We Should All Be a Little More Like Teenage Girls

Every weekday, I go to work and teach teenage girls. I teach teenage boys, too, but they’re not my focus today. I’m twenty-two myself, so I’m not that far removed from when I was a teenage girl. But I bet, even if you’re eighty-two, you’ve never forgotten what it was like to be a teenager.

Why? Because everything is just so much more as a teen.

Teenage girls get made fun of a lot in our culture. They are shallow and vapid, otherwise their weird and moody. They’re oblivious, otherwise their angsty and angry. If they like pink or having their nails done, people roll their eyes. What a stereotype. If they play sports or don’t wear skirts, people roll their eyes. What’s she trying to prove?

If they wear revealing clothes, then they’re sluts.
If they haven’t kissed boys, then they’re prudes or nerds.
If they’re confident, then they’re bossy.
If they’re quiet, then they’re dull.
If they’re popular, then they’re vapid or catty.
If they follow stereotypes, then people dismiss them.
If they break stereotypes, then people STILL dismiss them.
And on, and on, and on.

Teenage girls can’t win. Yet they still love big, and feel deeply, through all of that struggle and all of that pain.

But I’m here to argue that teen girls are, in many ways, the best of us, and we have a lot to learn from them.

Of course teen girls have their issues, and certain pieces of the stereotypes are true at times. But usually, the exact opposite is more real for teen girls than any ounce of the stereotype.

Teen girls have some of the most passionate, powerful, and loving friendships of anyone. Sometimes they last, and sometimes they don’t, but that doesn’t actually make the difference. Each relationship etches something on our souls, and no one is more open than that to teenage girls.

And that’s where the dramatics tend to come in. I am a firm believer that it’s not that the emotions themselves are more powerful or unruly than the rest of ours, but that teen girls don’t stuff down those emotions. They let themselves feel the elation that makes them scream and dance around each other, the devastation that makes them scream-cry into their pillow when they’re heartbroken, and the ferocity that makes them obsess over anything and everything that catches their attention.

In a society where we seek to numb ourselves more and more, a demographic that feels all their feelings as deep as they can be felt might not be bad role models.

They chase the things that give them joy. They tattoo themselves names of best friends and boyfriends. They devote themselves to fictional characters. They inhabit fantasy worlds with devotion and fervor. Everything that they care about, they care about vehemently.

This one hits me personally a lot. I got a lot of eye-rolls from adults about the level of obsession I brought to the things I loved. I never just loved a little, but loved with everything inside me. Whether that was my best friend Courtney who I couldn’t handle not seeing essentially every day, to the Vampire Diaries where I dressed like the main character and compulsively drew her over and over again.

In my bedroom when I was sixteen, I took sharpies to my beige walls. I’d chosen that beige color at twelve because I thought it made me more grown up. I wanted to be sophisticated. But at sixteen, my parents were splitting up, my mom was dating, I’d started taking college classes, and I was trying to figure out who I wanted to be. I always say I bled my heartsblood onto those walls by writing every quote that struck me. There was Shakespeare and Elton John and C.S. Lewis. There was St. Catherine of Sienna and Fall Out Boy and Jane Austen.

They were what made me feel whole, what made me feel real, when everything I’d counted on for my identity was fading fast.

I just listened to some Lana del Rey and Taylor Swift. I’m watching Supernatural, a show that was beloved by teenage me. I’m enjoying inhabiting the teenage girl not so far removed from who I am now. I think, if we all scratch the surface, we’re still the teenage girl who felt too much, loved too hard, and wanted everything.

There’s a lot we can learn from our teenage selves about vulnerability, about an openness to all emotions, about loving deeply and honestly, regardless of judgement. And I think we should give the teenage girls of today, and our teenage selves of the past, credit for that, at least.

So go Sharpie your forearm with that quote you love. Turn the volume all the way up on that song you can’t stop singing. Feel it all.

Take a lesson from the teen girls of the world, and connect with yourself and the world around you.