Smells Like Teenage Resilience
How to deal with a pandemic ft. Derry Girls
A teenage girl walks out of a changing room in a shop wearing a suffocating blue dress. She asks her friend, “What do you think of this one?” Her friend replies, “I don’t know, I’m not sure it’s you really.”
“Good, I don’t want to be me.”
When I watched this scene this week, uttered in an impossible-to-decipher Northern Irish accents on Netflix’s “Derry Girls,” I wanted to show it to the producer of every teen show/film/book in the history of human civilization.
Because unlike what a “Gossip Girl” or a “Riverdale” will have you believe, being a teenager is not about traipsing around with a fully-developed sense of self-worth, glossy hair, and more dates than your weekly calendar can hold. Being a teenager, as Lisa McGee who created Derry Girls knows well enough, means awkward few years of trying to fit in – whatever that means in your part of the world – and occasionally hoping that you were anyone but you. If you’re lucky, you would have found a group of friends with whom you can deal with the (trivial, in hindsight) problems of the Teen Life. But, only if you’re lucky.
“I don’t want to be me,” is also how most of us are dealing with this pandemic in the year of our Lord 2020. Forced to reckon with ourselves in a way most of us were unprepared for, we’re now re-evaluating who we thought we were, where we thought we’d be, and of course, the world we thought we’d be living in. The spate of workout photos, signing up for new hobbies, questions about shifting jobs, changes in long-held views on marriage and kids, wanting to spend time with parents – it’s a consequence of being forced to confront an unprecedented situation. We don’t know who we are anymore – and we’re all feeling a little like our awkward teenage selves.
Now, of course, a disclaimer. Not everyone was an awkward teenager – a fact which I found to be quite surprising when I first discovered it in my twenties. “Wait, there were people who *didn’t* spend days trying to impress the popular boy in high school with their GK knowledge, in the hopes that the aforementioned popular boy will look past their braces and glasses? What?”
And of course, most teenagers now, the Generation Z as they are called, don’t seem unsure about … most things. Whether it’s leaving fairy comments on PM Modi’s Instagram photo as an apparent response to Tik Tok being banned or being confident enough to own their sexuality or knowing how to raise a voice against injustice, the kids are truly, alright.
No, the teenage experience which Derry Girls centers — and which I now find myself looking back on fondly like an Old Person would do — is one which is firmly pre-Internet. Where it was possible to think your little bubble of your friends and school as your whole world, because the Actual World with all its problems was so far away.
The five teenagers in Derry Girls – Erin Quinn, Orla McCool, Michelle Mallon, Claire Devlin, and James Maguire — live in one of the most conflict-ridden places in the world. Derry is a city in Northern Ireland ravaged daily by the sectarian tension between Irish Republican Army (IRA) and the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) police force. The first episode of Derry Girls shows the Quinn family –Erin and Orla are cousins — watching news of a bombing. And, yet. When the school bus the girls are on is stopped by the military, they are discussing how Derry is the best place in the world to live in. “Derry is class,” says Claire, which in non-Irish-slang is translated to “Derry is awesome.”
Because that’s the thing about being a teenager. Whether you were popular or no, whether you grew up in the 1990s or in 2020, being a teenager means being fully absorbed into your own world – your growing-up angst, your friends, your fights, your studies, your blog, your games, your books, your bullies, your troubles, your music, you. It might be a useful lesson to imbibe in our pandemic times — to occasionally constrict the Actual World to just our little world.
The Actual World may be hurtling through an unprecedented era of pain and transition, sure, but in the background. The most important thing in the world, when you’re a teen, is something else — like how to get out of that History exam.
LINKS OF THE WEEK:
When the Delhi riots took place, I was in the newsroom. And it single-handedly broke through my thick-news skin and made me want to move away from the news. I can’t imagine the mental fortitude it must take to be Abdul Ghaffar, a 40-year-old criminal lawyer, who is dealing with 50 cases related to the riots. Betwa Sharma reports in Huffington Post.
“Gaffar said that of the 50 Delhi riot cases he is defending, 40% of them are pro bono (free). The families of two accused for whom he had obtained bail in March, Gaffar said, were yet to pay the surety of Rs 20,000.
“What fees can I expect from them?” he said. ”I’m trying to do what I believe is right even though I may have no control over the outcome.”
In stories that made me furious, Dipankar Ghose reports in The Indian Express on how the flood waters of Kosi river ravage homes in Govindpur in Bhagalpur in Bihar. The pandemic has not made things easy.
"Flooding is an annual affair in Bihar. The state’s Economic Survey for 2019 notes that 28 of 38 districts are flood prone. As much as 9 per cent was of the total capital outlay in 2017-18 was allocated for irrigation and flood control. In 2016-17, Rs 1,569.11 crore was spent on disaster management for floods.
Given the Covid pandemic, the district administration’s efforts to mitigate the adverse impact of floods has only become that much more difficult. Pratyaya Amrit, Principal Secretary (Disaster Management), told The Indian Express, “Unlike other years, flood management this year presents a unique challenge.”
To no one’s surprise, work-from-home has made us all lonelier than before. Simon Usborne writes for the Guardian.
After four months of long days alone at the tiny desk in her bedroom, Mackenzie had a panic attack. She had lost weight and become depressed. “At first, I thought it was because the job was demanding, but I realised it was more the isolation and not being able to interact with people,” she says. “I hadn’t realised I’d relied on that so heavily for my mental health.”
Mackenzie also felt suffocated by the digital monitoring, which was already becoming standard in big firms. Hers was relatively light. An agenda app would track tasks and alert faceless bosses when they were done. Response times to chats were noted. “It definitely added to me feeling like I didn’t have set hours and the anxiety of it all,” she says.
Ian Williams in Hazlitt writes an an essay on fatherhood, the desire to have children, and all the #girldads we know.
“Sometimes I think I can identify men who have daughters. There’s usually a little dimple of evidence that marks them whatever the context. Such men listen carefully to younger female colleagues; they wiggle during a pop song; they touch the leaves of a plant; they wear their birthday gift even if it doesn’t match their style; they back away from chit chat with obnoxious men; they might not be able to tie elaborate knots but they can recognize a French braid. These men were not Neanderthals before fatherhood, but I reckon they weren’t always so mindful. So while I can’t credit fatherhood for socializing or civilizing them, it does seem to have refined them.”
That’s it from me, this week. As always, I’d love to hear anything you have to say — bouquets, brickbats, random teenage memories — just hit “Reply” and I will answer.
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I will write again, soon.
