I was in Sellwood park in Portland, Oregan with my family for the 4th of July. A holiday that in itself already put my Canadian father on edge. Americans with access to lots of gunpowder even of the festive variety was enough to make anyone a little uneasy. We sat on our blanket as people around us roasted weenies on camp grills in their star spangled booty shorts. We waited for the sky to darken and the show to begin somewhere just beyond the river bed. It wasn’t like we were in a red state, pretty much everyone had gotten to the park by bike or hybrid car. They were being patriotic in a “this is so fun, I used to love this holiday as a kid” kinda way.
The biggest threat were the droves of teens coming into the park from all directions. These weren’t just your regular teens either, they were city teens all dressed like it was somewhere between 1998 to 2009. They had whale tales, skateboards, trad pants and jersey shore blonde highlights to match their jersey shore sunglasses. It was like a Harmony Korine movie unravelling before my eyes. They were smoking like chimneys and trying their best to see who could be louder when acting drunk. It was barely 10pm and my dad was itching to leave before the first sparkler had even hit the sky.
His feelings were validated when two teen girls broke into a fight. A brunette named Ava (I only know this because someone yelled “get her ass Ava”) attacked a pigtailed girl. They couldn’t have been older than 15. Ava pulled the girl to the cement, hair was grabbed and skin was scraped. The rest of the drove stepped back as if it was a ritual sacrifice. They formed a wall of iphone flashes as the fight was recorded from all angles. I couldn’t have written a better postmodern commentary if I tried. The lights worked as a great way to get everyone’s attention as dusk blanketed the park. The girls were latched onto each other on the ground, shouting and grunting, when two hipster men broke up the fight. One came running from his bike, head lamp still on. Ava fled the scene, taking with her a large percent of the girls that had been watching things unfold. They asked her a million questions as she sped up ahead of them. I could see the scrapes where her short-shorts ended and the overcompensation she held herself with—I could only imagine how afraid she was. It all becomes adrenaline. The other girl was comforted by the man with the head lamp as the boys continued to film her. Strands of her bleached hair stuck out where they had been pulled. She was crying, asking for her phone, asking for her friends. The boys assured her she had won the fight. I felt queasy as the self fulfilling prophecy of girlhood materialised before my eyes.
How could you be mad at these girls for fighting? It was only natural. I’m sure any Christian mommy blogger could sit here and say there’s a problem with young girls today but how could you blame them? Do you see the world they’re navigating? A teenage girl is the most anger filled being on the planet. Yes, to some extent it’s because their bodies are surging with hormones that make them believe the world’s out to get them. To that I would say it’s because the world is out to get them. Every single thing they come into contact with is telling them who they should be.
Imagine for a second you’re a 14 year old girl going on 15. You feel like your boobs aren’t big enough. On the news the world is on fire. A boy just stopped talking to you because some other guy told him you’re a slut. You have a host of platforms telling you what halter tops to buy, why you should drink apple cider vinegar instead of eating breakfast and how to make yourself naturally pretty overnight in 10 easy steps. All this information floods into your developing lobe at a rapid pace. This is mixed with your recent introduction to the constant male gaze, something you can’t even label yet. Now you have an imaginary boy in your head that you’re appealing to at all times. Alone in your room you pretend the boys on snapchat, the one in your calculus class, and your gym teacher can see you. The worst part is that they don’t care. You went through all that trouble and they don’t care. Now you’re drunk off a water bottle full of your mom’s tequila and are sharing a cherry ice vape with a girl you won’t talk to in five years. You’re angry and hormonal and don’t know who to blame.
There’s the target, the girl who has the stamina to keep a flat stomach and put on false eyelashes everyday. Maybe she’s the one who’s talked to that guy more or maybe she even slept with him. So now she’s on the ground underneath you and you don’t even care when the man pulls you off her because you won. But your issue is never solved, you’re still angry even more than before, still with no answer as to why. Your made up reason to be mad at the other girl is justifiable enough for now. Enough to keep a reputation until school begins in the fall. You feel like the bigger person, the stronger person, the better girl.
This feeling will never go away, there will always be an angry girl inside of you. You just become a lot better at hiding her. You’ll be able to bring her out when the time calls for it but now you have a better understanding of why she’s there and who her real targets are. You don’t let that boy in your head make the decisions anymore, you try to keep him duct taped to a chair deep in your subconscious. You don’t go after the other girls like you used to. You pick them up off the ground and cry on their shoulders in bar bathrooms. But that girl is a defiant part of you—it doesn’t alarm you when you see her outside of your body. When you see her in those two girls pinned to the ground, because you know and one day they will too.