For centuries in the media we’ve heard about struggles of being a teenager, especially female. From the Lisbon girls in Eugenides’ The Virgin Suicides, Girl In Peices by Kathleen Glasglow, and children’s books like My Sister Jodie by jacqueline Wilson (A book where a girl literally falls off a building and dies). The preteen to teenage girl has been demonized to seem either be, rambunctious, depressed,insufferably rude, or weird. Whether it’s a movie, book, or a TV show there always ends up being a teenage girl who ends up being labeled “misunderstood”. While that could be true it could also be a sign of bad writing. 
Do you remember the babysitter from The Fairly Odd Parents? Was she a well rounded character? No, no one in that show was. But that tends to be a lot of kid’s first impressions of teenage girls. That they’re mean, with no real ability to be happy with anything. For a more in depth example let’s look at Paris Geller from Gilmore Girls. She was made out to be this irrationally mean girl that from the get go was mean to Rory for as she says “messing with the curve” because of the influx of new students. But let’s compare Rory and Paris for a minute; Rory was a “small town beauty” who was kind to everyone and had boys falling for her all around her who never had her first real “screw up” until she got into Yale. But Paris was a grump who only had two real friends who obviously didn’t justify Paris’s vendetta against Rory. 

They didn’t give any back story to Paris for about two seasons and how dysfunctional her home life was.  Does that give her an excuse to act the way she did towards Rory? Obviously no, no one gets a “bully hall pass”. But when you look at the amount of fans of the show truly hate Paris because of the first couple seasons is significant. While it is validated by the other bad things she has done like cheating, and her fluctuating development, it still stands that just because of some miscommunication in the character arc had crowned her a truly hated character.

With the rise of the “coquette” aesthetic you find similar patterns around what forms of media people choose to display their aesthetic. Common themes tend to run with movies like The Virgin Suicide, Priscilla, and Lolita. All of these movies highlight negative and toxic parts of being a girl. One of the most popular quotes from The Virgin Suicides comes from Chapter one of the book and is “Obvisously Doctor you’ve never been a thirteen year old girl before”, which has been used by many girls to express and talk about their experiences being a teenager in the modern age. With the use of these media forms and the exposure it gives to younger girls, it gives a new wave of interpretation of the films to be romanticized. It gives girls the possibility to be confused on how to use and process emotions in healthy ways causing them to seek the bad in every aspect of life while actively searching for good. With no positive outlets in the media, teen girls find new ways to find normalcy in depression. 

But why are we perceived this way? It’s obvious that there are countless reasons behind why girls get such a bad rep, from menstruation, to the shift in hormones, to the blatant fact that the world is too male centric to care about why a girl could be the way she is. From our own bodies screwing us over, to no one outside of our own bodies trying to get a grasp on how to deal with the stereotypical hormonal teenage girl. I’ve never heard anyone say anything nice about girls, whether it’s kids saying that they’re mean, or full grown adults “praying for the well being” of expecting parents after they find out it’s a girl. Girls will continue to have negatives swarming around them no matter what. But the real question is when will it stop? Honest answer, never. Unless the patriarchy takes the back seat, then it will never happen. But every girl should continue to be head strong because, who knows?