Well, two things, actually; of which two blog posts this morning have reminded me.
1. The “Thirteen is trouble!!1!!! OMG!!1!!1″ thing. Veronica wrote about it. She says she felt insulted by it. So did I - especially because I was such a ridiculously well-behaved kid, all around. When people would start with that “ooooh the teenage years are the hard part!” crap, I would, like Veronica, want to behave like a crazy person, just because it seemed expected of me. But I never had the stones to actually do anything “bad.” And that made me annoyed with myself. But that’s another story. Anyway, the whole “teenagers are scary” thing always pissed me off because it seemed so dismissive, and made me feel like I was being set up for damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
2. The “make them do something they aren’t ready for” thing. Rootie wrote about it in passing, in a very touching post about her son’s 16th birthday. That bit stood out at me, though, as it always had; because from the time I was old enough to recognize myself as a sexual being, it always annoyed the shit out of me. And my annoyance only grew stronger as I got into my later teen years. Because, I was ready for that elusive “something.” And I was so frustrated at how girls were always cast as not being ready, and being pressured by boys who didn’t give a shit about their feelings; and boys were always cast as being ready at the drop of a hat, girls’ feelings be damned. There was nowhere that I fit in that script. The idea of a girl having active desires of her own, having agency, pursuing things she wanted, and - gasp! - at the same time being capable of recognizing others as people with feelings and desires of their own, was apparently beyond the pale. (Or, of course, girls were sluts. That was the other option. But again, it was all about them “letting” the boys “do things to them.” No agency. Always passive.)
And that’s what I think of that.
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7 Responses to "You know what I always hated, as a teenager?"
Right on.
I remember as a teen being extremely well behaved. I’m that girl every adult loved and all the other kids made fun of. I remember always hearing how much trouble teens were, and how it was this swamp to slog through until adulthood hit. I’m not finding that with my kids. Yeah, there’s difficulties, but they come from their lack of experience, not from some demon inside. I love my teens. I think I prefer them now to when they were little. Now they can carry on an intelligent conversation, admit a mistake and I DON’T have to spank them. Teenagers are like any other person, they act how you expect them to act (most of the time). I read somewhere scientific that a person is at their peak intellectual ability between 16 and 20. The only reason they can’t compete with a 40 yr old is experience. I can see that in my kids.
Heh, me too.
And, yeah, that old adage about people rising to the expectations set for them comes to mind.
The only thing that topped both of those for me was being surrounded by teenagers who did fit those stereotypes. Ugh.
[...] You know what I always hated, as a teenager? (tags: parenting kids teenagers teens sex sexuality society) [...]
Good post says this mom of an almost teenage son. Trying to talk to him about sex has been interesting. How do I get him to respect it and himself, when he is taught abstinence and total BS at school. And OMG once he opened up and told me what they taught him I railed into him that that was why he needed to talk to me, because he was getting fed BS at school…
As a well-behaved but sexually aware former teen, I completely relate to this. Although I think at least as damaging, if not more so is the “oh, it’s just teen angst” thing, which makes me incredibly angry. It may be true that some of the things teens flip out over aren’t a huge deal in hindsight, dismissing their feelings is really stupid when suicide is the third leading cause of teenage death. When our school recruited some volunteers for a suicide prevention program, almost everyone in the room had some experience with teen suicide. Sadly, one of the girls I met through the program shot herself in the head a year later.
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