“I was disappointed by
this song, I used to like Miley, but not anymore,” my friend tells me as a
Miley Cyrus song plays on the radio of the bus that we were in.
“Why? What’s it about?”
I ask, I don’t really have informed opinions on the lives and songs of pop
stars. In fact most of the time I don’t
even know who they are anymore.
“She really wants you
to know that she’s not a little girl anymore,” my friend tactfully says.
“Unh, they all do
that,” the conversation continued on to a one sided discussion about Amanda
Bynes. I don’t even know who that
is. My friend is a few years younger
than me, so I suppose these are the Britney’s and Christina’s of her age group. I talk to my friend about a pattern I see
repeated over and over again, they start as sweet innocents singing songs about
first kisses and first crushes. Then around their 18th birthday (right
when they’re legal) their necklines plunge, their hemlines rise, their hair
turns a different color, usually a tattoo happens, and their songs get exponentially
more explicit.
Their whole image seems
to revolve around men. They are either
singing sweetly about boys or naughtily about boys. Very few talk about themselves outside of
relationships with men. Packaging
Girlhood talks about the marketing that is directed at young women; girls are
given two categories they can either be ‘for the boys’ or ‘of the boys.’ You can be an attractive cheerleader,
cheering men on; ‘for the boys.’ Or you
can be a tomboy, playing sports with the men, ‘of the boys.’ Oddly enough all the women I know that have
been cheerleaders exist without relationship to men. Same goes for all the tomboys I know.
For the rest of that
bus ride I mused about my own ‘coming of age.’
Our culture lacks a true rite of passage into adulthood. Most of us just stumble forward on a time
continuum; graduate high school, go to college, get job, get married, buy
house, and have children. At some point
you scratch your noggin and think, ‘I guess I’m an adult now.’ I thought about when I really felt that I
came into my own, really felt like I was my own person. My mind skipped over the two years after I
graduated college. I did date someone.
Then I broke up with him and was on my own for a long time. I traveled, I took up a sport, I spent long
hours in prayer and reflection. These
were the years that finished that honing that college had started. I left my home state, moved halfway across
the country, and felt that I was my own woman.
When I felt the most
myself I was without a man.
Huh, I ‘came of age’
without a man.
When I met the man who
was to become my husband I felt an adult.
My coming of age had nothing to do with sex.
Isn’t that funny?
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