The Oxford Dictionary defines Coming of Age as-
A young persons transition from childhood to adulthood.
That is pretty simple, but I'd like to elaborate, I think that this"transition" from childhood to adulthood occurs through a number of stereotyped problems...or rites of passage. The problems which everyone of us teenagers go through...
To experience these rites of passage are a part of growing up, these experiences are what make our life, are they not? So I watched a movie today- Girl In Progress, well when I saw the poster, I expected to be a chick-flick (or a rom-com) just my kinda movie...but turns out it was one of those movies which made me think..
The movie introduced me to "Coming of Age" literature and made me recognize it as a separate genre. To make its very long and extremely complicated story short..See the little girl in the picture? She decided that shes gonna speed up growing up and made a list of all the rites of passage for growing up [which she got from movies like Mean Girls, Uptown Girls, Nanny Diaries etc. etc. (or as my brother calls them "girl movies"- for being dreamy and beautiful but also fake)]
Her list went something like this--
I've thought about them, and here they are-
I know that sounded like I was criticizing the teenage ways or whatever, but what I actually was doing was appreciating them, you learn valuable lessons from all of this!A young persons transition from childhood to adulthood.
That is pretty simple, but I'd like to elaborate, I think that this"transition" from childhood to adulthood occurs through a number of stereotyped problems...or rites of passage. The problems which everyone of us teenagers go through...
To experience these rites of passage are a part of growing up, these experiences are what make our life, are they not? So I watched a movie today- Girl In Progress, well when I saw the poster, I expected to be a chick-flick (or a rom-com) just my kinda movie...but turns out it was one of those movies which made me think..
The movie introduced me to "Coming of Age" literature and made me recognize it as a separate genre. To make its very long and extremely complicated story short..See the little girl in the picture? She decided that shes gonna speed up growing up and made a list of all the rites of passage for growing up [which she got from movies like Mean Girls, Uptown Girls, Nanny Diaries etc. etc. (or as my brother calls them "girl movies"- for being dreamy and beautiful but also fake)]
Her list went something like this--
- Steal money for makeover
- Be a bitch and impress popular girls
- Have a teacher as a mentor, making sure that she notices my untapped talents
- Hang with popular girls and let down mentor so that she calls my mom
- Let down mom by playing "loud music"
- Get invited to coolest party and loose virginity to the stupidest, most insensitive douchebag in the school.
- Move to New York and start a new life
I've thought about them, and here they are-
- Want independence... that's why there are so many tantrums, parents don't want to let go and kids feel trapped.
- Rebellion...i think this is aftermath of the sudden feeling of being caged at home..We're just bursting out of those houses. (Hence the punk clothes and the douchey attitude)
- Losing Control...I may sound like an adult when I say this and I do feel like a bit of traitor when I type this out but, after some time, teenagers loose sight of the end goal, the whle idea of annoying the parents and going with the flow blinds everything out. The stage of never being sober is here!
- Realizing your mistakes and cleaning up....just in time for graduation :)
When parents don't let us out of the house we jump the fence!...There's that feeling of invincibility, the ceiling cant hold us can it? How are we going to ever learn if we don't make those mistakes? Going through those rites of passage are super important...maybe our parents think they can "protect" us from them, the parties, the drugs and the alcohol but we all know that the overprotective parents produce the sneakiest kids..
I know its cliche for me to now say that its all parents fault, but it isn't. They just gotta know when to let go and when to be there for us, which can be tough considering how moody I am most of the time.(So Im automatically going to assume that most people having swinging moods too :)
What I think is, you have to be a teenager, make those mistakes without completely letting go of that safety bar. On the other hand you can't just hold onto that bar and think about your future..that's not living.
I don't want to live the teenage life my parents want me to live, but hey! its my life I'll live it just the way I want to..
But remember we're all going to learn a lesson, because we are all going to make mistakes...That's what being a teenager is all about, its about making mistakes but learning from them.
So that's what it is...your gonna learn something, but right now lets have some fun!
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So what do you guys think?