The Importance of Taking Teenage Girls Seriously in Stories
I
read a lot of archival newspaper coverage of concerts attended by teenage girls
as part of my research for my book, which is about fandom. When the concerts
they were going to were Beatles concerts in the early 1960s, journalists
described the girls as hysterical—deranged? —participants in a "wild-eyed
mob," but I found it strange when The New York Times described them 50
years later as "squealers" and "embarrassing idiots" who
"hadn't yet decided that shrieking doesn't become them." Those girls,
like me and my three sisters, were at One Direction concerts at the time.
I'm
not bringing this up because I want to hang on to a grudge. It's objectively
amusing to speculate in the press about what is and isn't becoming for young
women. And bygones are bygones—at least not in the press of record—people
aren't really permitted to make fun of girls like that any longer. Still,
telling some additional stories about who fangirls are and what they seek was a
part of what I intended to do in my book. After speaking with them, I
discovered that they, like most people, were out to accomplish strange and
unusual things. They were quite specific, which is the most fascinating type of
person to converse with.
I've
been able to revisit some of my favourite fictional stories about young women
now that the book is finished and I have a lot of spare time (in books, movies,
and one incredibly long TV show). Girls aren't just "squealers" in
these stories; they're weird and quirky people with a lot on their plates.
They're spectacular at times and remarkably average at others. The heroine is a
gloomy child queen in one case ("the Gloomiest Child Queen"); in
another, she's a cheerful blonde klutz. These girls are regarded seriously in
every case, and their wants form the centre of the story's drama.
1. Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? Lorrie Moore.
Berie
is eating brains in Paris in 1994, married and miserable, and "hoping for
anything Proustian," meaning she's crushing the brains against the roof of
her mouth in the hopes of jogging some memories. When it does, they recall the
seismic summer of her sixteenth year, when she was slaving away at a lowly job
with her best childhood buddy.
In
the fictional village of Horse hearts, in 1972, Berie and Silsby—yes, two
fantastic names—work together at Storyland, an amusement park. On work breaks,
they chain-smoke in Memory Lane, a covered alley, and in their spare time, they
go to lakeside bars with their phoney IDs. They are occasionally joined by a
teen co-worker who portrays Bo Peep, who is shown in flashback to have some
tragic life events ahead of her but is "tireless, sardonic, and
young" in 1972. "Have you seen my fucking sheep?" she'd inquire.
Silsby
is Cinderella, "the most refined girl in Horse hearts, not a difficult
task, but you have to realise what that could do to a girl," says Berrie.
I'm not going to give anything away about their relationship since this book is
brief, and anyone could read it today at lunch if they wanted to—and they
should. All I'll say is that, while there isn't a "frog hospital" in
the strictest sense, there is one in a more literal meaning than you may think.
2. Raw, dir. Julie Ducournu
My
favourite film is Raw. In the theatre, I saw it three times. It's about a
French adolescent who enrols in veterinary school and discovers she's a
cannibal. (Her parents are well aware of this, which is why she is only allowed
to eat mashed potatoes in restaurants.) Cannibalism is presented as natural and
fascinating in the film, but not in an edge lord way. It's incredible! "You
have this feeling when you bite someone's arm for fun that you want to go a
little further," director Julie Ducournau told The Guardian during the
publicity tour, expressing her displeasure with the audience's shock and horror
at the cannibalism, implying that they were lying about being morally and
physically disturbed.
It's
a body horror film, but most of the scares have nothing to do with people being
eaten. It stems from a full-body rash, a botched bikini wax, a poor habit of
eating one's own hair, and a strong sexual yearning for a soccer player. Who
hasn't experienced anything similar?
3. Mustang, dir. Deniz Gamze Erguven
Five
amusing sisters with identical hair embarrass their grandmother, uncle, and
nosy neighbours in rural Turkey by playing a game of chicken-fight in the ocean
with some boys—grandma describes it as "your parts touching their
necks." This begins a new terrible era of their development, in which they
are forced to wear "crap brown" costumes and remain indoors at all
times, but they do not take the penalties lying down. They shred the clothes
and throw one out the window; they set fire to a chair, claiming that it is
obscene because it has touched their bottoms. They manufacture their own gum
and have a good time during a "virginity test." ("We're all made
the same," one sister explains to the youngest sister, explaining why she
wasn't ashamed to be naked in front of the doctor.) Another interjects, "That's
not true." "One of your boobs is larger than the other.")
Pride
and Prejudice, Little Women, and The Real Housewives of New Jersey are among my
favourite stories involving girls living in a house. I also enjoy novels that
reflect how awful it is to live in a house full of sisters—one day you're
having fun, and the next you're watching them get picked off one by one. I'm
not going to lie, there is no happy ending in this film.
4. Elif Batuman, The Idiot
Everyone,
in some way, enjoys this school novel (Harvard, lol) that takes place primarily
through email and academics. Selin, the main character, is preoccupied with
language and a boy named Ivan who sucks in a normal fashion. I was in a dismal
and confusing semi-romantic situation when this book came out in 2017, so I
read it twice in two months and posted it on Instagram like everyone else.
I
recently brought it out to read it again, this time with the goal of paying
more attention to Selin's bond with her moral foil Svetlana in preparation for
the release of the sequel. When my only interest had been in the torturous
correspondence with the boy and how that might relate to my depressing,
dime-a-dozen situation, it warmed my heart to look back at what I had
underlined, in forceful mechanical pencil: "It was decreasingly possible
to imagine explaining it all to anyone." Whoever it was, boredom would
drive them to leap out a window."
5. Cadet Kelly, dir. Larry Show
The
Hilary Duff film, which was later reimagined as a lesbian romance and, yes,
military propaganda, was launched in 2002, amid a golden age of Disney Channel
original films about girls thrust into hazardous situations. This was the era
of a teen Lindsay Lohan investigating the disappearance of her English
instructor, as well as a re-imagining of Twelfth Night set in the world of
competitive off-road motorcycle racing, and Quints, a wacky film about a kid
whose parents unexpectedly had five children.
Cadet
Kelly stars Duff as an artsy youngster with a wonderful personal style whose
mother remarries to the head of a military school—Kelly must move, and she must
learn to get along with Christy Carlson Romano, a strict student leader who
isn't punished for calling underclassmen "maggots." Kelly isn't happy
about it, but she makes it work because she has no choice, for the sake of her
mother's fragile happiness. Adults are constantly in need of assistance from
children!
I
don't think I need to explain the appeal of this one. Hilary Duff, on the other
hand, is my generation's Sarah Jessica Parker—charming, she's funny and gives
us depth through the froth. Her father falls off a cliff in the middle of her
drill team's dance competition, and she is our sweetheart. She rappels down to
save him and returns just in time for the big reveal.
6. Patty Hearst, Every Secret Thing
I'm
not trying to be glib, but during the start of the pandemic, I got Patty
Hearst's 1981 biography on Etsy (?) because I truly believed it would be
relevant to the situation. (I'm trapped inside...) Actually, it didn't, but it
was a unique and entertaining read. From the night they showed up at her house
in Berkeley to the legal battles resulting from her participation in some of
their crimes, the young heiress—with the help of a credited ghost-writer—shares
every single moment of her experience being kidnapped in 1974 at the age of 19
by the hapless "Symbionese Liberation Army," from the night they
showed up at her house in Berkeley to the legal battles resulting from her
participation in some of their crimes. Don't worry, there are some hilarious
moments. ("We had a horrible time figuring out how much money my father
made.") I simply had no idea. I couldn't make a guess.")
Joan
Didion examines the evaluations of Hearst's book in her essay "Girl of the
Golden West," concluding that she came across as inauthentic and left
something out. "Given the meticulously comprehensive account supplied in
Every Secret Thing, it would be difficult to describe what the something might
have been," she wrote.
The
book is about 500 pages long and covers everything from how to lace a bullet
with cyanide to what kind of tea a captive in a closet might be offered. If
there's anything missing, it's definitely Hearst's personal reactions to the
numerous absurd discussions and situations she finds herself in—but those
should be rather evident. She writes, "I responded that I had never heard
of mung beans." "I was dubbed a 'bourgeois bitch' for it since,
according to someone, that's what poor people in America had to eat every
night, and I'd never heard of it."
7. The Fits, dir. Anna Rose Holmer
I
was enthralled by this film when I first saw it at the Museum of the Moving
Image in Queens, which doesn't even allow refreshments in the theatre. It is
set in Cincinnati and follows Toni, an 11-year-old girl who switches her love
from boxing to dancing. She is awestruck by the older ladies on the dancing
team, so when some of them begin experiencing inexplicable seizures, she has a
fit. Is this a terrible metaphor for puberty? In terms of gender? For the sake
of artistic transcendence? "The gap between flailing and acting isn't that
great," director Anna Rose Holmer told The New York Times.
Make
whatever you want of it, but don't miss the wonderful New York Times Magazine
piece about the real-life source material—a wave of mysterious physical tics
that appeared in females at Le Roy High School in New York in 2012. (Because Le
Roy is around 45 minutes from my hometown, this news story piqued my friends'
and family's interest.) Despite the fact that several parents, teachers, and
professionals were certain it was a case of contagious female hysteria, the
most likely explanation turned out to be a delayed strep virus reaction.
8. Jenny Hval, Girls Against God
I'll
admit that I've only lately begun reading this one. I believe it will
eventually include witchcraft, but for now, it's about a "provincial
goth" girl in southern Norway in the 1990s who enjoys expressing her fury
and is frustrated that she isn't permitted to do so at school ("We're not
allowed to speak 'hate' unless it's about Hitler," she complains). She's
getting into the metal scene, of course. She's a bit of a snob. She refuses to
complete a reading assignment she considers beneath her: ‘I tell the teacher
that it's an insult to the brain, and the teacher gives me a written warning.’
It's fantastic. Even if I dislike the finale or the witch nonsense, I am
confident in this advice.
9. Pretty Little Liars
What
a show it is. It's terrifying. It's a complete blunder. There are over 500 episodes
and 1,000 different cell phones in the series. I'm sure there are arguments to
be made about its societal critiques, such as the "mean girl" cliché
or our relationship with technology, but I'm not interested. These are the
toughest teens you'll ever encounter (played by 25-year-olds, naturally). They
are well aware that they may perish. They discover that their parents are a
bunch of jerks, but they don't respond.
They
aren't sentimental about high school friendship (it's evident they recognise
they have little in common outside their numerous stalkers and trauma), and
they are wary of the police. When Emily Nussbaum wrote her huge essay about The
Sopranos in 2007, she said that it had the only opening titles that were so
memorable that people still watched them every week. Maybe! Until the premiere
of Pretty Little Liars!