When Sarah and I decided we wanted to talk about teenage girls, especially using a quirky sidekick character from a short-lived television show of the mid-nineties as the conduit to the discussion, I have to admit, I hesitated.  Who in their right mind would ever take us seriously?

Two things (aside from a vague mutual predilection for those not entirely in their right minds anyhow) worked in our favor. First, as ladies, we are quite used to having to fight tooth and nail to have anyone take us seriously, ever, so not much was different there. And secondly, to our complete and total surprise, people did. Take it seriously, I mean. We coughed out maybe five hundred characters collectively on Twitter about a project discussing teen girl identities and My So Called Life, and within minutes had a dozen folks clamoring, very seriously, to participate, from women with PhDs to precocious high schoolers.  By the end of the week we were panicking to each other on g-chat about our overflowing email inboxes of interest.  And then it hit us.  That worry that we wouldn’t be taken seriously for talking about silly girl things like teenagers, pop culture in the 90s, and ladybusiness? That was basically the whole problem we wanted to confront, and within minutes we had proof that it was completely unfounded. We basically couldn’t not go on with it.  

Female adolescence is a funny thing: both coveted and reviled, somewhat feared, and always infinitely, tragically, melodramatically misunderstood.  It’s a strange demilitarized zone between being a kid and being a grown-up, something that, at the time, feels war-torn and liminal.  Yet we spend our childhood wanting to be a teenager, and once we hit our twenties we’re expected to continually pursue an idealized, acne-free version of our physical selves at sixteen.  As adults, the media tells us that our brains need to grow up — we need an adult sexuality, adult intelligence, adult self-control over our emotions — while simultaneously mandating that we do everything we can to prevent our bodies from growing up, too.   But when those coveted six years are actually happening, it feels less like a glamorous, enviable fantasy land and more like a century of alternating relentless agony and elation. And beyond that, it was full of important insights and feelings and mistakes and stories and opportunities, things that seemed so much more important than whatever it was old folks were telling us about the best years of our lives and be home by eleven.  We remember having a lot to say, except it seemed that nobody wanted to listen.  From our experience, being seventeen felt nothing like Seventeen, and everything people had to say about us seemed wrong.  Because it was hard, and it was fun, and it was lonely, and it was scary, and it was interesting, and it was worthwhile.  It’s still worthwhile.

To some extent I still do question if my ongoing obsession is somehow regressive and childish, indicative of that all-too-oft-mentioned quarterlife crisis.  I’ve recently exited that coveted postadolescent 18-24 age group, and I guess that I’m now a grown-up lady who is supposed to be cultivating a serious interest in gardening magazines and anti-wrinkle cream.  Did I miss out on some gene for an internal Ann Taylor Should Appeal To You Now clock? Loud music and socially inappropriate hair colours still seem infinitely more worth my time and attention, and I don’t get what all the fuss is about.  I don’t see anyone wagging accusatory fingers at JD Salinger while crying “Peter Pan complex! What about your Adult Life! Why do you keep Talking About Teenagers!” to the high heavens, and frankly, I don’t see why I don’t get to play with the boys, too.  And besides, I pay my bills on time.  I’m a great cook.  I have dental insurance.  I’m a Reasonably Functional Adult.   

So even if I do have a bit of A Rayanne Complex, if you’ll forgive the neologism — so what?  What’s wrong with that?  We rarely ascribe to teenage girls any abilities other than athletic eyeball-rolling and an uncanny talent for racking up astronomical phone bills — although certainly many of them are remarkably talented and even (dare we say it?) interesting, nightmarish throes of puberty and all. So many of our narratives of female adolesence are about fear, control, and shame, and too often the only power we allow young women relates to a sex appeal that, more often than not, they themselves hardly understand at the time.  And all that not only sucks — it’s really, really boring.  We’re doodling in the margins of our notebooks just thinking about it.

So what we want to propose is this: perhaps we can examine the experience of being an adolescent girl and find some value in it beyond the aesthetic appeal to the male gaze.  Perhaps we can step away from the tropes of the Lolita, the Bitchy Cheerleader, the Pregnant Drug Addicted Troubled One, the Goody Two Shoes, the Bad Girl Sexpot, the Chubby Awkward One, and the Virgin Who Is In Love With A Boy From The Wrong Side of The Tracks/Vampire.  Perhaps we can learn something from both Rayanne Graff and our former (or current) selves, both our mistakes and our strengths, and the infinite complexity of our varied experiences.  Perhaps we can as a community — we have approached writers varied in race, class, nationality, gender presentation, age, and career, but all of whom have shared the simple fact of having lived as a young woman of the ages 13 to 19 and Had Some Feelings about it — work towards creating a more positive and more realistic narrative of adolescent girlhood.  Maybe we can make up for some of the shame we felt then.  Or maybe we can just accept that the ability to pay bills and get to work on time isn’t mutually exclusive to bubblegum or a little bit of ill-advised day-glo hair dye — because for one, I’m not planning on taking my nose ring out anytime soon.

Meg Clark co-edits The Rayanne Project with Sarah. She lives in Brooklyn and has a blog and a Twitter, too.

  3:37 pm  |   June 1 2011   |  21 notes