Episode 24: Teenaged Girls

So if you can't sleep at 5:30 am, listen to TAL, right? The list of what needs to be done is keeping me up and this is one thing on the list, so here we go...

This episode is one that is a little difficult for me to listen to, realizing how teenage girls can act. Even though I have gone through this time period in life, this episode reminds me how cruel girls really can be.

Act one is a collection of Jo Carol Pierce songs, told from a teenager's perspective, performed at middle age. At first the songs feel a little, well, crazy, but once you give in and just listen, it all makes sense somehow. Go figure.

Act two is a tough listen. Rennie Sparks shares the story "Skanks", relating the experience of going to the mall, dealing with a 'best friend' who is everything to but to her and her own self image. This one almost had me crying it was so true and realistic to how girls can be. Thankfully none of the girls I knew at that point in my life (or now even) were like this, but OH MAN how I wished I could be transported back to that time period, find Rennie's friend Dawn and give her a good kick to the head or something.

Act three is the second time playing of a piece from episode 13.This piece bothered me at first listen and it still does at second listen. Between the second and third stories, the fact that I have spent time around girls of the teenage years and work everyday with kids who will soon reach that age, the fact that anyone could do things like Dawn did to Rennie or how the boy "enlightened" the woman in the third story at the age of 13, frankly it kills me. I've got the worst mama syndrome when it comes to thinking of younger girls and their lives. Perhaps it was being in a fairly conservative upbringing that didn't expect you to do anything too crazy (and I really didn't, especially when in high school), I can't fathom such things going on as are described here. And even though I know these things do happen, it bothers me that girls are so willing to let themselves get walked all over and taken advantage of- I just wish they knew what they were really worth- not just as a sexual object or "hanger onner".

Girls today.
And this story was put out in 1996.