A Girl's Coming of Age

End of 7th Grade-1993

The first time I saw representation of my own coming of age story was when I stumbled onto an episode of the live show, Mortified. This is where people bravely go up onstage and read excerpts from their childhood diaries. Most of the diary entries are from their middle school years. Those awkward years of puberty, the formation of social hierarchies, and the beginning of that confusing time of feeling like an adult, without being one. 

What struck me most from the entires the women read were how sexual they were. Raunchy, naughty, down right pervy. A girl’s nasty thoughts about sex are never talked about so here I was, well into my 30s, feeling so relieved that what I had written in my own diaries 20 years before, had also been written by other girls. All that time I had made mental note to burn those diaries before I died because I thought I was a freak. I honestly thought something was wrong with me. I thought maybe I had repressed abuse that came out in those thoughts. I thought I was gross and sick. Turns out, I’m normal AF. 

In the last few years there has been a tremendous movement to show and talk about what life is really like for us girls/women. Female stand-up comedians are sharing truths about our dirty thoughts, our daily dealings with micro-aggressions, and about our bodies-like what our panties look like at the end of the day (and if you’re grossed out about this thought, please think about all the times we’ve heard about men’s shit stains on their undies). 

There have been movies that offer amazing representation like The To Do List with Aubrey Plaza which depicted female masturbation; Obvious Child with Jenny Slate, which is where the panty joke above came from; and, Eighth Grade, which explored the self-hate we burden ourselves with when puberty starts. Now a series of TV shows have been debuting that expose even more truths. Like Big Mouth, which seems like just another male coming-of-age story, but thankfully also dives deep into the boy’s female friend’s life who is experiencing her own battles with her Hormone Monster; and Dietland, which tackles body issues as well as sexual assault and grown-up self-hate. Now, my newest favorite is PEN15. This show follows two 13 year old girls (played by grown women, trust me, it absolutely works) navigating the hell that is the 7th grade. This one hit SO close to home, that just like with the Mortified readings, they covered masturbation in a way that made me feel SO much better about my younger self. 

I know I’m not uncovering anything new, we’ve been talking about the need for better representation for a lot of underserved segments of the population for years now, but I do want to continue to drive the point home: I thought I was a freak until I saw and heard these things. I thought I was alone and an absolute pervert. I thought of myself as a tomboy because I must be a boy if I’m having thoughts like these. I carried a lot of self-hate because I thought I was the only one in the world with these kinds of thoughts. 

So bring on the girls’ coming-of-age stories, and roll out the whole truth and nothing but it! Because these stories are incredibly important and are normalizing what should have been normal in the first place!