A Purloined Girlhood

I have a new post up at Tiger Beatdown!

It's the first post in a series I'm calling "A Purloined Girlhood" where I look at the ways that watching movies about growing up female have a completely different resonance for me nowadays. The first post is about Say Anything:

You have an odd relationship to the past when you’ve transitioned.

There’s barriers, thresholds, hesitations. Things Not Wanted To Be Said. Occasionally, misdirection and dodging. It can get…complicated.

You see, I am a woman in her thirties Without A Past–or at least, Without An Adolescence.

There are times I don’t regret not having had a girlhood; from what I’ve observed, and from what I’ve heard from my friends, it can definitely be one of those things that is Not All It’s Cracked Up To Be.

But at the same time, I feel, sometimes…a loss? A lack? A missing connection between me and other women? Adolescence is such a key experience for so many of the women I know, so my lack of a girlhood sometimes leaves me feeling–still–like I’m on the outside, looking in. It’s difficult to pin down, exactly, especially because doing so sometimes brings back all the pain I felt during my childhood: the pain of having a boyhood I never wanted thrust upon me, the pain of watching others have the life I wanted and not being able to figure out what to do about it.

The next one will be on Heathers.