I am no longer a teenage girl. As I live and breathe I can go and buy a lighter at the corner store. Or get a scratch-off at the gas station. And technically, I can step inside a sex shop. I can do all of these things and more because I am no longer under the teen umbrella.
Teenage girls get the brunt of it all the time. In every aspect of life. Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel passed monumental box-office records? Those aren’t good movies, it’s just fluff for girls. What isn’t focused on is that Titanic held the highest record of all movies for years.
A female childhood tv star is growing into her own? She shouldn’t because it contaminates the younger generation’s minds. And what are young boys supposed to do with that? Well it’s not her fault she’s living her life.
Boys will be boys. It goes unquestioned by so many. Like it’s part of the table of elements. It’s a joke and an insult. It’s whatever you want it to be. Just not what teenage girls need it to be. It never is.
When I was one of those ‘teenage girls’ there were a bunch of things I couldn’t do. Besides getting a lighter, a scatchoff and stepping foot into the sex-asile of a Spencers. I couldn’t be a human being, that’s for one thing.
At some point my thighs needed to be covered in the summertime. It could be 95 degrees out and yet, I had to cover up. I knew why. There was never a point where I didn’t know why I wore knee-length shorts instead of thigh hugging ones.
My chest needed to be covered. Even though I’m not even a fucking c cup. But it’s the fact that I’m still another cup, that I needed to shield my chest. Coordinate my bra colors so that no one can tell what’s underneath my shirt.
I needed to have good posture. What for? I don’t know. Every boy in my grade had horrible seating positions. And every girl I ever knew couldn’t sit with her back straight for more than fifteen minutes.
There needs to be presentability. I have to wear something prestable. What am I presenting? Oh myself, of course. But not too much for someone to come and take. Just enough that I’m a functioning female of society. Even though I know guys who haven’t taken a comb to
their hair in days.
I can blame it on a bunch of things.
The old white men who founded this country. Or the old white men that we study to this day. The young white men on reddit. It doesn’t really matter at this point does it? Because they aren’t teenage girls.
They will never be teenage girls. And so nothing has changed.
Speaking as a former teenage girl, I don’t wanna do that ever again. But it’s not really over is it?
The difference is, no one is gonna tell me to cover up. I’m supposed to know by now. At this age no one is gonna tell me to put on different shorts. I should already know. They will tell me other things though.
It’s a dog eat dog world.
That’s just the way it is.
Boys will be boys.
And I’ve already heard that as a teenage girl. It’s just that this time it’s different. See before, someone would say that while society held your head in a flushing toilet. Now, society has let you come up for air. For a second.
A cruel respite.
Truth is, this is not my first year as a non-teenage girl. In a few months it will be ten years since I first turned a teenager. And within all of the time that has passed and the spaces I’ve inhabited, I still don’t know how it’s going to go.
ABOUT
Yasmine Diaz is a writer from NYC who likes dabbling in both fiction and nonfiction. In her free time she likes photography, art and curating music playlists to fictional characters and her constantly changing vibe.
Moonbow Magazine 