{"id":174,"date":"2024-03-12T13:43:06","date_gmt":"2024-03-12T19:43:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.ulethbridge.ca\/the-write-stuff\/?p=174"},"modified":"2024-03-12T13:43:07","modified_gmt":"2024-03-12T19:43:07","slug":"hell-is-a-teenage-girl-by-grace-horlings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.ulethbridge.ca\/the-write-stuff\/2024\/03\/12\/hell-is-a-teenage-girl-by-grace-horlings\/","title":{"rendered":"HELL IS A TEENAGE GIRL By Grace Horlings"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 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\u2019t 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 \u201cthis is so fun, I used to love this holiday as a kid\u201d <\/em>kinda way.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The biggest threat were the droves of teens coming into the park from all directions. These weren\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 His feelings were validated when two teen girls broke into a fight. A brunette named Ava (I only know this because someone yelled \u201cget her ass Ava\u201d) attacked a pigtailed girl. They couldn\u2019t 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\u2019t 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\u2014I 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 How could you be mad at these girls for fighting? It was only natural. I\u2019m 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Imagine for a second you’re a 14 year old girl going on 15. You feel like your boobs aren\u2019t 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\u2019t 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\u2019t care. You went through all that trouble and they don\u2019t care. Now you\u2019re drunk off a water bottle full of your mom\u2019s tequila and are sharing a cherry ice vape with a girl you won\u2019t talk to in five years. You\u2019re angry and hormonal and don’t know who to blame.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 There\u2019s 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\u2019s talked to that guy more or maybe she even slept with him. So now she’s on the ground underneath you and you don\u2019t even care when the man pulls you off her because you won. But your issue is never solved, you\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This feeling will never go away, there will\u00a0 always be an angry girl inside of you. You just become a lot better at hiding her. You\u2019ll be able to bring her out when the time calls for it but now you have a better understanding of why she\u2019s there and who her real targets are. You don\u2019t 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\u2019t 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\u2014it doesn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 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 Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":449,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.ulethbridge.ca\/the-write-stuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.ulethbridge.ca\/the-write-stuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.ulethbridge.ca\/the-write-stuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.ulethbridge.ca\/the-write-stuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/449"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.ulethbridge.ca\/the-write-stuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sites.ulethbridge.ca\/the-write-stuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":177,"href":"https:\/\/sites.ulethbridge.ca\/the-write-stuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174\/revisions\/177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.ulethbridge.ca\/the-write-stuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.ulethbridge.ca\/the-write-stuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.ulethbridge.ca\/the-write-stuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}