What It Feels Like For A Girl

It’s time we started paying attention to teen girls

- Meg Mason

IN ALL THE MORAL PANIC ABOUT TEENAGERS – and there’s a new source of this almost daily (take your pick: social media, body image, Tide pod challenges, mental health, 13 Reasons Why, promiscuity) – one thing is usually almost always missing from the conversation. Teenagers.

As a society, we talk a lot about teens, but rarely do we sit down and talk with them. And it’s a funny thing, because we all remember what it felt like to be that age: the exquisite pain of discovering your body, your gender, your sexuality, yourself. Figuring out that you can be completely traumatised by a person but be obsessed with them, too. Dealing with parents, who want to shield you where you want to be exposed, and want to expose you where you want to be shielded. Falling in love for the first time: with a boy, with a girl, with a friend, with a band, with an actor who you rationally know you’ll never meet but, still, your connection is so strong and real that it seems like actually, you might just bump into them one day and, you know, the rest will be history. First job. First kiss. First period. First sex. First everything.