A Tangle of Discourses: Girls Negotiating Adolescence RABY

A Tangle of Discourses: Girls Negotiating Adolescence

REBECCA C. RABY

**Quotations**  

“On the one hand, Jess accepts the definition of herself as moody and sees this as inevitable to teenagehood. Then she experiences herself being punished for it (moodiness as a social problem?). She denies the mood as ‘different’ but not necessarily bad, and links this difference to the context of starting high school and dealing with its demands. Reverting to an essentialist position, she later suggests that hormones are in fact affecting her, she is moody and angrier than usual, but then ends up drawing on a discourse of becoming, deploying it in a way that contradicts the essentialist position.”

Being moody is not a positive thing so I do not understand why Jess has to “accept the definition of herself as moody”. When the other says Jess contradicts herself I think that is not needed. Jess is young and is not sure what she is going though. I', pretty sure the way she feels today is not the way she is going to feel tomorrow. Personally I would be offended if I was described as being moody at any age. Earlier in Jess’ interview she says:

“Sometimes I’ll have had a bad day and I’ll come home in the worst mood. She’ll be all happy and I’ll be all ‘just not now, mom’ and then she’ll be ‘oh, you’re grounded’. Then I’ll get grounded for being in a bad mood or at least how it started or something. // Yeah, my mom says that ever since I’ve been in high school I’ve been in a bad mood.”

This all could have been avoided if Jess would have simply told her mom that she had not had a good day and that they would talk later but instead she choose to tell her mom in a way that did not come off as good. We as adults all have those days where we do not feel like talking to anyone. This is not something that only teenagers do. “We” need to stop blaming everything teenagers do on “hormones”. Unless we feel as though these same “hormones” are still affect us as adults.  

“Here teens are a risk to others, difficult, troublemakers and potential disrupters of households and social peace. Griffin suggests that girls are more likely to be considered at risk while boys are more likely to be treated as a social problem”

Saying that teens are a “risk to other, troublemakers, and potential disrupters of house holds and social peace” is a little inaccurate. There was lots of categorizing in this reading. All teens are not troublemakers and not all teens are disrupters of peace. There were lots of preconceived notations about teens in this reading. Is this quote we see separation of gender. Girls vs. boys. Of course girls are considered at risk and boys are more likely to be treated as a social problem. People like to overlook girls/ women but we are cable of doing what boys/ men do. I wonder when we will let these gender roles go.

I heard this song as a teen and I thought it related to my life. 

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I honestly did not enjoy this reading. I felt as though it was way too lengthy and everything that was said could have been condensed. 

My only questions for next class are....

What did everyone think about this reading all together?

Did you feel there was a bias and/ or some uneducated thoughts from the author? 

Lastly, point out one thing you could relate to from this text.