Love Island. Many of the teenagers photographed shop from fast fashion brands such as Pretty Little Thing, which choose reality TV stars from these shows to front their campaigns. Lynch says the girls often share dresses, planning who will wear it to the next disco. They like to wear them with Converse trainers rather than high heels.

While Lynch and her friends used to cake their faces in foundation and scribble on messy eyeliner, today’s teenagers are experts at contouring and cat eye flicks. ‘They’re so much better at makeup as they watch lots of tutorials on social media,’ Lynch says. And while a foreword to the book written by the Irish designer Simone Rocha recalls her own experience of ‘Ironing your hair flat on the ironing board, taking turns to do your friends,’’ today’s teens have upgraded to dedicated hair tools.

While gen Z are often criticised for being too dependent on their phones, Lynch says the experience of hanging out with the girls changed her perception of how they use them. ‘Their phones didn’t really interfere with their night. They were still having lots of fun. They film themselves a lot for TikTok which encourages them to act a bit silly and dance. For me growing up it wasn’t cool to be funny. It was all about doing model type posing for the camera.’

‘I remember the excitement I had as a teenager to finally be able to partake in the rituals of beauty culture,’ says Lynch. ‘It was a sweet spot where the positives of womanhood were untainted by the weight of any impending challenges.’ In a world of filtered perfection and ring lights that clip onto phones, at the beginning persuading the girls to act candid proved tricky. ‘I would tell them just to behave as if I wasn’t there. At the start they kept turning around and smiling but eventually I faded into the background.’

Weaving her way through the crowded dance floors, lots of the male teenagers thought Lynch was a general club photographer and would ask her to take their pictures too. Lynch declined. ‘I just wanted to focus on the girls because when I look back I always had a good time with my girlfriends. It was only when boys started to get involved that things began to get complicated. So I decided I would just take them out of the equation altogether and focus on the female friendships.’