Speaker 1: M h. Welcome to the stuff of life. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Julie Douglas. The early teens are years of upheaval and turmoil,
Speaker 1: their years of physical and glandular change, new and wider
Speaker 1: relationships with people, and new inner feelings in the early adolescents.
Speaker 1: In the book A Field Guide to Getting Lost, author
Speaker 1: Rebecca Solnitt writes that when she pictures herself at age fifteen,
Speaker 1: she can see flames shooting up. She says, she sees
Speaker 1: herself falling off the edge of the world, and she
Speaker 1: is amazed that she survived, not the outside world, but
Speaker 1: the inside one. Parents of almost every child find the
Speaker 1: age of puberty or early adolescence full of problems. The
Speaker 1: knowledge that these difficulties are normal and usually only temporary,
Speaker 1: helps fitter and family friction into more constructive channels. There's
Speaker 1: no doubt that the teenage years are marked by turmoil,
Speaker 1: but this betwixt and between stage is a relative newcomer,
Speaker 1: born out of the twentieth century, when increasingly wealthy nations
Speaker 1: did away with child labor and instead focused on education.
Speaker 1: By the nineteen fifties, adolescents emerged as its own bona
Speaker 1: fide phase of development. The adolescent is self centered, bills
Speaker 1: responds to every situation that's concerned with how it affects him. Today,
Speaker 1: we treat teenagers like another species, beings fumbling for the
Speaker 1: portals into adulthood. We admire them, we fear them, but
Speaker 1: mostly we forget that at our core, each of us
Speaker 1: is still falling off the edge of the world. We
Speaker 1: are still that teenager. In this episode, we talked to
Speaker 1: a neuroscientist about the teenage brain. As a result of
Speaker 1: the increasing activity of this biole logical stress system, UH,
Speaker 1: teen and young adults seem to have a more robust
Speaker 1: reaction to stress. And we talked to some intrepid teens
Speaker 1: about what it feels like to be on the edge
Speaker 1: of adulthood and what the media gets right and what
Speaker 1: the media gets wrong. Well, of course there's a whole
Speaker 1: other experience compared to back then, but there's even a
Speaker 1: different experience because of your gender or like like your race,
Speaker 1: like it goes even deeper than just being simply that age.
Speaker 1: But first, let's take a step into the inner sanctum
Speaker 1: of the teenage girl with photographer Ronya Matar. Have a
Speaker 1: photo in the book about like a little teen age
Speaker 1: girl in the Palestine refugee camp, and she's she's wearing
Speaker 1: a headscar but she's addressed exactly like a picture in
Speaker 1: her closet of Hannah Montana, as she's striking the exact
Speaker 1: same places Hannah Montana, And there was something so endearing
Speaker 1: about that. So I photograph girls in the United States
Speaker 1: and in the Middle East. I mean, for me, this
Speaker 1: was also the whole project about identity, but it's also
Speaker 1: about my current identity at my daughter's identity as being
Speaker 1: from the two cultures. And it so happened that anytime
Speaker 1: you might put the news on now you're going to
Speaker 1: hear about some terrorists, something happening in the middles or
Speaker 1: about refugees, and we forget that there's the normal people
Speaker 1: behind the scenes are just the same. So for me,
Speaker 1: this work became really on focusing on that universality through
Speaker 1: the girls and Ronne's book A Girl in Her Room,
Speaker 1: An essay by Susan Minett describes the bedroom as the
Speaker 1: first cocoon a girl will create for herself. This is
Speaker 1: a chrystalis. If we could see inside, we would witness
Speaker 1: one of the most extraordinary changes in the animal kingdom
Speaker 1: metamorphosis the girls in a way are really growing up
Speaker 1: and trying to to kind of get a sense of
Speaker 1: who they are and how they are perceived in the
Speaker 1: world by their friends, by other adults. By I mean,
Speaker 1: they're really trying to come to terms with their identity.
Speaker 1: And I said that the room was the place where
Speaker 1: they would experiment with that. What they surrounded themselves on
Speaker 1: the walls, stuff on their bed everything. It was such
Speaker 1: an intimate setting. The impetus for a girl in her
Speaker 1: room came from Ronney's then newly emerging teenage daughter. When
Speaker 1: my daughter turned fifteen, especially saw the change in her.
Speaker 1: She had been a townboy soccer player before, and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, she was just like becoming this girly
Speaker 1: girl who I felt I hardly recognized. So I kind
Speaker 1: of became fascinated with with the changes she was going
Speaker 1: to and thought I was one of photographs something. And
Speaker 1: then her friends would come and I started kind of
Speaker 1: photographing them, and then I realized that these girls are
Speaker 1: in the case of my daughter, because I don't know
Speaker 1: some of them as well, but my daughter was like
Speaker 1: a whole different person that I had never seen, and
Speaker 1: they all kind of started to sound all was the same.
Speaker 1: It's the same expressions and ponalities and the same straight hair,
Speaker 1: and um, so I decided, you know, maybe it would
Speaker 1: be more interesting for me to photograph each girl by herself.
Speaker 1: And when I started photographing each girl, I kind of
Speaker 1: started originally with that friends of my daughters or daughters
Speaker 1: of my friends, and um, it so happened that we
Speaker 1: did it in their bedroom, and I quickly realized that
Speaker 1: this was my project. The room not only provided sanctuary,
Speaker 1: but it reflected aspects of the girl's personality back to
Speaker 1: the camera. When the girl was around in her room,
Speaker 1: it was she was more she was being herself. Second,
Speaker 1: I could see that there was such an interesting, really
Speaker 1: organic relationship with this with the girl in her space.
Speaker 1: And Ronne's book of photos Susan Mine Rights Pink gives
Speaker 1: way to glitter, stuffed animals, to figurings. Pictures of animals
Speaker 1: are replaced by pictures people and with objects no longer
Speaker 1: selected by a parent. Then to the she adds her
Speaker 1: own creations, and soon the walls are taken over and
Speaker 1: the closets in the bed. The teenager's room is her cave.
Speaker 1: So perhaps these scenes of girlhood morphing into womanhood are
Speaker 1: so compelling because they reach across time and connect to
Speaker 1: all of us who, at one time or another we're
Speaker 1: grasping for who we were or who we wanted to become.
Speaker 1: You know. It's something very interesting happened because at that
Speaker 1: point I was really interested in photographing girls in this
Speaker 1: country and because this is where I lived and where
Speaker 1: my girl, my daughter's growing up. And then somewhere as
Speaker 1: I'm doing this project, it's really struck a chord with me,
Speaker 1: like I was those girls when if I gave earlier
Speaker 1: in a different country and different culture, but I was
Speaker 1: I was the same, and there was something This is
Speaker 1: when it tissed me at the whole universality of it,
Speaker 1: and I decided to include girls in the Middle East.
Speaker 1: But it's exactly what you say, like, um, it put
Speaker 1: me back into my teenage here just like something. There
Speaker 1: are things that never changed. And maybe the pictures on
Speaker 1: the wilds are of different rock stars, but I also
Speaker 1: had pictures of rock stars back then. I mean I
Speaker 1: had something a little different happening. As I was growing
Speaker 1: up doing the living in Civil Wars, I was collecting
Speaker 1: sharpnell and bullets, bullets also from the street like whenever
Speaker 1: they was fighting. The next day I would go out
Speaker 1: with my friends and little collectors, and they were also
Speaker 1: stayed in my room. But this was also part of
Speaker 1: the identity I was growing up. The team's geographical locations
Speaker 1: in socio economic status varied widely, but still there were
Speaker 1: more commonalities than differences among them. The cover of the book,
Speaker 1: her name is Chris Pilla. I love this photo because
Speaker 1: you you look at it and you really think this
Speaker 1: is a young woman in the United States or anywhere.
Speaker 1: You would never think this is a living new girl.
Speaker 1: She's blonde or faith blonde. She's so she has a
Speaker 1: gigant to take photo of Marlin Monroe behind her, and
Speaker 1: she has this kind of attitude playing down, which is
Speaker 1: for another kind of universal teenage girl in her bedroom
Speaker 1: attitude as and and it shows people off a little
Speaker 1: bit because people assume that if she's going to be
Speaker 1: from the Middle East, she has to be covered or
Speaker 1: oppressed of blah blah blah with the whole kind of
Speaker 1: rhetorically here all the time, and that's not the case.
Speaker 1: There are other markers of teenage universality beyond pop culture expression.
Speaker 1: And what was interesting is even in the refugee camp
Speaker 1: and anywhere it felt like there was always the mirror
Speaker 1: and often the laptop and Facebook. And for me, these
Speaker 1: were like in some way the outside world coming into
Speaker 1: the room, or because the mirror is like okay, all
Speaker 1: they're kind of seeing how they want to portray themselves
Speaker 1: to others right in some way, and and Facebook is
Speaker 1: the way they come indicating with the outside words from
Speaker 1: the comfort of their bedroom. In this sense, mirrors and
Speaker 1: social sites like Facebook are conduits to identity. Think of
Speaker 1: all the images and expectations that team girls are inundated
Speaker 1: with now, think of all the attendant anxieties that come
Speaker 1: along with living in a time where the gaze has intensified.
Speaker 1: But they put on the wall is often what they
Speaker 1: want to be. And there's another young woman, her name
Speaker 1: is Fianna, and she surrounded herself with all these beautiful
Speaker 1: models in her wall, and there was something painful about
Speaker 1: that in some way, and and she said something like,
Speaker 1: you know, as I was getting photographed, I kept thinking
Speaker 1: how do I look? And compared to the pictures on
Speaker 1: my wall. We tend to think of teenage girls is
Speaker 1: armored up in their makeup and their defiant stances. But
Speaker 1: as Ronya points out, that's often the condition of vulnerability.
Speaker 1: I found with the the gut to have that they
Speaker 1: have this armor for the outside world, and if you
Speaker 1: take the time to really be with them in the
Speaker 1: room and kind of whatever, you see how vulnerable they are.
Speaker 1: This was really a revelation to me. It was all
Speaker 1: the girls. There was another girl in the book as well,
Speaker 1: and her name is Dizzy, and she was wearing a sweater,
Speaker 1: and as I was photographing and she got more at these,
Speaker 1: she showed she took off for a sweater and I
Speaker 1: could see that she had cuts on her arms, and
Speaker 1: and she's somebody who when I saw on the street,
Speaker 1: looked like somebody who had build an armor, and she had,
Speaker 1: you know, she had the attitude you might think off
Speaker 1: a teenage girls, and all of a sudden, when she
Speaker 1: took off that, I'm like, oh my god, she's she's struggling.
Speaker 1: And it was really actually very powerful moment to me
Speaker 1: because then she told me, I do want to photograph
Speaker 1: them because when I look at them, it reminds me
Speaker 1: of what I overcame, where I was, and where I am.
Speaker 1: So there was something also very powerful about that that's
Speaker 1: also very vulnerable. Photographing the girls gave me a portal
Speaker 1: into teenagers that helped her to reconsider her own children.
Speaker 1: With me spending so much time with them and really
Speaker 1: building that trusting relationship, I could see the vulnerability and
Speaker 1: how hard it is to be a teenage girl. And
Speaker 1: it really made me so much more understanding of my
Speaker 1: own kids in some way, to give them more space
Speaker 1: in some way and to often ignore this kind of
Speaker 1: um attitude that I could have worried about otherwise, because
Speaker 1: I'm like, Okay, no, this is this is just part
Speaker 1: of growing up and they have to do that part
Speaker 1: of cutting the cord. And I'm their mom, and these
Speaker 1: young women I was photographing there's no way their mom
Speaker 1: could have taken the photos I took. So it was
Speaker 1: something that really made me understand that quite a bit.
Speaker 1: One thing that's interesting is as I'm photographing them, I'm
Speaker 1: really bonding with them after the point that I think
Speaker 1: I'm one of them, and I'm would pass the mirror
Speaker 1: and I'm like, oh my god, what am I thinking?
Speaker 1: So what just wron? You want you to take a
Speaker 1: way from what she saw through her lens. Some people
Speaker 1: have a harder time looking young girls being photographed. All
Speaker 1: of a sudden, people associate also of uh, you know, like, okay,
Speaker 1: there's sexuality and those I'm like, there's nothing sexual. It's
Speaker 1: it's there's something empowering about owning up to being a
Speaker 1: girl and too. You know, you could be you could
Speaker 1: go plase soccer the next day, but you still are
Speaker 1: owning up to your body changing and all that. And
Speaker 1: there's something I feel like, it's important for me to
Speaker 1: look at the work with respect that the girls deserves.
Speaker 1: To wear her hair and clothes, according to the latest
Speaker 1: style is much more important than to wear them in
Speaker 1: the most becoming ways. She's not mature enough yet the
Speaker 1: world knows best, and she wants to be sure of
Speaker 1: her place in the world. And the Wired article a
Speaker 1: troubling adaptation the beautiful teenage brain. David Dobbs writes, quote
Speaker 1: in scientific terms, teenagers can be a pain and ass
Speaker 1: but they are quite possibly the most fully crucially adaptive
Speaker 1: human beings around. Without them, human beings might not have
Speaker 1: readily spread across the globe. In this segment, we talked
Speaker 1: to Elaine F. Walker about vulnerability and the teenage brain.
Speaker 1: Early teens are years of uneven development, that are spirits
Speaker 1: of mental energy as well as physical and at other
Speaker 1: times nothing seems to be happening. Research on adolescent brain development,
Speaker 1: brain function and behavior is an area that is very
Speaker 1: active right now and we have a lot to learn.
Speaker 1: I'm Elane Walker and a professor of psychology and you're
Speaker 1: a science at Emery University. For thirty years, Elaine has
Speaker 1: been conducting research on risk factors for aarious mental disorders,
Speaker 1: especially schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders. And guess what being
Speaker 1: a team can be a risk factor, depending on, of course, genetics,
Speaker 1: but also the kinds of stressors teams are exposed to.
Speaker 1: Not to mention certain drugs. Certainly, at this point, there's
Speaker 1: plenty of evidence that adolescents are more responsive to certain
Speaker 1: emotional stimuli than either younger children are adult. And then
Speaker 1: there's the stress response as regulated by the hp A
Speaker 1: axis or hypothalamic pituitary adrenal access. The main thing is
Speaker 1: that cortisol, the stress hormone, is released, and the brain
Speaker 1: gets wind of this hormone and tells the hypothalamus and
Speaker 1: pituitary glands to chill out, which both puts the body
Speaker 1: on high alert, but make sure that it doesn't go overboard.
Speaker 1: The problem is when there's a persistent elevated cortisol released
Speaker 1: that left unchecked, can lead to changes in brain struck
Speaker 1: and behavior in and of itself. That normative increase in
Speaker 1: cortisol release may make adolescence a more vulnerable period because
Speaker 1: the stress system hp A axis is ranting up its activity.
Speaker 1: It's basically one part amped up emotional response to stress
Speaker 1: and one part dicey environmental conditions along with the brain
Speaker 1: still under renovation state that could present a tipping point.
Speaker 1: The fact that so many psychiatric disorders have their peak
Speaker 1: onset period during adolescents in young adulthood is probably a
Speaker 1: function of the fact that brain maturation during adolescent is
Speaker 1: playing a role in triggering the manifestation of vulnerabilities. This
Speaker 1: means that for teens who are at the risk of schizophrenia,
Speaker 1: puberty could set the stage for the disorder, and hints
Speaker 1: of it can emerge in something called prodromal symptoms. Symptoms
Speaker 1: that are associated with heightened risk for latter schizophrenia include
Speaker 1: subtle version of the defining features of schizophrenia and and
Speaker 1: other psychotic disorders. Uh The individual might report that they
Speaker 1: think fromtimes that they're hearing their name called, but when
Speaker 1: they check, there's no one there, and they attribute that
Speaker 1: perceptual anomaly to just their imagination. Turns out that those
Speaker 1: who go onto full blown psychosis have higher levels of cortisol,
Speaker 1: have exposure to more stress, and are more likely to
Speaker 1: use cannabis. The thing about this that's so fascinating is
Speaker 1: that the same underlying plasticity that sets the conditions for
Speaker 1: vulnerability to brain changes like psychosis. Maybe the saving grace
Speaker 1: for the team who can be identified early on this
Speaker 1: work is still in the investigated stages, so many of
Speaker 1: the studies have not yet been replicated. However, it does
Speaker 1: appear that the likelihood that an individual will develop a
Speaker 1: psychotic disorder can be reduced if they are provided with
Speaker 1: cognitive therapy after they begin to show the prodromal sign.
Speaker 1: This kind of neuroplasticity is in itself a big risk
Speaker 1: by nature the idea that to ride the edge of development,
Speaker 1: you have to ride the razor's edge of a shape
Speaker 1: shifting brain, negotiating the twists and turns of risk, reward,
Speaker 1: and emotion. Let's watch some of these youngsters as spend
Speaker 1: Friday afternoon and evening we'll see what some of the
Speaker 1: common troubles are. Oh no, I don't think they're ready
Speaker 1: for these hot tracks. Good Ready. Box Communications is a
Speaker 1: multimedia and journalism program for uncensored teen publishing and self expression.
Speaker 1: Four vox teams took over the studio to record their
Speaker 1: thoughts on gender, how they're represented in the media, and
Speaker 1: how media like you know, high school musical shaped their
Speaker 1: ideas about adolescence. My name's Catherine, a k A. Cat
Speaker 1: On eight seen my glorious gap years ending gloriously. My
Speaker 1: name's Manuel. I am eighteen years old. I turned nineteen
Speaker 1: on Sunday. I graduated from North Atlanta High School at
Speaker 1: last year, and I also took a gap year. My
Speaker 1: names some Eira. I'm seventeen. I go to the Cap
Speaker 1: School of the Arts. I'm Caleb. I'm eighteen. I'm girl
Speaker 1: in status now I go to Best Academy High school.
Speaker 1: What do you think the media gets wrong and right
Speaker 1: about being a teenager? I don't know. I see a
Speaker 1: spectrum really like I either see like teen celebrities like
Speaker 1: Kylie or like local news teenagers that are only like
Speaker 1: you know, oh you know, they were body slapped by
Speaker 1: a police officer. In the classroom or you know, there
Speaker 1: was something crazy on the streets. What I see our
Speaker 1: minority teens only being reported on when something bad happens,
Speaker 1: and um, when non minority teens white people. Um, you
Speaker 1: see things like these four college girls died in a
Speaker 1: car accident. Well that's that's sad, of course, but that
Speaker 1: happens all the time. Why are you following that? And
Speaker 1: of course here in Atlanta we have a huge operiods
Speaker 1: and jug abuse, but it's really only reported on minorities
Speaker 1: who are doing it, when in reality it's the wealthier
Speaker 1: areas of the city that have the highest use. When
Speaker 1: I think about teams, I think about how we're portrayed
Speaker 1: in movies. Yes, as if like every single high school
Speaker 1: in America has this major peg mentality. Gods to your loaners, here, jogs, here,
Speaker 1: the popular kids. I'm like, that never worked at my school.
Speaker 1: I just want to say that high school musical let
Speaker 1: me down, because I thought it was going to be
Speaker 1: exactly like that. It's not musical schools all boys, But
Speaker 1: I just there are, like you, all the jocks, and
Speaker 1: then there are the nerds and the geeks and like
Speaker 1: the people that just don't do anything at all. But
Speaker 1: I think that, like from from what I've been able
Speaker 1: to experience from high school, Like, even though there's division,
Speaker 1: I feel like teams now aren't judging like millennials aren't
Speaker 1: judging each other based on like characteristics. More teams are
Speaker 1: really now judging itself off of like what's our resume
Speaker 1: look like girl? Or like what you're doing, or like
Speaker 1: you like your status? Like it isn't really about like
Speaker 1: I mean, physical appearance is still always going to be
Speaker 1: something teams you know, if you think or not. But
Speaker 1: other than that, I mean the whole like jocks versus nervousing.
Speaker 1: That is, today's teams seem to be on the whole
Speaker 1: better adjusted. In two thousand and fifteen, the Centers for
Speaker 1: Disease Control released the results of the Youth Risk Behavior
Speaker 1: Surveillance Survey and found that today's teens smoke less, drink less,
Speaker 1: and have sex less in the previous generation. For instance,
Speaker 1: ten point eight percent of teens today smoked cigarettes twenty
Speaker 1: years ago. That was thirty four point eight percent. Today's
Speaker 1: teens are also forty six percent less likely to be
Speaker 1: in strength and teenagers twenty years ago. In fact, they're
Speaker 1: twenty one percent less likely to have ever tried alcohol
Speaker 1: at all, and yet they just can't shake the reputation
Speaker 1: that they're overdoing it, especially emotionally. What adults have said
Speaker 1: in my life like, um, when I overreact about things, Um,
Speaker 1: they say, because by the time you're an adult, the
Speaker 1: things that we think about are much are like small
Speaker 1: things to them, like all that petty stuff that goes
Speaker 1: on in school, that small stuff. At some point it's
Speaker 1: kind of like it's non existent, like an adulthood. So
Speaker 1: they don't really according to at least when my adults
Speaker 1: like adults, But I feel like adults really just like something.
Speaker 1: Adults probably just lied to you because adults have been
Speaker 1: justice petty teenager. I mean, since social media is huge,
Speaker 1: adults are just as petty on Facebook as we are petty,
Speaker 1: oh gosh, Like they're making memes just like we are,
Speaker 1: and they're laughing at all the same things that go down,
Speaker 1: just like we are. And if adults are exposing themselves
Speaker 1: as petty and social media, even as a mirror points out,
Speaker 1: they tell teens that the little indignities of life don't matter.
Speaker 1: What exactly does it mean to be in an adult anyway?
Speaker 1: For me? Adulthood isn't necessarily turning eighteen or getting a
Speaker 1: car or a bank account. It's how you carry yourself.
Speaker 1: It's how you react to situations, how you adapt to things,
Speaker 1: how how you express yourself, and how you treat others. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's basically how I view it. As an adult,
Speaker 1: you're only pushed to build relationships for other adults who
Speaker 1: have opportunities for you. So understanding that whatever you say
Speaker 1: or whatever you do has a consequence to it. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think that's what adult means. Sometimes it's hard to
Speaker 1: argue what adult hood means because you know, like people
Speaker 1: are human, so they're gonna they're gonna slip up sometimes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like adulthood has so many different nations to so many
Speaker 1: different people. Yeah. I think I'm pointing to say, is
Speaker 1: that adulthood has nothing to do with your age. I
Speaker 1: think that's something that we all kind of agree on. Yes,
Speaker 1: I remember when I turned eighteen, I'm thinking, oh my god,
Speaker 1: there's gonna be this amazing flash of light, gains superpowers.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say, save the word. I was just so
Speaker 1: in my imagination. I'm sorry, but like, but like, truthfully,
Speaker 1: I feel the same way that I felt when I
Speaker 1: was five, when I was ten, and I was twell, like,
Speaker 1: there's no grand transition to this. One day you just
Speaker 1: look up in your eighteen and the first question, I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm an adult. And then I'm like what, No, Like, wow, okay,
Speaker 1: new transition. Is there an an instruction? Man? This leads
Speaker 1: to a discussion of expectations. I guess from the African
Speaker 1: American point of view, as a black man, you know,
Speaker 1: you're supposed to go out what's supposed to do and
Speaker 1: come home and bring home the money to support your family.
Speaker 1: Now I completely agree that, I mean from from the base,
Speaker 1: from the baseness of that, as a man, you're supposed
Speaker 1: to do that. But I feel like, then, well, well
Speaker 1: I'll take you along adding a black man to that.
Speaker 1: From what my family has shown me what a black
Speaker 1: man is supposed to be, I feel like in society
Speaker 1: and I'm not I'm not playing the victim here because
Speaker 1: I don't like playing the victim here, but black men
Speaker 1: are really like I'm not even gonna use exercise because
Speaker 1: that's just such a huge and loaded word. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: I feel like black men have to do even more
Speaker 1: than just what a regular let's just say white man
Speaker 1: has to do. I mean, I feel like our image
Speaker 1: is always under attack. Kleen feels the pressure of holding
Speaker 1: up the mantle of being a black man to project
Speaker 1: and work to attain a positive image that his white
Speaker 1: male counterparts are already impuged with. And this is very
Speaker 1: much part of the culture of patriarchy in our American culture.
Speaker 1: We're still definitely living under this patriarchy that men have
Speaker 1: to be this way and do this and women follow afterwards,
Speaker 1: which I personally would like to challenge um on my
Speaker 1: in my personal life and in family. I know my
Speaker 1: mom she likes the idea of the patriarchy man doing this,
Speaker 1: but I know, I think that's kind of boring. I
Speaker 1: think it is two And like I feel like my
Speaker 1: mom at times like she would want for a man
Speaker 1: to like be able to, you know, do all of
Speaker 1: those magical things that a man in America is supposed
Speaker 1: to do. But I feel like I feel of the
Speaker 1: day and she feels like, well, I could really do
Speaker 1: this all by myself exactly, and what is and I
Speaker 1: hate to be the person, but like what does it
Speaker 1: mean to be a man or what does it mean
Speaker 1: to be a woman? And stuff like that. That's really
Speaker 1: the truth of it. Women can do the same things
Speaker 1: men can do. UM from from the female perspective and
Speaker 1: from what my family UM I believe expects from me.
Speaker 1: Is that you know, they want me to stand tall
Speaker 1: and hold my own ground. Like you know, they firmly
Speaker 1: believe in the fact that there are things that women
Speaker 1: can do then men can do. So they hold me.
Speaker 1: I think, I feel like they hold me up to
Speaker 1: some pretty high expectations, which I feel like is both
Speaker 1: really amazing because they have such faith in me, but
Speaker 1: it's also a little constricting because what if I want
Speaker 1: to go off and do something else, and so it's like,
Speaker 1: m well, then I feel like it's two things to that.
Speaker 1: Like one since we grow true, I mean, that's a
Speaker 1: decision that we get to make for ourselves. But then too,
Speaker 1: I feel like with the teenagers of today, I feel
Speaker 1: like that like the lines between men and women are
Speaker 1: completely blurred. So what do teens want from their parents
Speaker 1: and society? What you experience in life is letely different
Speaker 1: from what somebody else has experienced alive. So don't push
Speaker 1: your expectations or what you know or what you think
Speaker 1: somebody should know onto everyone. If you enjoyed high school
Speaker 1: and you did the typical prom prom queen, prob king
Speaker 1: things like that. That's cool, but let some let us
Speaker 1: as teens be us, let us discover ourselves without your interference.
Speaker 1: And it's great that you know who you are. But
Speaker 1: I would like to experience my life and maybe be
Speaker 1: better or not as great doubt. Yeah, guide on the
Speaker 1: sign at stage on stage. Manuel's now and his second
Speaker 1: semester at Oglethorpe University. We reached out to him to
Speaker 1: see what his thoughts are about current events. Hi, Julie
Speaker 1: Lass has changed since we last spoke in June. Here's
Speaker 1: some of my follow up thoughts. There is that political
Speaker 1: correctness that went out the door when the whole election started,
Speaker 1: and people are just you know, covering it up with oh,
Speaker 1: the economy is bad, this and that. But at the
Speaker 1: core of it, it's still this American thing, this American racism.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's I hate to say it, but sometimes
Speaker 1: there's the there's nothing more American than being racist. If
Speaker 1: there's nothing else that I want for myself, it's just
Speaker 1: to be treated like a human being. Um. Right now,
Speaker 1: we don't know what's going to happen next with Trump
Speaker 1: in office m M m M. One of the most
Speaker 1: poignant stories we tell about ourselves is about emerging from
Speaker 1: the chrystalis of childhood into adolescence, a fleeting time when
Speaker 1: we lived our emotions like a fever dream. That's because
Speaker 1: it's a time of radical transformation, one that we need
Speaker 1: not just to have the courage to take a risk
Speaker 1: to survive, but to change the world. A Stuff of
Speaker 1: Life has written an executive produced by me Julie Douglas
Speaker 1: and co produced by Noel Brown. Original music is by
Speaker 1: Noel Brown and editorial oversight is provided by contributing producer
Speaker 1: Dylan Fagan and Head of production Jerry Rowland. This episode
Speaker 1: also featured music by Tristan McNeil, Aaron Grubbs, and Dylan Fagan.
Speaker 1: If you're wondering about the instructional clips for parents raising teams,
Speaker 1: those are from the nineteen fifty three film Age of
Speaker 1: Turmoil from archive dot org. We'd like to thank Ronya
Speaker 1: Mattar for walking us through the minds and spaces of
Speaker 1: teenage girls. You can find her book, A Girl and
Speaker 1: Her Room and stores and learn more on Ronya Matar
Speaker 1: dot com. Thank you to Elaine F. Walker at Emery
Speaker 1: University for explaining the wonders and the pitfalls of the
Speaker 1: teenage brain. And many many thanks to our team participants
Speaker 1: from Box Team Communications Caleb Anderson, Manuel Portillo, Catherine Boyd,
Speaker 1: and Amra Dischaber for the adults out of the studio
Speaker 1: and recording your insights. You can find out more about
Speaker 1: Box Team Communications at vox A t l dot com.
Speaker 1: If you like what we do here at the Stuff
Speaker 1: of Life, visit us on Facebook and Twitter. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: you can email us at the Stuff of Life at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com.