Former Teenage Girls in Conversation
JWhit
When asked to state
their name for the record at
the beginning of my interview,
I’m greeted with a sing-songy “J,”
a loud four-note run.
Listening to the recording, my attitude—half exhaustion, half amusement—is palpable. “The entire thing is going to be like this, huh?” I chuckle. And it is: they fill an hour and twenty-five minutes with jokes, memes, and booming laughter. J doesn’t seem to have an “off” switch, always singing and goofing around—always the loudest one in the room. They weren’t always so vocal and boisterous, however. They remember coming to their older brother in a panic, dismayed at the prospect of spending four whole years in high school: “I was like, ‘Jeff, is there any way I can literally not go to high school… like, please, I don’t want to go to high school!’” They reflect, “I didn’t expect anything specifically, I just expected to not have a good time,” connecting their expectation of freshman year to middle school, where they were “bored out of [their] mind, not caring about anything or anybody.” It made them insular, their bubbly personality hidden from the rest of the world. By senior year, however, they’d become more comfortable with their peers and teachers, regarding high school as a “jolly good time” in retrospect. “Freshman year, I was so quiet. I was like, ‘I hate everybody.’ And then, by senior year, I was so nasty. I was so disgusting,” they recount joyfully, clearly wearing their tendency to be “disgustingly” loud and goofy as a badge of honor.
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It doesn’t seem like J’s demeanor has changed much since their time as an Antelope Valley High School student. Still upset they weren’t a contender for the Class Clown senior superlative in 2016, they boast,
“I know in my heart
I’m the meme of this school.”
While they admit to pushing their teachers' buttons, J speaks of them warmly: “I had the same teachers over and over… I love them, and they know that, but I also just want to, I don’t know, be disruptive and irritating and just not know when to stop.” J goofed around with most of their teachers, but a few stand out as really special. They attended an afterschool art program with Chris Haggard, a guidance counselor who would talk with students about “deep stuff” and help the class’ wannabe street artists improve their graffiti technique. Another teacher, who J affectionately refers to as their “uncle,” still keeps in touch and supplied “emotional guidance” when J was a teenager because, they admitted, “my parents are not the people to be giving emotional guidance.” Because of their parents’ busy schedules and a certain amount of emotional distance, their familial connections were never as buddy-buddy as their relationships with the teachers they saw every day. “The relationship I had with them was always, like, ‘these are my parents.’ It wasn’t, like, ‘these are the people that I confide in.’”
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Looking for positive role models and trustworthy confidants outside the home is not uncommon. An article in The Atlantic written for “The Friendship Files,” a series about unique friendships across the country, spotlights the relationship between four now-graduated high school students and their history teacher, Mr. O. The students would eat lunch in his classroom and ask for his advice on “daily trivial matters.” For his part, Mr. O says that he felt his job was to “just listen” and provide the girls with perspective and support. The article highlights the positive impact both parties have on one another: teachers can give students an honest window into adulthood, while students can help teachers become more attuned to the dialogues occurring in the new generation. It’s clear, just from the brief discussion about their “uncle,” that he provided (and continues to provide) valuable insights and perspectives on adulthood, while lending an ear and learning from J.
The need for supportive, honest relationships becomes more urgent when
a teenager’s home life is emotionally tumultuous, like J’s was.
The year they turned fifteen, their mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. While she eventually recovered, the period was a tense, upsetting, and eye-opening time for everyone in the family. Picking their words carefully, J explains, “It was interesting to see my mom, who was that strict, tough love, immigrant mom character—to see her go through something that made her so weak… to see her struggle with something that put her in a vulnerable position, because that was a position she never allowed herself to be in.” Although unable to work outside of the home since J was a child, their mother was the backbone of the family, doing the majority of the “domestic” duties and constantly performing emotional labor: the unpaid work and emotional burden it takes to keep a relationship and/or home running smoothly.
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Without the solid foundation provided by J’s mother, their father became a “genuine alcoholic.” According to the American Addiction Center, extreme stress (even at the subclinical level) is a major risk factor associated with alcohol abuse. While physically present through the treatment process (interestingly, women with cancer are six times more likely to be abandoned by their spouses than their male counterparts), J’s father did not provide the emotional support or presence of mind needed to take care of his children. The situation was difficult and trying: “With my dad, at the start [of his alcoholic tendencies] there was a lot of anger or frustration… like, ‘get it together.’” Still, J finds the silver lining in this cloud: they remember it as an emotionally transformative time, a time in which some of the sharp, harsh edges of their middle school personality were sanded away. “You kind of have to learn a tenderness—you can’t be an asshole when your mom is, like, going through chemo… you have to have some kindness in you.” Here, I see J taking on some of that emotional labor their mom had to abandon when she got sick: softening their heart, feeling for the whole family when it was easier for some members to emotionally detach or numb themselves completely.
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While an undoubtedly impactful period of emotional vulnerability and transformation, J believes they’ve grown even more dramatically in their own identity since entering college. Notably unbothered by questions of gender and sexuality in high school, “I knew I wasn’t out here being a straight, cis woman, but it’s not really something I thought about because it was already in me.” These weren’t questions they thought to ask.
No pronoun or identity felt inherently "wrong" to them.
When discussing the identity of people who don’t fit neatly into male/female gender categories, it’s important to note that being enby (non-binary) doesn’t exclude one from identifying with other parts of the gender binary. J doesn’t fully claim “womanhood” as their gender experience, but they still use “they/them” and “she/her” pronouns interchangeably, responding to both “J” and “Jess” with ease.
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When asked about their perceived shifts in identity from high school to present day, J feels like, internally, nothing has really changed: “The identity has been the same, and the experience of living with it has been the same… but what’s changed is my ability to describe it.” Exiting the Antelope Valley bubble and realizing that “oh, this… matters to people” allowed them to start engaging in these tough conversations with their peers and themself. Additionally, they cite their developing fashion sense as the most visible change relating to new gender revelations. Even in adolescence, early questions about gender arose around clothing: “The only reason I had to think about [gender] stuff was when I was like, ‘Uh, I don’t want to wear this outfit, Mother.’” Often uncomfortable in dresses and other “girly” wear, J clarifies that they don’t feel particularly dysphoric in feminine clothing, but “it’s just easier to find things like this…” they say, gesturing to their current outfit: khakis, sneakers, and a half-blue-half-pink button-up. “I have a connection to my appearance now that I didn’t have in high school… it’s [cool] to walk around and think ‘I look like I feel.’” With the demand for trans-inclusive clothing on the rise and niches like trans-masculine fashion gaining popularity, J has joined a growing community of fashion enthusiasts who don’t rely on the gender binary to dictate what they can wear.
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In that vein, J relays a clear, forceful message to their teenage self: “Cut your hair.”