Great Power and Great Responsibility

In my rambles around the internet this week, this article caught my eye. For the unclickables among you, it sets out the case for bad relationships during a girl’s teen years being more than just upsetting, and sad, and heartbreaking, but also the cause of much mental distress and – even – ill-health. Teenage girls can, apparently, define too much of themselves and invest an excessive amount of their self-worth in their relationships with others, particularly their romantic entanglements with boys, and when these relationships end it can shatter these fragile constructions of identity.

Claire Danes as Juliet in Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 ‘William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet’ – surely the prime example of teenage love gone off-kilter…
Image: hotflick.net

The article goes on to discuss how girls and women (I think the author’s focus was America, but we can use it as a general base for discussion) are encouraged to think of themselves in relation to others, as caregivers or supporters or ‘good’ people who make life easier for those around them; decorative creatures who bring beauty and light to the lives of their loved ones simply by existing. Sex and sexuality education place undue pressure on girls – as both gatekeepers and providers of others’ pleasure, they must operate in an impossible situation. Now, I’m not saying I entirely agree with the viewpoints put forth in this article, but I think it’s interesting nonetheless. The author makes mention of cultural factors in her discussion – the hysteria surrounding weddings, for instance, and the pressure on women to have a ‘perfect’ day and to look like a ‘princess’ – but one thing she doesn’t mention, which is something I think is important when we’re discussing teenage girls and fraught romance, is the trope of the ‘perfect’ boyfriend in YA literature.

Shailene Woodley as Hazel Grace Lancaster and Ansel Adams as Augustus (Gus) Waters in the promotional poster for the movie version of John Green’s novel ‘The Fault in Our Stars.’
Image: twitter.com

Movies, I think, have a lot to answer for – they’re the crucible of the perfect Hollywood romance of young girls’ dreams – but increasingly, too, YA novels (and, of course, their movie adaptations) mean that young female readers have more and more opportunity to lose their hearts to beautiful, flawless and – importantly – fictional men. A bit of romantic escapism is wonderful, of course; a little fantasy of how wonderful it would be to have someone love you the way Gus loves Hazel Grace, or Peeta loves Katniss – but when you start to bring those expectations into your real life, a phenomenon I’m pretty sure is not unknown to the teenage (and, sometimes, not so teenage) readers of these books, problems can arise.

For boys and men can’t live up to the standards of fictional heroes. Girls embarking upon tentative, tender relationships for the first time perhaps expect their partners to speak to them in the measured tones and poetic cadences of a John Green hero, or to be as strong, and yet supportive of their right to be themselves, as Four is to Tris or Po is to Katsa. I’m sure plenty of teenage readers understand that these characters are just that – characters – and are not supposed to reflect the reality of relationships, but perhaps there are some who find it harder to draw the demarcation line. As I was growing up, the only books we had to read about kids our own age were the ‘Babysitters’ Club’-types, the ‘Sweet Valley High’ sort of books which were, at their heart, more about girls than boys; I didn’t have an Augustus Waters to lose my heart to as a teen. My crushes were all movie-based, and that made it easier to exit the cinema, sighing, knowing that I was leaving behind the fiction and stepping back out into reality. I didn’t go home expecting Jack Dawson to come knocking on my front door with a glint in his eye – though it would have been amazing if he had.

Leonardo di Caprio as Jack Dawson, the hero of the movie ‘Titanic’ (1997)
Image: titanic3d.tumblr.com

Books are different. Books get into your heart in a way that movies don’t, I think. And the books that young people are reading these days are chock-full of the sorts of characters that grab the heart and mind, sweep the reader away into a fantastic world where male love interests are both strong and sympathetic, desirable and ‘safe’, utterly in love with the heroine and yet utterly respectful of her agency and boundaries. In so many ways, this is a great thing – girls are being given examples of the sorts of relationships which are healthy, and which will bring them satisfaction, and which they can strive for – but in another, it can be a drawback. They can start looking for this sort of mature relationship with boys who are not ready or able to give it to them (and for which they’re probably not ready themselves, if they were being honest), and when a boy acts like himself – goofy, and irresponsible, and interested in things besides his girlfriend, and fun-loving, and carefree, all things which are natural to him and which he should be doing at this stage of his life – his girlfriend can feel disappointed and disillusioned. Also, if girls’ expectations are raised, pressure is placed upon boys to conform, and that’s not a good thing either.

Writers of YA books have great power. The kidlit and YA market is a massive player in publishing, and fans read these books with utter devotion. But, of course, this great power has to bear responsibility for the mind-worlds it creates.

Perhaps – as I do with many things – I am overthinking this whole scenario. However, I do feel that the cultural landscape in which today’s teens are growing up and forming their ideas about love and relationships is entirely different to the one in which I formed mine; the Mr Darcy of ‘Pride and Prejudice’, whom I loved with my whole heart as a teenager, pales beside a modern literary hero. The ease with which I shifted between the fictional and actual worlds is perhaps unknown to teenagers today, who are surrounded by screens and .gifs and Tumblr and Twitter and Facebook and fan pages and discussion boards and goodness knows what else, all fuelling their dreams of romantic perfection. As I said, there’s nothing wrong with a bit of romantic escapism, and dreaming of the ‘perfect’ love which will one day be yours is something everyone does as a teenager, whether they read or not.

But it’s important to know that love is not perfect, because people are not perfect; it’s important to know that the love you read about and see in movies doesn’t always translate into real-life relationships. It’s important to know that there’s far more to life than who you’re dating, and that the only person to whom you owe happiness is yourself.

I wish I’d known all this when I was a kid. I wish today’s kids knew it, too.

 

Wednesday Write-In #79

This week’s words for CAKE.shortandsweet’s Wednesday Write-In were:

strawberry  ::  tag  ::  code  ::  lower reaches  ::  hideaway

Image: ceressecrets.com

The Summer of Forever

Burton’s Berry Farm was the biggest in the county. All the kids from miles around, me included, blagged summer jobs there; it was hard work for rubbish pay, but it beat pulling ice-cream cones for screaming kids down at the seaside, hands down. At least you could eat as you worked, and Burton’s fields were big enough that you could do a certain amount of loafing without being spotted.

The sun was high, a tag or two of light wispy cloud just barely flecking the perfect blue of the sky, the day Joey was put in my drill. The air smelled like dry earth, and the hsss of the irrigation system was almost enough to lull you into mindlessness. I was lying on my side, using the strawberry plants like a hideaway as I rummaged through their lower reaches in search of the fattest fruit. It didn’t taste as good, but it weighed more, and that was all I cared about.

‘Hey,’ I heard. A shadow fell over me. Squinting, I looked up.

‘Oh – hey,’ I said,  my head exploding with are you clean do you smell what’s your hair like did you brush your teeth this morning? He dropped to his knees beside me, making me squint as the sunlight flashed straight into my face. I gathered myself up, making space for him.

‘So. What’s the drill?’ he said, looking sideways at me, his eyebrows waggling. ‘Get it? Drill?’ He nudged me with the point of his elbow, shaking his long fringe out of his face. Is he speaking code, or something? I wondered, for a long, stupid minute, long enough for the smile to fall from his face and be replaced by awkward embarrassment.

‘Drill!’ I said, finally, bringing one dirt-encrusted hand up to my face. ‘Duh. Yeah. Good one.’ I laughed, but the moment had passed. I tried not to look at him as I showed him how to pick, demonstrating the quick twisting motion that helped the berry to roll softly into the palm of your hand.

‘Be careful not to just chuck them into the punnet,’ I said. ‘He checks for spoilage, and you don’t get paid for the mushy ones.’

‘Got it,’ he replied, setting to work. At least an hour passed in silence.

‘So, you’re in my maths class, yeah?’ His voice startled me.

‘Yeah?’ I said, shrugging, my heart pick-pocking in my neck.

‘Looking forward to final year?’ He squinted at me, his skin already reddening. His arms were bare, the sleeves of his t-shirt ripped off, raggedly, at the seam. I half-smiled at him.

‘Yeah, right,’ I said. ‘Hello, the big bad world.’

‘Tell me about it,’ he said, rolling his eyes. ‘What’s your plan? You know, for afterwards?’

‘I can’t even think about it,’ I said, trying not to hear my mother’s voice splitting my head in half. Get yourself down to that supermarket and apply for a job on the tills, do you hear me? It’s good work, and it’s steady work, and it’ll do you! Or are you too good for an honest job, you little madam?

‘You’re going to college though, aren’t you? You should, anyway,’ he said, turning back to the plants.

‘What?’ I propped myself up on one elbow. He was already pink across the cheeks, and a damp patch spread across his chest and down the hollow of his back. ‘Why d’you say that?’

‘Well – because! You’re good at English, right? You wrote that poem, for last year’s school magazine?’ I flushed, feeling sick.

‘You read it?’ I buried my face in the greenery.

‘It was good,’ he said.

‘Shut up.’

‘It was!‘ He chuckled.

‘Shut up anyway!’ I laughed, but the rolling sickness was still there, underneath. He was silent, then, but a smile lingered on his face.

After a while I stretched into the hollow I’d dug in the soil, where I kept my stash of water. I took a long swallow, and was thoughtlessly sealing it back up again when I noticed him glancing over. He has no hat, I thought. No sun-cream. No water.

‘Want some?’ I said, offering him the sun-warmed bottle.

‘Thanks,’ he said, flashing me a grin. He licked his lips and flicked his hair out of his face again as he reached for it. I watched as he raised it to his mouth, and watched his lips move as he drank his fill, and watched his freckling skin while he was distracted with other things.

‘Sorry,’ he said, handing it back to me mostly empty. ‘I took too much.’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ I said, lifting it to my own mouth again before the touch of his skin faded from the plastic.

My pickings for that day were way down, and they didn’t come back up again at all that long, hot summer. Turned out, the fields at Burton’s were the perfect place for loafing.

Many Ways

Yestereve, as my husband and I sat reading Proust and Kafka side by side on our antique leather sofa, one of us happened to switch on the demonic gogglebox in the corner of the room, purely by accident of course. The programme which appeared on it was entitled something like ‘X-Idol All-Singing All-Dancing Contest Factor’ and it featured several people who were very (very!) young performing popular musical hits in front of a panel of judges.

I’m sure you know the type of show to which I am referring. Don’t pretend you don’t, because – frankly – nobody believes you.

My better half and I looked a little like these two fine gentlemen as we watched…
Image: muppets.wikia.com

I wasn’t paying full attention to the screen, because I was lost in a book (in fact, this is true, but I don’t expect you to believe it); however, after a while I put down what I was reading and started to focus on the TV. It wasn’t because I was so intrigued by the cutting-edge, brand-new, thrilling format of the show (zzzz….), but because I couldn’t believe the way these young, talented people were talking about themselves.

‘This is my last chance,’ some of them sobbed. ‘I’ll never be able to do this if I don’t get through today.’ ‘My whole life depends on this.’ ‘I don’t know how I’ll go home and face my family if I don’t succeed here today.’ ‘I want my family to be proud of me.’

Image: onesinglevoice.com

I felt so sorry and sad to hear them talk like this, and I couldn’t understand why they were putting such pressure on themselves. I was horrified most of all by the fact that they were all so young.

I remember being sixteen, seventeen, eighteen. I remember how I was desperate for life to start, and how I felt like every second spent not doing what I wanted was a second wasted. I remember having dreams and ambitions and drive, and I remember more than anything wanting to make something of my life, to get away from everything I’d known up to that point and move to another place, begin a new existence, and meet new people. I can completely understand the urge, at that age, to get started, to stop wasting time, to break into the thick of life and immerse yourself in it. It’s an exciting time, for sure. But what you lack at that age is any way of knowing how much time you have, just waiting for you to turn it into something amazing.

I just wish someone would take those young people to one side and remind them that there are a million different ways to reach your goal, and not winning a TV show is not the death of your dream. I also wish they’d try to explain to them that, when you’re sixteen, you can literally do anything you want. Your life is barely begun, you have so much time, and you can shape your future whatever way you choose. I also wish that the young people concerned would listen, and understand – I know, when I was that age, the advice of anyone out of their teens was considered less than worthless. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth hearing, though.

All the contestants on this particular show wanted to be professional recording artists, and all of them were hoping that their individual skills would be good enough to see them advance through the competition to the ultimate prize of a record deal. I’m sure some of them also wanted to take advantage of the expert mentoring offered to them by the established artists who take part in the show, year after year, and – perhaps – some of them just wanted to be on TV. These contestants are not people who have been working for twenty or thirty years in the business, who have struggled to fill venues, who have played in bars to audiences of four or five, who have had to put up with catcalls and abuse, who have lost bookings, put every penny they have into their career, and live their lives on the road. They are not people who have been worn down by the industry, who have had every last drop of their youthful idealism ground into the dirt by the relentless effort of trying to make it, and who have given their music career every ounce of their devotion and effort. Those are the kind of people who might be able to say ‘This is my last chance’ or ‘If I don’t make it on this show, I know the dream is over,’ and from whose lips it might sound legitimate.

For a person of sixteen whose only prior experience is singing in their bedroom into their hairbrush, the concept of ‘last chance’ shouldn’t even come into play.

But then, these young contestants can hardly be blamed for thinking the way they do – all their lives, these shows have been the biggest thing on TV. It’s not surprising that they think entering one and winning it is the ‘only’ path to success. But if someone has every shred of their self-worth and self-belief wrapped up in winning a TV show – which, I’m sure they don’t realise, is primarily a vehicle to make money for its producers, not to make them into stars – and if they’re knocked out of the running, it’s clearly going to have a terrible effect on their mind and their mental health. I find that thought chilling, and very sad.

I know some contestants enter these shows year after year after year, and each time they ‘fail’ their confidence takes another knock. Eventually, they won’t have any self-belief left, because they’re trying to succeed in an environment which is not geared towards helping them to achieve what they want. Not winning a competition like this is not ‘failure.’ Instead of pouring their hearts into entering the same competition again and again, I wish some of these young people would just make music, if that’s what they want to do. Record yourself performing and upload it to YouTube. Set up an artist’s Facebook page, Twitter account, Tumblr blog, whatever it takes – and build an audience. Get gigs. Get paying gigs. Buy more equipment. Put a band together. Go on the road. Find a friend who’s good at computing, and ask them to make you a website. Find a friend who’s arty, and get them to design your merch. All of this can be done – and it’s amazing how much people want to help when they see you chasing your dream, and working for it. When I was a teenager, all of this could be achieved, too – but it was much, much harder. Nowadays, the internet makes all things possible.

Not winning a TV show which is designed to make money for everyone but the artists who pour their hearts into it is not, decidedly not, the only way to make it in the music business. Every single contestant on those shows has it within themselves to make a success of their career, if they’re willing to put in the effort and use a little imagination. It’s never ‘too late’. It’s never their ‘last chance.’ Their families are already proud of them.

All that pressure, all that stress, and all that incredible emotional pain they’re inflicting upon themselves is damaging, horrible to watch and utterly unnecessary. We’re in the middle of Mental Health Week, and so there’s no better time to remind people that there are lots of ways to get there, and they have plenty of time to make the journey.

Also, I’m never watching another TV talent show. I’ll happily stick to Proust and Kafka from now on, thank you very much.

Image: 123rf.com