What Most Men Get Wrong When Writing Teenage Girls
For me, being a teenage girl was a time of intimate friendships and awkwardness, during which I pursued my creative ambitions with abandon, loved the things I loved with unfettered enthusiasm, and learned how to identify and discuss issues of feminism and privilege and social justice. I read a lot of books featuring teenage girls, some of whom illuminated my understanding of this time of life, and some who didn’t feel like real teenage girls at all. What most of the latter type of books had in common was that they were written by people who have never experienced teenage girlhood firsthand.
When we talk about representation in books being like a mirror into our own experiences, that only works if the portrayal is accurate. Sometimes male authors write teenage girls as fun house mirrors instead, throwing elements of the experience wildly out of proportion until the reflection is unrecognizable. I’m not going to throw shade at any particular male writers, but let’s just say I’ve read a fair share of books by dudes that prompted me to ask, “Has this guy ever even met a teenage girl?” And I’m not the only one who feels this way.
Which is why, when writer Saladin Ahmed asked on Twitter what men tend to get wrong when writing teenage girl characters, he received over 2,000 replies in 20 hours.
https://twitter.com/saladinahmed/status/1073695554083975168
This was a relevant time for Ahmed to ask because it was just announced that in March 2019, he will take over for G. Willow Wilson writing the Ms. Marvel comics. The story follows a Pakistani American teenage girl, Kamala Khan, who was the first Muslim protagonist of a Marvel comic series. Since her debut in 2014, she’s become one of the most popular characters in the Marvel Universe. I take Ahmed’s question as a sign that he really doesn’t want to mess this up.
So without further ado, here was the internet’s keenest frustration with what male writers get wrong about teenage girls.
Female Friendship
https://twitter.com/writersyndrome/status/1073712116748730373
The profound intimacy and intensity of friendships between teen girls.
— emily 🐂 (@aemiouly) December 14, 2018
https://twitter.com/TheNewSarahJane/status/1073912239168442370
https://twitter.com/EmmaBurcart/status/1073719157122891776
https://twitter.com/ColleenBlooms/status/1073776453949345792
Mean Girls/The “Frenemies” Trope
https://twitter.com/sosomanysarahs/status/1073767477123796994
https://twitter.com/aliettedb/status/1073853019702349824
https://twitter.com/cafween/status/1073750846762971137
Also, in my experience, the girls who use mean girl tactics aren’t the prettiest, most popular ones, but the girls who have something to gain and something to lose. They’re either terribly insecure or extremely entitled, and they get their power by putting down other girls.
— Mara Wilson (@MaraWilson) December 15, 2018
Also, female “frenemies” might have been the least of a teen girl’s problems.
https://twitter.com/CiaraReadsALot/status/1073961537616965632
Portraying Teenage Girls as Either Exceptionally Mature or Vapid
That teen girls can be loud, gross, hyper, childish… I feel like many portrayals of teen girls, they’re always preternaturally mature yet also empty headed at the same time. You never see them like, silly and fun and annoying like kids can be
— MJ Knefel (@mollyknefel) December 14, 2018
They can still be silly and a little childish, because, come on—they’re still young.
The thing about teens is, they are still children in most ways. I have a house full of them right now, and it’s fart jokes and potato chips, boys and girls.
— Terri Shea (@terrishea) December 15, 2018
Or they might be way more mature than you give them credit for.
https://twitter.com/HillaryMonahan/status/1073750178249826304
Maturity can vary widely among girls of the same age.
The vast differences in maturity (physical and mental) between even girls of the same age. There are 14yos reading American Girl Magazine and 14yos reading Cosmo, and that's not weird! Embarrassing? Yes. But unusual? Not at all. Age means almost nothing for adolescents.
— Kat Mayerovitch 🐀 (@kat_mayerovitch) December 15, 2018
Forgetting That Teenage Girls Are Pretty Dang Funny
And hey, it’s possible to be both silly and deep. Teenage girls contain multitudes too, you know.
https://twitter.com/Amelia_R_Mellor/status/1073788597151494149
Teenage girls too are silly, have toilet humour, say dirty jokes, that’s what she said jokes, pull pranks, the class clown and are wickedly funny. Their sense of humour isn’t solely sarcasm. They can even have a dark sense of humour.
— .🫐 (@wongkarmarx) December 15, 2018
teenage girls are HILARIOUS. my friends and i were always laughing about something and you never see girls laughing in groups on tv shows or in movies unless it’s sinister/mean
— lil bones jones (@aimiekins) December 15, 2018
Underestimating the Expectations Put on Girls
Every girl I know grew up hearing “girls mature more quickly than boys” repeated like a skipping record. Over time, it started to sound like an extended justification for the idea that “boys will be boys.” But what if it’s just a self-perpetuating social myth?
https://twitter.com/DanielleSCW/status/1073753187335704576
by which I mean that teenage girls are more commonly expected to take on more responsibility re: household tasks, taking care of siblings, and generally acting like adults, but if their bodies mature at the same rate they are often sexualized and made fun of for physical changes.
— Jen Bartel (@heyjenbartel) December 14, 2018
In my family there are 7 boys and 4 girls. The girls had far more responsibilities than the boys. There was a shit ton more pressure on our shoulders. The girls had consequences for our actions and the boys had none.
— Hannah Lavender ⚔️✨ (@Hannah_illo) December 15, 2018
Another reason why girls are expected to mature faster than boys do: periods supposedly signal womanhood. A boy’s “becoming a man” story is usually an emotional journey of self-discovery, but a girl’s “becoming a woman” story is just a biological change?
https://twitter.com/GraceFacesPlace/status/1073814489290719232
Which brings us to the next thing men get wrong when writing teenage girls…
Puberty. Periods Exist, Guys.
How they conveniently forget that, in general, teen girls menstruate. It blew my mind when Tamora Pierce’s Alanna got her period.
— delightfully eccentric lady pal (@TheBigMeeow) December 15, 2018
Your friend invites you to a pool party, and suddenly the logistics of having a good time got a whole lot more complicated.
https://twitter.com/paix120/status/1073808435668488193
I think male authors tend to focus on the parts of "becoming a woman" that are exciting to them…boobs and hips. Not so much about suddenly needing deodorant, forgetting to shave your legs and dealing with mocking in gym class, not having a handle on managing your period yet…
— Jenny Thompson (@JennyRThompson) December 15, 2018
https://twitter.com/matociquala/status/1073715108638064641
https://twitter.com/alybunny/status/1073766660933345281
*Cough* Murakami *cough*. This trope continues beyond girlhood, too. See Sonja’s excellent post: “I Don’t Think about My Boobs As Much As Male Novelists Think I Do.”
Has anyone mentioned this delectable example yet? ‘Mariye passed her time in the storage shed thinking about her budding breasts.’ No she didn’t, Murakami. Via @wirewalking pic.twitter.com/p3ryWyO1gs
— Anna Mazzola – Find me on BlueSky etc instead (@Anna_Mazz) December 15, 2018
Sexualization
It’s not just about the “budding breasts,” though—teenage girls are sexualized in a scary way. A lot of male writers don’t capture what it’s like to face that kind of creepy, dangerous attention from both boys and grown men.
https://twitter.com/lilithsaintcrow/status/1073750915692126208
https://twitter.com/amaenad/status/1073887339066331136
A teen girl’s sexuality is complicated, not black and white, especially when she’s figuring it out in the wake of this kind of objectification (The Poet X does a killer job dealing with this topic!).
https://twitter.com/umangkalra__/status/1073807838290604037
https://twitter.com/ottawanag/status/1073736955991515136
https://twitter.com/urwalder/status/1073744278516465665
How We Really Feel
Teenage girls are often portrayed as being emotional because of hormones and PMS. But along with those hormones, think about all the social and emotional pressures just noted. Now combine them with the fact that, as a teen, you are maturing mentally and ideologically, wrestling with your understanding of self and the world, and likely beginning to diverge in some ways from the adults in your life. And yet, you are—if you’re lucky!—still a dependent on those adults. You’re ready to self-actualize, but you don’t yet have the means to, and all of that can create a really intense interior landscape.
I was probably at my angriest, most engaged with the outside world and laughed most as a teen. Teen girls can be extremely sincere because all those new hormones mean they feel everything amplified and raw and they are having all kind of feels.
— fs books (@FoxSpiritBooks) December 15, 2018
The way that female emotions are always made palatable or attractive to men. Sadness as fragile beauty, anger as passion, awkwardness as charming. NO. Sometimes my sadness can be my own messy sadness, not the reason a boy finds me attractive so he can feel better about himself.
— Madison Bateman (@madisonbateman) December 15, 2018
That teen girls aren't moody just because of hormones or because they somehow thrive on drama. They often deal with enormous family and social pressures with little to no support and struggle under the weight of it, causing them to act out or be harsh/moody.
— Albertine Watson 🏹🏛 Wishlist Mythmatch on Steam! (@littlebluerobot) December 15, 2018
However, the intensity of these emotions doesn’t generally manifest itself into the tropes of moody teens who lash out at their parents. A lot of teen girls still manage to be, you know, nice people during their adolescence.
https://twitter.com/AlishaGrauso/status/1073733439541587968
Hobbies/Passions/Interests/Ambitions
Basically, teenage girls don’t care as much about boys as you think they do, male novelists. Also please stop treating their interests as vapid kthxbye.
I'm going to have to go with the notion that teenage girls have absolutely no hobbies or interests outside of performative femininity/romance/career chasing, or if they do, they're the one "cool girl" surrounded by boys.
Where's all the D&D groups and the anime binge parties?
— Secret Gamer Girl (@SecretGamerGrrl) December 14, 2018
girls can be interested in traditionally masculine things and be "tomboys" without having 20 older brothers. so many writers think the only way a girl can like sports or cars or building things (etc) is because a MAN was involved who introduced those things to her 🙄
— the brotherhood of evil lesbians (@obiwormkenobi) December 15, 2018
https://twitter.com/carolineframke/status/1073720441678819328
https://twitter.com/HaleyMancini/status/1073885200013156352
That LOVE is always on our minds. Get real/ when I was a teen the only thing on my mind was GETTING PUBLISHED
— Forgetful_Bacon (@UncleMeag) December 15, 2018
https://twitter.com/SusanEsparza/status/1073859433539629057
Some Teen Girls Aren’t Represented At All
When writers populate their stories with teenage girl characters, certain groups often get left out of the narrative altogether. (This is a larger problem that goes beyond just male novelists, though.)
https://twitter.com/AlligatorLegs/status/1073931595982229509
I'm 99% sure if I had read any story written from the perspective of an unhatched trans girl, it would have flipped a switch in my head and saved me decades of confusion about why everything about my life felt wrong and out of whack.
— Millie 🏳️⚧️ who is doing an anarchism (@gayforgrils) December 15, 2018
Stereotypical Quirks
And then there are those stupid little things that bother us, too.
https://twitter.com/anylaurie16/status/1073751145095589889
In Conclusion
I’m not one to argue that men cannot or should not write teenage girl characters. It’s been done, and heck, one of my favorite YA novelists is a man who’s written teen girls as POV characters. But what this flood of responses shows is that a lot of male authors write female characters without taking a step back to scrutinize their own perceptions of women. If you’re going to do it, male writers, pay attention, ask questions, and take critique while you’re still drafting the work, because buddy you’re gonna get it afterward if you don’t.
Ahmed was grateful for the help. Anyone who picks up the new series of Ms. Marvel, feel free to report back how he did writing Kamala.
https://twitter.com/saladinahmed/status/1073955218155601922
There are thousands of more replies where these came from, but we want to hear yours, too. What would you add?
