Put yo hand up on my hip, when I dip you dip we dip

Since this week’s blog prompt is “TBA”, I suppose I’ll just chat about some of the stories we read in RED this week. In the family section, it was really interesting to me to see that some of these girls had the same thoughts, experiences, or relationships that I had. For instance, almost every teenager goes through a bout where she is angry at one of her parents. This was surely true for me when I was 13, but just like Alicia Davis, we found things to bond over and became closer. Also, I know what it’s like to have a sister abroad when disaster strikes, as in “The News” by Claudia Berger. My sister was in Paris when the bombings started a few summers ago. She was a romance language major when she was at UCF, so she spent a lot of time in Italy and France. We definitely had a scare, but she turned out to be okay and came home to us safely. We used to have a very turbulent relationship, so I understand Claudia when she was worried that the last thing she told her sister was, “I hate you.”

The 2 essays by the twins Sarah and Hannah Morris were great, although I am sad to read how much Sarah is worried about Hannah’s weight. She’s not worried for health reasons, either- she’s worried that she’ll get made fun of, not find a boyfriend, or not get into nightclubs when she’s older. It saddens me that she is full of compliments about her sister, but always follows up with a “but I just wish she could lose weight” variant, as though she is less valuable or hasn’t reached her potential as a person. This just goes back to the media and societal pressures on our female youth to fit into a certain ideal look, and it even goes so far as to cause a slight rift between these sisters.

Emma’s bloody red heart really got to me, not only because both of my parents have been divorced twice, but because my little sister is currently living in a situation much like Emma’s. She travels back and forth between my dad and her mom’s house, often forgets textbooks or homework at one of theirs and can’t finish her assignments, and worst of all, is used as a bargaining chip between the two of them. “Well you got her for her birthday so I get her for Easter.” What about what she wants? I will be SO glad when she turns 16 in a few months so that she can decide where she wants to be and when. There is none of this “you need to come pick her up” nonsense, because she can take care of that herself. Her car will be her own domain, her own space, and she can do with it as she pleases. I think it’s really important for every teenager to feel like they have their own space, and are truly in control of something. Not another human being, of course, but a space, an object, a plan. Goodness knows it helped me to survive my middle and high school years.

In the “Friendships” section of the readings, I was surprised by Sarah McIntosh’s story in “Lies We Have Told”. I was surprised to read another account of a girl cutting herself, of trying to commit suicide. I don’t have enough information to conclusively say, but, as with the other story a few weeks ago, it seems to me that the most angst and depression happens when girls realize they’re bisexual. In this society, it is not okay to be confused. Even with all of the reforms and awareness that have occurred in the last few decades, people are still close-minded in a heterosexual binary. It is terrible that a teenage girl feels she has to close herself off from the world and that her only outlet is mutilating herself and deceiving people, because she knows she will be socially alienated or psychologically (even physically) hurt by her peers if they found out. These are the same circumstances that are directly affecting some of my friends, and we have got to change it.

Finally, in the “Crush” section, I was reminded of how intense young love can be. Oh my god, I yearned for certain guys! I could feel it in my bones, usually guys I barely knew but had seen on campus. Even in college, I haven’t experienced the same kind of agony as that of my first few crushes. I’m glad Jocelyn Pearce at least got soccer out of it. It also reminded me how detective-like girls can be: knowing when your crush has classes, where, and what they do after school, etc. Also, the grinding essay was great, simply because everyone of my friends, at some point, has talked about grinding, but this is the first time I’ve ever seen anything written about it. I’m not exactly sure how we went from what I like to call that “shoulder dancing” of the 80s to the grinding we so enjoy today, but it certainly is a stark contrast. Something that really stuck with me in this essay is that: just because you do something sexy doesn’t mean you’re going to have sex. Dancing “like a whore” and “acting like a whore” are two different things, says the author, and I couldn’t agree more (although I have issues with the word “whore”). When I was in high school, which was barely 4 years ago, it was cool to dress a certain way when you went to parties, or to dance a certain way, or talk a certain way. It never meant you had to do anything, and many of my friends as well as myself had lots of self control and resisted anything we were uncomfortable with. It’s really important to keep in mind that girls are strong, and although they may be easily influenced by fashion and the media on the outside, their minds are not so easily fooled.