A rant in the raw (OH SHIT RUN AWAY)
I saw the movie version of "Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging" the other day. It was all right, but it definitely lost something in the translation from diary to film.
It did make me think, though. It's a tweenage chick high school comedy drama, complete with the awkward puberty and emerging sexuality and all those other lovely things that go along with being 14. At several points during the movie, the girls practice feeling themselves up, making out, and putting on thong underwear. I was a bit uncomfortable with this, and that in itself came off as weird. Here were a bunch of girls engaging in fairly realistic teen girl things, but I felt naughty just seeing it on TV and wondered if someone might be watching the movie just for shots of 14-year-old ass cheek.
It hit me as kind of sad that we let our adolescent girls be virgins or whores, but anything in between is titillation. A bunch of boys that age could be seen in a movie looking at dirty magazines or jacking off, and it's like "haha, dumbass youth." But with girls, there's that feeling like it's all somebody else's cheesecake, and that bothers me. It sucks that the sexual part of growing up with a 'tang means entering a world where every stupid thing you do with your body has to be linked to some dude's boner.
This is something I've always been very aware of, but it wasn't til I saw a bunch of girls sitting on their hands and then groping their flat chests with numb fingers "to see what it feels like" that I realized I had never seen teen girls portrayed as being vulgar and innocent at the same time. Instead, I expected something obscene because breasts automatically mean EROTIC to me. I don't expect to see them outside of the context of mature sexuality, and I didn't have an emotional vocabulary for processing it that didn't go into a totally inappropriate direction, because that's sort of the norm. This boob fondling wasn't intended to be arousing, it was supposed to be ridiculous and childish. It was not about the viewer's dick in some way, and that right there is what boggled me--that it almost always is, and girls pick up on it from early on as something you expect. Sad.
Growing up I felt like I wasn't allowed to have a moment of puberty that didn't in some way revolve around men and their dicks. The gross stuff, the zits and cramps and all that crap? SO not sexy enough for TV, but it's what I remember most about being awkward and teenaged and female. The way I always felt like I'd get no privacy no matter how I dressed? Gee, I wonder why I might have been so self-conscious about that.
I always envied the boys. Their puberty was right out there in the open and it was normal, and gross, and not the end of the world. Mine was secretive and seemed inferior because parts of it were of no use to the collective hardon of my society, and were therefore icky, deficient and unimportant.
I was an early bloomer--it hit me when I was 10. The minute I started to develop tits, I noticed all these little things about childhood that were being taken away from me. But I was not growing into a young lady, goddamn it. I was a foul-mouthed little rockhound who beat up boys and wanted to be a cyborg when I grew up. It's not my fault my genes kicked in and I had to go bra-shopping in the fifth grade. This did not make me more mature than my flat-chested peers (guys who date underaged girls, I'm looking at YOU right now). It just made me more buoyant in the upper body department. And crankier. And bitter, oh boy so bitter.
I did not want guys coming on to me. I really, really did not want adults noticing and acknowledging my chest. It felt weird and gross, and in retrospect it usually was. But did I question it? Nope. I guess even then I kind of knew that this was what happens to XX types when they sprout boobage. I felt cheated, and to be honest I still feel that way. Some part of me will always be raging because little things I loved to do (like running around outside) became spectator sports and I couldn't just be me anymore. I didn't even want to be a girl in the first place, so it hit me extra hard when I was treated as a much older one.
It probably sounds like I was surrounded by pedos to anyone reading this, but it came from everywhere. My fifth grade teacher was a woman, and she took me aside one day at recess and told me the boys could see my boobies (her word, spoken awkwardly and with pity) through my shirt. I felt something ugly inside turn over and go squelch. I felt something die right there on the walkway. I wasn't just a happy little mutant anymore, I was "becoming a woman." And oh god, did I hate it.
The way I remember puberty is this: I'm standing in the middle of a giant ring of dicks, and they're all pointed at me and could go off at any time.
I opted out of the whole thing because it was tedious and I was bored with the whole thing. Jaded about sex and tired of running the dick gauntlet before I was old enough to get into an R rated movie. It's a wonder I stayed a virgin. Add in the females who were abused and acting out in my life, and you can imagine why I spent many years hating and fearing males in general.
So anyway, owing to my personal issues, I'm usually pretty quick to pick up on the various ways our lovely culture co-opts the experience of having titties and turns it into fantasy fodder. But it seems like I'm always finding new lows to complain about. Where are the movies where 12 year old girls flick boogers at each other and do stupid random shit?
Even in those fairly blah coming-of-age movies, there's a whole chunk of puberty that gets chopped out and left on the editing room floor. It's a shame, because girls can be fucking gross, and that is hilarious. I'd rather watch snot-faced tomboy childishness than some 50 year old guy's vaguely lolitaish stabs in the dark as he tries to imagine what it must be like to grow up girl-bodied.
But mostly, "Snogging" was a cute movie, and I appreciate the unintentional genderthinks it dumped on me. It's made me connect with a part of my childhood that I've considered utterly worthless and humiliating for most of my life, and now I'm starting to understand things a lot better as a result.
PS - No hating on dudes intended here. I was not as threatened by females at the time, so it didn't really leave as much of a lasting impression on me, but honestly I think the worst of the programming came from women and girls who were desperate to live up to expectations and not rock the boat. Le sigh.
TL;DR: Dick, dick, dick, gauntlets of dick, thank god I'm a tranny....
It did make me think, though. It's a tweenage chick high school comedy drama, complete with the awkward puberty and emerging sexuality and all those other lovely things that go along with being 14. At several points during the movie, the girls practice feeling themselves up, making out, and putting on thong underwear. I was a bit uncomfortable with this, and that in itself came off as weird. Here were a bunch of girls engaging in fairly realistic teen girl things, but I felt naughty just seeing it on TV and wondered if someone might be watching the movie just for shots of 14-year-old ass cheek.
It hit me as kind of sad that we let our adolescent girls be virgins or whores, but anything in between is titillation. A bunch of boys that age could be seen in a movie looking at dirty magazines or jacking off, and it's like "haha, dumbass youth." But with girls, there's that feeling like it's all somebody else's cheesecake, and that bothers me. It sucks that the sexual part of growing up with a 'tang means entering a world where every stupid thing you do with your body has to be linked to some dude's boner.
This is something I've always been very aware of, but it wasn't til I saw a bunch of girls sitting on their hands and then groping their flat chests with numb fingers "to see what it feels like" that I realized I had never seen teen girls portrayed as being vulgar and innocent at the same time. Instead, I expected something obscene because breasts automatically mean EROTIC to me. I don't expect to see them outside of the context of mature sexuality, and I didn't have an emotional vocabulary for processing it that didn't go into a totally inappropriate direction, because that's sort of the norm. This boob fondling wasn't intended to be arousing, it was supposed to be ridiculous and childish. It was not about the viewer's dick in some way, and that right there is what boggled me--that it almost always is, and girls pick up on it from early on as something you expect. Sad.
Growing up I felt like I wasn't allowed to have a moment of puberty that didn't in some way revolve around men and their dicks. The gross stuff, the zits and cramps and all that crap? SO not sexy enough for TV, but it's what I remember most about being awkward and teenaged and female. The way I always felt like I'd get no privacy no matter how I dressed? Gee, I wonder why I might have been so self-conscious about that.
I always envied the boys. Their puberty was right out there in the open and it was normal, and gross, and not the end of the world. Mine was secretive and seemed inferior because parts of it were of no use to the collective hardon of my society, and were therefore icky, deficient and unimportant.
I was an early bloomer--it hit me when I was 10. The minute I started to develop tits, I noticed all these little things about childhood that were being taken away from me. But I was not growing into a young lady, goddamn it. I was a foul-mouthed little rockhound who beat up boys and wanted to be a cyborg when I grew up. It's not my fault my genes kicked in and I had to go bra-shopping in the fifth grade. This did not make me more mature than my flat-chested peers (guys who date underaged girls, I'm looking at YOU right now). It just made me more buoyant in the upper body department. And crankier. And bitter, oh boy so bitter.
I did not want guys coming on to me. I really, really did not want adults noticing and acknowledging my chest. It felt weird and gross, and in retrospect it usually was. But did I question it? Nope. I guess even then I kind of knew that this was what happens to XX types when they sprout boobage. I felt cheated, and to be honest I still feel that way. Some part of me will always be raging because little things I loved to do (like running around outside) became spectator sports and I couldn't just be me anymore. I didn't even want to be a girl in the first place, so it hit me extra hard when I was treated as a much older one.
It probably sounds like I was surrounded by pedos to anyone reading this, but it came from everywhere. My fifth grade teacher was a woman, and she took me aside one day at recess and told me the boys could see my boobies (her word, spoken awkwardly and with pity) through my shirt. I felt something ugly inside turn over and go squelch. I felt something die right there on the walkway. I wasn't just a happy little mutant anymore, I was "becoming a woman." And oh god, did I hate it.
The way I remember puberty is this: I'm standing in the middle of a giant ring of dicks, and they're all pointed at me and could go off at any time.
I opted out of the whole thing because it was tedious and I was bored with the whole thing. Jaded about sex and tired of running the dick gauntlet before I was old enough to get into an R rated movie. It's a wonder I stayed a virgin. Add in the females who were abused and acting out in my life, and you can imagine why I spent many years hating and fearing males in general.
So anyway, owing to my personal issues, I'm usually pretty quick to pick up on the various ways our lovely culture co-opts the experience of having titties and turns it into fantasy fodder. But it seems like I'm always finding new lows to complain about. Where are the movies where 12 year old girls flick boogers at each other and do stupid random shit?
Even in those fairly blah coming-of-age movies, there's a whole chunk of puberty that gets chopped out and left on the editing room floor. It's a shame, because girls can be fucking gross, and that is hilarious. I'd rather watch snot-faced tomboy childishness than some 50 year old guy's vaguely lolitaish stabs in the dark as he tries to imagine what it must be like to grow up girl-bodied.
But mostly, "Snogging" was a cute movie, and I appreciate the unintentional genderthinks it dumped on me. It's made me connect with a part of my childhood that I've considered utterly worthless and humiliating for most of my life, and now I'm starting to understand things a lot better as a result.
PS - No hating on dudes intended here. I was not as threatened by females at the time, so it didn't really leave as much of a lasting impression on me, but honestly I think the worst of the programming came from women and girls who were desperate to live up to expectations and not rock the boat. Le sigh.
TL;DR: Dick, dick, dick, gauntlets of dick, thank god I'm a tranny....