Reflections on Coming-of-Age in a Girl’s World

By Jessica Renee Thomas

As a 21-year-old junior in college, I can’t help but refl ect on my adolescence and ask myself what could have been. A lot of what has shaped my worldview is movies, and for as long as I can remember, I have been waiting for my big coming-of-age moment. A moment or period of time that would drastically alter my perspective on life and breathe renewed energy into said life. Consequently, this has led me down a road of harshly judging the stories that take precedence in female coming-of-age movies. The coming-of-age movies centered around female protagonists are often burdened with heavy realities that young girls face. It’s not uncommon to watch a coming-of-age movie with a female protagonist that deals with the topic of teen pregnancy, sexual abuse, etc. — think of movies like “Juno,” “Saved!” or even “The Virgin Suicides.” Young girls are thrust into the adult world before they can truly begin to have fun. Even when they experience the joys of being young, there’s this overwhelming burden that just one misstep will drastically alter their lives. In contrast, in male-centric coming-ofage movies like “Superbad” or “The Lost Boys,” the plots refl ect the never-ending youth men get to experience, as their issues revolve around nonconsequential sex or monsters. To put it simply, they get to have fun while girls have to reckon with the horrors of real life.

I desperately wished that more female coming-of-age movies would have the same carefree, nostalgic aura that male coming-of-age movies have. It was easy for me to write these drastic differences off as a byproduct of male Hollywood executives not being able to write stories that speak to the girlhood experience and, at the same time, provide the same type of fun present in these male-driven coming-of-age movies. And while in many cases this is very true, I now believe that these differences are much deeper, refl ecting the different realities men and women get to exist in. For girls, coming-of-age is a terrifying path towards self-discovery. Young girls don’t need to slay monsters because their monsters are all too real and pose very real threats to their lives. In reckoning with the fact that girls will never get the same coming-of-age movies as boys, I realized that it would be more worthwhile to celebrate the coming-of-age movies that are directed, written, and starring women that really speak to my own coming-of-age experience and the experiences of those closest to me. To mourn what could have been is pointless, especially when real stories that speak to the diverse experiences of girlhood are here and ready to be told.

I can’t say that my own teenage experience was burdened by the extreme societal pressures of the likes of teen pregnancy, but rather this overwhelming desire to “better” my situation. My entire life revolved around academics because I never really thought someone of my socioeconomic status could go to college, especially one like UCLA. Upon entering UCLA, I have come to realize that many of my peers do not have the same relationship with higher education as I do. When I was growing up, no one I knew in real life went to a prestigious four-year university. I didn’t even know what UCLA was until the fi fth grade when I wrote a report about FloJo, which inspired me to make attending UCLA my life’s goal. I now wonder if this one goal was really worth what I put myself through during my high school years. I was so determined to get into this prestigious school that I put myself in self-imposed isolation. I truly believe that growing up as a lower-income girl made me feel like the weight of the world was on my shoulders, as if my family’s future success and prosperity were riding on my high school academic career. Now being at UCLA for three years, I can’t help but feel disillusioned. Like I stunted my social growth and made myself incapable of being able to relate to people my own age. I have grave anxiety about the most minor things, like going out and having fun, which a young person like me should be doing. But most of all, I have this deep fear of growing up coupled with the feeling that I missed out on my key developmental years.

It wasn’t until I watched “Booksmart” that I really felt seen in the coming-of-age landscape. It was the story of two overachieving girls so caught up in their desire to attend prestigious Ivy League universities, they didn’t realize the people that they pegged as “slackers” were moving onto the same schools as them. The only difference between them and these “slackers” was the fact that they made the most of their high school experience. This movie, while falling into the trappings of many white feminist tropes, does the greatest thing a movie about girl overachievers could possibly do — tell the audience that there’s absolutely no reward in devoting your entire life to the grind. Rather, you should actively have a life and identity outside of it.

While both of the main characters are interesting in their own right, I felt particularly drawn to the character of Molly, who used academic achievements to put herself on a pedestal above her classmates. It is apparent that scholarly achievements were really the only identity she had, so the bitter reality that everyone else was also doing well made her doubt everything she knew about herself. Realizing that her peers were able to balance an academic and personal life leads her down a road of self-discovery, as she devotes the night before graduation to going to her fi rst party and experiencing the debauchery that all her classmates got to.

The difference between Molly and me, however, is that I still feel that I never got this “coming-of-age” moment. It wasn’t until I actually got to college that I realized there was no reward in dedicating my entire life to professional pursuits. And, most of all, I wonder if it’s too late to get my moment of self-discovery. I have this overwhelming feeling that my youth — yes, at 21 years old — has passed me by and that for the rest of my life, I will have to reconcile with the fact that I grew up too prematurely.

While I heavily identify with a movie like “Booksmart,” which sees two female protagonists reckon with having an identity outside of academia, I can’t help but see my mother in a movie like “Just Another Girl on the I.R.T.” This fi lm presents an alternative perspective of coming-of-age, as it centers an ambitious, fl amboyant girl from New York who dreams about becoming a doctor despite her surroundings. Her goals and ambitions come to a halt when she becomes pregnant. No longer is she vibrant and outgoing, but instead riddled with fear over what a baby would mean for her future. This movie shows how all-encompassing a pregnancy, at any stage of life, is for a woman. A mother is made to feel that she is supposed to lose herself, as she is expected to give every bit of herself to her child. No longer can our protagonist, Chantel, dream about being a doctor, as her only future is being a mother. In a fucked up way, teen pregnancy can be thought of as zapping the youth out of the mother and transplanting it into her baby.

Selfi shly, I thought about how my mom might have had her own future mapped out in front of her prior to getting pregnant at 17 with my sister. I thought about how she might have dreamed about being a doctor or going to college. Most of all, I thought about how my siblings and I ruined her life and her chance at youth. Upon talking to my mother, however, I’m met with a completely different perspective. Before getting pregnant, my mother didn’t have a plan for herself and, by that point, had completely stopped going to school altogether. It wouldn’t be until much later in life that she had a moment of self-discovery. In her 30s, she decided to become a pharmacist technician, and in her own words, she did it purely for herself.

Similarly, Chantel, after giving birth and reckoning with the reality of being a new mother, refuses to give up on her goal of being a doctor and ultimately still pursues her education — a goal that is strictly for herself. While the world might want mothers to metaphorically give their youth to their children, women like Chantel and my mother prove to the world that motherhood isn’t the severing of youth. Rather, it is just another new chapter in their book. In this way, they both rewrite not only what motherhood looks like but also what youth looks like.

This brings me back to my fear of growing up and losing touch with my youth. This burden of feeling like my life is running away from me no longer feels as heavy as it once did. Refl ecting on my mother’s youth and refl ecting on the person she is today, in her early 40s, makes me feel like I can still catch up to mine. It even makes me wonder whether coming-of-age and being young are as interwoven as I once thought. Last August, my family and I went to Disneyland for the fi rst time, and I can’t get my mother’s huge bright smile out of my mind. It makes me less obsessed with waiting for my moment of self-discovery to happen because my mother proves that coming-of-age is a forever process and the metaphysical concept of “youth” never truly dies. When I’m with her, her silly jokes and childish demeanor make me feel 10 years old again and like the world is still at my fi ngertips.

By Elsa Servantez

Design by Tia Barfield

In the couple of months following my fi rst tattoo (or rather, my fi rst tattoo that is publicly visible)

I saw myself as a changed woman — as corny as that is to admit. I had made a decisive change to my outward expression, to the way that people perceived and understood me. Whatever my personal identity may be, however I work my tattoo into that, it was from that point on literally inextricable from myself. Idle, contemplative moments were spent peering down at the little man on my arm. Brandishing his scythe proudly above his head, my red-cheeked gardener surrounded himself on all sides by fl owers — the fruits of his labor, I imagined. He, with the placid and contented smile on the puny, tic-tac sized face that rests in the soft fl esh of my left bicep, is a wel- come companion. My f(arm) er is colorful and cute, storybook-like, even. I put him there, quite honestly, for no reason in particular. I knew I had no reason to welcome him onto my skin, or at least none in the vein that people are looking for when they ask, “so, what do your tattoos mean?” Frankly, I have no aspirations of fl ower-farming or scythe-wielding, nor does anyone else I know. That wasn’t what it was about, for me.

My impulse to get tattooed came from a place of playful joy: to happily romp and muck around in the unruliness of my fl eshy form. I have never been someone to keep my sneakers clean and crease-free, or have a phone too long before cracking it. I just can’t be bothered. I think of the little man on my arm in a similar way. You only get one go.

Still, I anticipated with angst and embarrassment the conversations that would surely come when tasked with communicating my lackadaisical connection to the blankness of my skin to friends, family, or passersby. I expected amusement and a fair share of appreciation, as well as veiled criticisms, and have received exactly that.

What shocks me, though, is what people say when I turn the question around on them, sloughing the spotlight away from my farmer, letting him fall back into place against my ribcage. “What about you?” I ask. “Would you ever get a tattoo?”

Practically without fail, the tattoo-averse justify their decision to remain un-inked with an unease and anxiety over the idea of growing old with a tattoo. “How will it look when I’m older?” they wonder, grimacing at the idea of a skin-bound fl ower whose petals are faded, wilted, wrinkled and sagging. “What if I regret it?” they contemplate, imagining being marked with lyrics to a song whose melody became rote and tired years ago.

How silly, I thought, to imagine yourself old and worn, inhabiting a body and a life that is so unlike the one you have now, in form and function, and cast judgment. How silly, I thought, to assume that 20 years from now, what will preoccupy your mind will be how the tattoo you got decades ago no longer looks the way it used to. In reality, aging entails experiencing changes and degradations to your body that will, in all likelihood, be painful and have pervasive and life-altering impacts. To be wrought in self-imposed shame over a tattoo, to add to the pain of going old in this completely unnecessary way, just seems cruel. When their worst fears come true and their tattoo from decades ago has morphed into a saggy, faded, blurry beautiful mess so too will another, bare arm be just as wrinkled, just as marred with the same signs of a life lived.

I don’t mean to proselytize the non-tattooed. I’m not here to convince anyone that to be tattooed is somehow right, more courageous, more feminist. The judgment that I felt towards the reservations these women voiced to me are callous and blind to the realities of the pressures of femininity. There is a genuine anxiety that underlies these doubts about tattooing, and the more I heard it voiced by these women in their decisions to adorn their bodies (or not), the more the root of this fear became apparent. The ideal form of femininity, societally prescribed and enforced, is clear and pervasive. Young women are called to understand and defi ne themselves in the context of their appearance, youth and purity. There is a feminine ideal — the force, pull and judgment of which we all feel — that is pure, beautiful, subservi- ent, and constantly projected upon. To be a woman or femme, in the social world at large, is to an extent to be understood as an object of an external other’s gaze. Of course, this gaze is one that excludes both tattooed and aged skin from its feminine ideal. Tattooing is, by necessity, a highly personal practice. They are paradoxically external, consumed by all onlookers, yet private, entrenched in personal meaning and signifi cance. Others are invited to see a tattooed body and infer meaning from marks they know little about. Regardless of whether your tattoos bear a deep, personal symbolism, it is a vulnerable expression to wear so visibly and externally a self-defi ned beauty standard. Tattoos can be an externalized statement of identity and individuality. Women and femmes are acutely aware of the ways in which our bodies are read, consumed and gazed upon by others. Making this kind of a bodily statement, to offer up another part of oneself to be misunderstood, judged and misread, understandably carries weight. What this anxiety belies is an unfortunate discomfort with the reality of the degradation of our bodies as something we can enjoy. I don’t mean to make out the person who fears death and old age to be a fool. I don’t even think that is necessarily the type of fear that is at play in a young woman’s unease to bear on her skin an old, blown-out tattoo on her skin. The fear lies, I think, in the prospect of existing in a body that deviates from the standard of femininity in more ways than one.

There is a tension here, both a seizing and a forfeit of control. Tattoos are forms of art that are one with us as natural beings; they are, just as we are, in constant motion and fl ux. To get tattooed is an embodiment of the desire to shape and morph the body you inhabit, to create a beautiful and unique form of self through this bodily expression. There is an unmentioned understanding that while this change is permanent, it is only as permanent as we are. We offer our self expression up to the gaze of others and the degradative powers of time. No matter how blown out, how faded and warped a tattoo can become, there is always beauty in that motion.