teenage girls

Toe to Toe

brittany — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Toe to Toe was part of the official selection of the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. The story is simple: Jesse and Tosha are both lacrosse players at a Washington, D.C. prep school and although they seem predestined to be rivals, they become the best of friends. Each girl is completely different from each other. Jesse (Louisa Krause) is the wealthy yet lonely and promiscuous daughter of detached parents with Daddy issues. Tosha (Sonequa Martin) is the minority with a background of financial hardship but driven by her ambition of acquiring an Ivy League education on a full scholarship.

At first glance, the film could appear forced and stereotypical; unfortunately, that’s exactly what it turns out to be. There’s enough teenage drama to fill the entire four years of high school. Jesse and Tosha are faced with issues regarding STDs, harassment, racial conflicts, and everything in between. Add to that the dramatic suspense of being part of an athletic team and you have the basis for the movie. There’s a heavy use of socio-economic clichés and an especially artificial climax that almost obscures everything else about the movie.

At other times, though, the protagonists’ acting chops shine through and the movie becomes enjoyable. Both performances are well balanced. Krause manages to portray a promiscuous but self-aware character while Martin has enough poise and restraint to make her character vulnerable and relatable.

The movie’s setting is also quite enjoyable; the scenes outside the prep school and in the actual city are lively and more realistic. This is due to the fact that they were shot with local musical talent. The protagonists seem to feed from the city’s energy and only magnified their charisma and talent.

Yet, in a movie that seems so contrived it doesn’t seem enough to carry it through. Toe to Toe didn’t surpass being bland.

Written by: Jessica Sánchez, October 1st 2010

Hollywood Is Like High School With Money

admin — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 09:00:00 +0000

By Zoey Dean

Grand Central

In the new novel Hollywood is Like High School with Money, Zoey Dean explores high-stakes backstabbing amidst the glamorous realm of movie making. This book is reflective of the author’s typical genre: juvenile novels set in ritzy realms where teenagers act like jaded adults beyond what is typical among American youth. The author previously penned The A-List: Hollywood Royalty series and has been a New York Times bestseller for just this sort of novel. Book clubs beware: Dean’s latest take on Beverly Hills might find its way to your reading list.

The protagonist in this particular story is a naïve young Ohioan transplant to the Hills named Taylor Henning who lands her first Hollywood job as second assistant to corporate powerhouse Iris Whittaker at Metronome movie studio. Taylor quickly learns that good girl Midwest manners don’t keep her in the game amidst the school of sharks that is corporate entertainment America. Like many other beach-reads, this book plays out the scenario of innocent girl meets snarky sabotaging antagonist, yet somehow heroine manages to come out on top. As in the popular film Mean Girls, the protagonist takes a turn trying on the wicked glove before managing to triumph.

Sometimes superfluous with adjectives, Dean nonetheless manages to draw readers into Taylor's plight among the piranhas of Hollywood. Taylor's number one nemesis is one venomous blonde named Kylie Arthur, first assistant to Ms. Whitaker. Kylie is devious in the most typical manner of the beautifully vapid and will stop at nothing to move up in the company. The only character more wily than Kylie is Iris’ young daughter, Quinn, with her brazenly typical “don’t give a fuck” teen attitude and practiced indifference to everything outside her adolescent circle of cool.

Dean throws a cog into the works when Taylor reaches out to Quinn for advice on how to survive amongst the Beverly Hills veterans, and the teenage girl begrudgingly obliges. As Taylor follows Quinn’s texted directives such as “fake it until you make it,” she undergoes a transformation from Cleveland sweetie into vindictive power player. In some places, it is almost unbelievable that Taylor would so rapidly confuse her true nature with the cutthroat habits of the industry (via the eyes of a teen), but sometimes innocence really can breed extreme behavior and so, as a reader, you just roll with believing.

While overall Dean does a good job of bringing the reader into Taylor’s Hollywood world, it can sometimes feel like a case of “grab the thesaurus” to sort through the descriptions. While I have nothing against narratives written to entertain youth, please do realize that reading this novel will not enrich your literary breadth: it will amuse you in some places, frustrate you in others, and ultimately leave you with a feeling of blank.

Blank is okay though, because reading a book like this clears your mental slate allowing you to walk lazily down an imaginary path that doesn’t require cerebral strain. With an open mind for the genre of juvenile lit, anyone can enjoy passing time with Zoey Dean’s characters. Unless, of course, you get annoyed by silly girls making bad choices, losing the guy because of those choices, and then winding up a winning princess in the end. I’ll admit that I knew all along this novel wouldn’t break new ground for me, but nonetheless I enjoyed the read. Hollywood Is like High School with Money is a pleasant investment of one’s time and will mos’def pass an afternoon.

Written by: Djuna A. Davidson, December 21st 2009

The Girls

admin — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 16:32:00 +0000

By Tucker Shaw

Amulet

The Girls is a modern chick lit version of The Women by Clare Boothe Luce. This book, like that classic play, is made especially interesting because boys are talked about, but not featured as active characters! In this modern version, girl-next-door Peggy enrolls at an upper-crust Aspen prep school and finds herself way out of her league. She is intimidated by the seeming perfection of her roommate Mary, who is beautiful, popular, and the girlfriend of a wealthy hotelier's son. She is intimidated by Sylvia, the constantly color-coordinated, gossip-saavy diva of the school. And she is intimidated by the town of Aspen, which is filled with overpriced lattes and celebrity sightings.

Peggy finds herself in a moral dilemma when she overhears Amber, the local coffee shop’s barista, claiming that Mary’s boyfriend Stephen is cheating on her with a local salesgirl. Should Peggy tell Mary and hurt her feelings and possibly her relationship over what could be gossip? Or should she stay silent and possibly betray her friend? The choice is made no easier by the fact that Sylvia has also overheard, and could potentially relay the news to Mary before Peggy does, possibly usurping the roommate’s friendship.

As Peggy wrestles with the decision, she goes to the shop to see the salesgirl in question and overhears some incriminating evidence. When Mary must confront the crisis, unfortunately Sylvia has joined Peggy as her support system. However, we see a more vulnerable Sylvia as she begins to share in the girls’ weekly grilled cheese confidences. And soon the girls team up to confront cheating boyfriends. As The Girls ends, various characters pop up, seemingly out of nowhere, and join the drama, hurling accusations at one another’s boyfriends. The plot dissolves into a series of catfights, which are fun but shallow. Luckily, the book is made interesting by its setting, Colorado (refreshing to see snobbery outside of NY/LA!) and by the prominent role which food plays in the narrative. It is supremely refreshing to see a young female narrator (Peggy) who sees food as neither an enemy nor a savior, but rather a creative medium. Throughout the book, Peggy deals with stress by zoning out and creating elaborate and fanciful recipes in her mind. A responsible young woman who provides a centered view of the dramatized girly events around her, the narrator is skillful and inventive at her job as a chef’s assistant in a hip Aspen restaurant. She clearly has talent, passion, and creativity. As a plus, Tucker Shaw, himself a food journalist, includes some of the yummy recipes at the back of the book!

Written by: Elizabeth F.A. Meaney, July 25th 2009

Red: Teenage Girls in America Write On What Fires Up Their Lives Today

admin — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 11:17:00 +0000

Edited by Amy Goldwasser

Plume

My teenage years have always seemed to be something that I’ve wanted to forget: awkwardness, feeling clueless about life, not feeling comfortable in my body, navigating love and friendships, hating my family, loving my family, not knowing who my family really was, and knowing that there must be something more to life than what I was doing. Ugh, high school.

Now that I’m past my teens and well on to other decades of my life, I haven’t taken the time to look back and consider all of those big Life Questions I once had. Amy Goldwasser’s anthology, Red: Teenage Girls in America Write On What Fires Up Their Lives Today, helped me to both reconsider my past wonderments and understand what teenage life is like for a whole new generation of young women.

If it were just fresh voices that evolved out of this anthology, Red would be an amazing and worth-your-while read. If Red were just about life as a teenage woman in America, it would still be a great anthology. But the unique articulation of each writer, the diverse experiences represented, the range of topics presented, the brutal honesty and uncertainties revealed in each essay, and the fierce tenacity to understand life that each writer brings to the page makes_Red_ not only phenomenal, but a feminist staple for every reader’s library. The anthology is composed not of adults editing and filtering the words of teenage girls, but the words of the young women themselves—with all of their incomplete thoughts and blunt renderings of life.

The topics covered in Red range from what you would expect from an anthology of teenage girls’ writings (i.e., body image, friendships, and family life) to groundbreaking essays by young women on politics, PTSD, pop culture, and war. This isn’t to say that the essays about body image, friendships, and family are not groundbreaking. In fact, these pieces challenge the reader to think about, reconsider, and understand the complexity of young women’s lives in America just as much as the essays on the larger world do. Whether the writers’ voices come across as determined and strong or hesitant and ambiguous each essay invokes the varied challenges of growing up as a woman in America.

I believe that the intended audience for Red is you. Whoever you are. You could be a young teenage woman living in America and obviously connect with Red, or you could be from a different generation and gender than the contributors and still find every essay meaningful. While phrases such as, “we exchanged screen names” definitely point to the youth of the authors represented in_Red_, when one of the contributors states, “I want to reach out so that someone somewhere will breath more easily because I have lived,” you begin to understand that these fresh voices speak their words with an awareness of the world around them, and the impact that these words might have on others—something that our society does not believe young women are capable of today. Red proves this notion wrong in brilliant and wonderful ways.

Written by: Chelsey Clammer, February 20th 2009