Growing up these days is hard for a girl.
For one, the expectations on us are ridiculous, and largely unspoken. It's all about shaved legs and plucked eyebrows and smooth skin and ridiculous figures that none of us will ever get. Me? You know, sometimes I just too damn lazy to shave my legs. I look up from the bath at the razor from it's stupid plastic wall caddy and I jus think 'I hate you.' My eyebrows..I don't even want to talk about my eyebrows. They're horrible. And I'm a size twelve desperately trying to Zumba away last year's post-dumping binge, but really, I have nothing against being a size twelve. Real women have curves.
And then there are boys.
Teenage boys and teenage girls are very different, which is why teenage relationships very rarely last. Teenage girls go through a lot of shit, and we're on this permament rollercoaster, whether you like it or not. One moment you're playing cops and robbers with the boys and being immature about 'boy germs', and then the next minute you've got boobs and you have to carry pads in your bag and hair starts popping up in random places and your bum gets really big and then you find yourself drooling over that boy in your Social Science class even though he's skinny and pimply and you know deep in your heart he's really not good enough for you but you act as though you're not good enough for him and he kind of goes along with that, which is sad.
Boys at my age are heartbreakingly immature. I'm not being sexist, but teenage boys are simply not capable of living up to an average teenage girl's grand hopes and dreams on love and marriage and boys and sex and babies. I mean, seriously, most teenage girls, if it wasn't for education and starting a career, are emotionally ready for a long term relationship and marriage and babies, and apart from the aforesaid education and career-building it's really the boys that make the average marriage age 24 and not 14. Six years of the most epic fail nonexistant love life has made me realize that children have this thing in their brain called immaturity. At the age of twelve it falls out of a girl's brain and she grows up, but in boys it matures into this disasterous thing of sexism and horniness and cruelty and hypocrisy and ridiculously high expectations on girls and whatever other else I can badmouth about my exes, and the sad thing is sometimes this thing in boy brains never falls out.
From the time I lost that beautifully innocent time of 'boy germs' and when I started to fall in love too often and too deeply for my own good I have often seen this inequality in the sexes. This ingrained biological need to be wanted and loved and adored and to be wanting and loving and adorable has turned the tables on us, and has allowed men to stamp over even the most hard-hearted of feminists. Now I look back at some of the incredibly lame and degrading things I have done in the name of love and I curse myself for not being stronger, and for not waiting until boys turn into men, not waiting for someone who might actually be worth my while. But yet it's still there, and I'm still going at it, I'm still chasing the unchaseable, no matter how hard I try to supress it or deny it.
Nature has allowed men incredible liberties, and yet nowadays men don't even open doors for you, or stand when you enter a room or offer you their seat. Nowadays it's not even enough to wait until boys become men, because for most of them...they'll never be men. They'll never be worth it, but we chase them anyway.
5 comments:
Feel free to contradict me on this.
I have a feeling that male immaturity is there to stroke the "tend and befriend" index in women.
When it is off-putting, it can be a challenge.
Yes: the roller-coaster life of a teenage girl - which seems to start a few years before official teenagehood and for a few can go on into the 20s and 30s.
It seems the men I get along the best with have an unsullied youth or youthful appearance, as well as making things happen out there.
When it comes to love there is no such thing as "too often" or "too deeply". Again, it is the destabilising power of the expectations which allows one to think and feel this.
And sometimes, if we waited until boys turned into men, we would not enjoy them as boys, and they would not enjoy us as girls.
And that's why there's the incredible phenomenon (not syndrome, Lady Renegade) of the "manchild".
One thing which might or might not help is treating them with the respect they want and as they aspire to be.
Another wondering: the lack of "Dad" quality is probably why we might transfer it to politicians and other such figures. We sometimes vote for politicians based on their "Dad" quality.
And if it wasn't for the immediate or extended pressure to have babies women would find ways to be and to grow up. Indeed, we already have.
(To what extent is elective hysterectomy anti-feminist? How might it change body integrity and autonomy?)
What do you think?
I went through that phase as a teenager. I had the biggest crush on a really unattractive boy from another school, and then many more unworthy ones.
When I look at my teenage boys, they don't go through such emotional roller coasters like girls their age.
I sincerely hope my posts don't give this opinion across that all women are the reincarnations of the Virgin Mary, because believe me, I know they're not. Pour exemple, a few lines in one of my poems 'Now I'm a sophomore there are those dumb blonde girls/who don't really like me/because I actually have a brain. Now I'm a sophomore/I'm supposed to be a big girl/But to them I'm just easy meat/For them to pick on.
Please try and see that when I write I write what I observe, and only what I observe - I'm not really bothered with other factors that I don't deem relevant. For example, if I'm writing about men who are douchepackers, I only write about that - I try not to write about too many things at the same time. Just because it isn't in any of my blogs please don't assume that I think that all men are as chauvinistic as the ones that I write about. Just because men may be the particular villain in question for that particular post it doesn't mean I question the existance of other, female villains.
no u.
But seriously, you hating men seems to be a major theme on this blog. It's pretty lulzy.
Sometimes what is not said is as important as what is said or written.
And I know that female villains have been covered as well on Teenage Dreams over the years. Some obvious, some subtle.
(Keep in mind that I've only been reading the blog for 13 months, plus some retrospective reading to understand the context. A year and more is not a long time to know someone and feel the changes happening).
Many of the systemic biases/failures are important and relevant. We do take in a certain epistemic universe.
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