Preface: I started this wanting to write about TV representations of female childhood/coming of age. It then pivoted to a “girlhood” thing. And then became about the development of my sexuality LOL. If I cared enough about producing good stuff, I would split these up and flesh out each idea. I’m not going to do that. But when you feel like you are being jerked around by the narrative before you, at least know I warned you.

There is a chasm of reality in our representations of youth in the media. Either we receive euphemistic depictions of teenager-dom, oversaturated in color and infused with canned laughter, or we get unnecessarily gritty, borderline trauma-porn a la Euphoria.

What we wish to glean from our media is personal. Some watch the most recent HBO drama about a post-apocalyptic, dystopian, media mogul in medieval Europe where everything is life-or-death but there’s still time for a lot of sex, or whatever, and others massage their brains by firing the neural pathways required to recite Friends word-for-word for the 19th time. Escape, reflection, entertainment, disassociation, being part of something, art, to get laid, these are all reasons why people watch TV. But regardless of intent, television does impact our perceptions of ourselves and our world.

According to Badura’s social cognitive theory of mass communication, “people gain understanding of causal relationships and expand their knowledge by operating symbolically on the wealth of information gained from personal and vicarious experiences.” People are able to learn and add to their mental constructs by observing others, in person and on the screen. We use television, and digital media at large, to construct perceptions of the self, of others, of our society etc.

What we watch bears consequence on our cognitive development, especially for those whose brains are actively and avidly forming patterns and connections, our kids and teens.

With the release of Barbie, there were many trends of conversation around the concept of “girlhood.” Girlhood is letting someone borrow your scrunchie. Girlhood is writing in gel pen. Girlhood is lip smacker chapstick.

Not for me and not for many others. Girlhood was and is extremely embarrassing and isolating. I went to an all girl school for 6th-12th grade and while I did feel community in our “sisterhood,” I felt very alone in my personal girlhood.

For me, girlhood was referring back to the two page panel in American Girl’s The Caring and Keeping of You which illustrated breast development, holding it beside myself in the mirror, forlorn I was still in the “budding” phase at 17 years old. Girlhood was talking to strangers on Omegle, lying about my age and appearance, pretending I was like the hot teens I saw on TV. Girlhood was buying bootleg diet pills on amazon.

It felt like so much of girlhood revolved around relationships, the woman’s body, and sex- talking about the relationships of the people on TV, the people in the grades above, and eventually your peers. I remember the excited murmurs of tales of lost virginities as we returned from summer at the start of junior year. Talking about periods and plan b and cramps, I would grit my teeth and nod through these conversations

Some of the most popular teen shows during my middle and high school years included Glee, Pretty Little Liars, Vampire Diaries, and Gossip Girl. And of course, these representations weren’t exactly accurate for anyone in high school, a full decade younger than most of the actors, but I do think that the essence of drama around dating and trying to be as sexy and mature as possible permeated real teen lives.

There are some more recent shows which provide a somewhat more realistic depiction of these formative years such as Never Have I Ever and Sex Education. And while these shows explore the discomfort and confusion that can come from growing up… the kids were still sexually active so I was still like wtf. The only two times I’ve really felt seen on screen (lmao coming from my rich, white ass) was Eighth Grade and Pen15- two projects which focus on middle school, but brought me to tears when I watched in my early twenties. After watching Eighth Grade, I encouraged everyone I knew to watch it. Partly because I loved it, but mostly because it meant that maybe, maybe I could convey to someone how I felt. My mom and sister said it was painfully uncomfortable and I was like yes!!! exactly!!! I am constantly uncomfortable!

At 17 I hadn’t had my first kiss or my first period. One of the symptoms of my #chronicillness was delayed puberty and boy did she DELAY. At around 15 I got a bone age scan which suggested I had the skeletal maturity of an 11 year old. I told some friends this. A couple years later, at 17, I was standing on a beach, in a bikini… vulnerable. And one of those peers looked at me and said, “Do you know how old your bone age is now? I’d guess 12.” BRUH.

I felt like I missed out on the bonding experience of maturing alongside other women. I felt unattractive and deeply uncomfortable. I could not parse my mental maturity from my physical, and I could not develop my self perceptions or sexuality while I felt I was 12-year-old presenting. In many ways I was mentally matured, but when it came to bodies and boys, I was painfully behind.

My freshman year of college, I challenged myself by signing up for a couples piece in my dance group. The choreographer had to have a serious talk with me, nearly cutting me from the piece, because I wasn’t believable. I was awkward. Any photo from any couples piece since then will show me a foot away from my partner, while everyone else is appropriately skin-to-skin. Perhaps the only time this wasn’t the case was when my role was “gender swapped.” Dancing the male role is inherently performative. Dancing the female role felt equally foreign, but it wasn’t supposed to be, and that made it worse. My senior year, I choreographed one of these pieces as a final attempt to rectify my past failures, but I ultimately removed myself. I felt that the audience would see me and be taken out of the experience; the other couples would seem natural and it would be easy to imagine a similar dance floor rendevue outside of the performance, whereas I would be a reminder that these were assigned roles, because who could be sexually attracted to me?

Many people who I’ve confessed these things to have been confused as I present as this confident, sex-positive person. I have no issue chatting someone up, flirting over text, or even asking someone out. But for the longest time, the second I felt there was potential for physical contact, my cheeks would flush and burn, my stomach would flip, my heart would sink, and I would tunnel vision in on an escape route.

I had one almost situationship during college. I am not going to recount this in detail at mercy of the other person, but it ended quite quickly due to my inability to be remotely physical. I was so down bad for this person, but the one time we did kiss, I felt nothing. And I damn near passed out from the anxiety it induced. In fact, aside from that brief kiss, my first kiss at 17, and a very drunk and strange game of truth or dare in college, I didn’t kiss anyone else until I was 24. The person who broke the spell has no idea how absolutely integral he was to my relationship with myself and intimacy. I liked this guy and I could not tell if he liked me back or was just polite. One night, however, after trying to read these mixed signals, he asked to kiss me. I said yes and proceeded to mentally talk myself through every second, “is this the right amount of pressure?” “right amount of tongue?” “where do my hands go?” And again, I felt nothing. I liked this guy so much, and I felt nothing. I drove home in a panic. Was I broken? I was sure I blew it, that the guy could sense my nervousness and inexperience through the kiss. But somehow, this wasn’t the case. My years of reading the “how to kiss” wikiHow paid off! Yippee! We continued to make out through the summer and sloooowlllyyy things got better. My head thought less and my body felt more. At the end of the summer, I moved to NYC ready to play with my newfound skill: kissing.

Once in New York, I really was making up for lost time. I packed in my missed adolescence of flings and make outs into a couple years. Unfortunately, what I thought was a sort of liberation, was more like swapping one bad thing for another. My paralyzing fear of intimacy transformed into an irresponsible and self-destructive relationship with it. There are so many apologies I could give to people who I hurt during this time because I was a 24 year old learning 16 year old lessons. I realize now that the revelation I was operating from wasn’t that I was this sexual and powerful being, but that men will kiss (I’m keeping it PG here) anything remotely soft and warm. This also explains the discrepancy in my attitude towards intimacy with men vs. non-men but that’s another essay for another day.

I still often feel like an outsider among women my age. I feel like I’m cosplaying when I pretend to relate to them. I still feel more uncomfortable than sexy, awkward than confident, but I acknowledge that overall I have evolved exponentially from the person I was even just three years ago.

I hear people my age say that they’re “afraid” of teenagers. I’m not afraid of them, but I am envious. The average TikTok consuming teen is a caricature of what I feel I missed out on. In the past decade, teenagers have been force fed ways to mature, #glowup, be sexy, cool and mysterious via Instagram, Youtube, TikTok etc. Teenagers are looking more and more like the 25 year old Hollywood stars that play them. While I’m sure the debilitating insecurity of being 15 endures, and may even be worse with a globalized population with which to compare oneself to, these kids have been coached in neoliberal self actualization – convinced to put exorbitant effort into their looks, develop self via their clothes and accessories, and overall be aggressively invested in their “brand.” This, as designed, ironically mass produces a very specific type of person despite getting there through the search for identity. I suppose we’ve somewhat come full circle. Bandura’s findings on television apply to social media and that has its own implications for how children are developing. In fact, that’s basically what my whole masters was on. So while sure, I am concerned about the impact of all this on the teen mind, I can still be salty that these children get to be so sexy!