Adolescent Observation

I interviewed my fourteen-year-old niece ("K") who grew up in Idaho Springs, Colorado - a small mountain town that doesn’t have much going for it other than the local Beau Joe’s pizza restaurant and the close proximity to the mountains and ski resorts. I remember the town having around 3,000 people at most in the early ‘90s when I went to high school there and it’s probably not much different today. Like me, K attended the same elementary school, middle school and high school with the same cohort of students in Clear Creek County, population around 9,000. She didn’t mention if the area is still as heterogeneous as it was when I was an adolescent (99% Caucasian), but I suspect the demographics haven’t changed much.

When I asked K about her values to start the conversation, she said that as far as religion goes she’s agnostic and that she believes in something until she has proof that it doesn’t exist. As for her values, she said they are “...the same as any decent person; equality for everyone, don’t put someone down for their beliefs unless their beliefs are hurting someone else, and you may do what you wish unless you endanger someone else.” Given this full, thoughtful response to a short question about values, I feel that for a fourteen-year-old, she comes across as quite mature. I think it also demonstrates a fuller identity development with what Erik Erikson proposed was an “integration of identity, social roles, and the broader cultural context” (Gardiner 155). I say this because she identified the other and how she values equality for all others in a broader cultural sense. She clearly has moved beyond the ego-centrism of a younger child.

When I asked K about how she has been shaped by society and how that has affected what she thinks about herself as a girl, my eyes were opened to how much more aware she is of peer pressure and gender stereotypes than I was at her age. K pointed out that her family, Hollywood, school and Tumblr (an online blogging site) are her main social influences. She said, “Well, generally, I think society just sucks. We don’t have nearly as much equality as they think...Hollywood teaches us what is and isn’t attractive...Society taught me that being a woman means constantly having to prove myself, while Tumblr taught me that being a woman means that I don’t have to take crap from anyone, since women are just as human as anyone else.”

So, while I also was a young feminist - I believed strongly that girls could and should be able to do just as much as boys and I have a clear memory of writing a paper in junior high about rape and how they should be legal for any woman who wanted them - I do not think my sense of the world was as clear as K’s seems to be. I think a large part of the reason for this is that I didn’t grow up with the internet like she did and it has certainly globalized and broadened her exposure to the world’s happenings, injustices, and cultures.

I asked K specifically what being a girl meant to her and her frighteningly honest response took me back because I didn’t learn these realities until I was in college.

“What does it mean to be a girl to me? It means walking down the street at night with keys held between my knuckles like claws. It means being terrified to go anywhere without at least one friend. It means constantly being sexualized, yet being shamed for showing even just my shoulders on a hot summer day in public. It means that if I ever get raped, the first thing I may be asked is “Well, what were you wearing?”, as if it was my fault that it happened to me. It means that if I am not completely hairless except for hair on my head and above my eyes, then no one will want to date me, yet if my hair is too short, I get asked if I am a lesbian, even by my ex-boyfriend.”

K is quite aware of the pressures and societal expectations (and contradictions) of being a female and it comes across in her anger and defense of her gender identity. The cultural attitudes and beliefs of K’s peers (the microsystem), the attitudes and beliefs of her neighbors and those portrayed in the media (the exosystem), and the attitudes and beliefs of the overarching American culture which she reads about on the news, the internet, and sees in advertisements, etc. (the macrosystem) have all helped shape K’s identity formation and sense of who she is as a girl (Gardiner 24, 157). I think she is an intelligent, critically thinking adolescent who is well on her way to forming a solid sense of self in a world sometimes hostile to women, but I trust that she will have a strong enough sense of self to navigate these troubled waters.

References

Gardiner, H. W., Kosmitzki, C. (2008). Lives across cultures: Cross-cultural human development. Boston: Pearson.

Appendix

Interview Guide

1. Tell me about your environment growing up (place, size of town, school, family life, religion, values).

2. Tell me about any rites of passage your family celebrated (did you celebrate any stage of your life like turning 13 or sweet 16?).

3. How do you think society has shaped you? What are you shaped by (tv, family, etc.) and how has it shaped you (materialism, what it means to be a woman, etc.)?4. Tell me your thoughts about dating

5. Tell me what it means to be a girl to you and your future.

6. How would you describe your parents parenting style? Tell me about a time that you were in trouble and were punished.

7. What is the biggest stress in your life right now?