Graduation

If you have noticed the lack of posts for the past few days, it is because I have been busy celebrating my high school graduation. I thought it would have been a grave injustice to sacrifice actual teenage experiences in the name of keeping up with my blog that is supposed to document actual teenage experiences.

Paradoxes and catch-22s aside, graduating high school was great, if not anticlimactic. The event took place on my school's football field. The temperature was a sweltering 94 degrees, but in my ankle-length, polyester sweatbox it felt much warmer. Numerous anti-frizz serums and elixirs kept my my hair from mushrooming out from beneath my mortarboard. I have to admit that, temperature aside, I felt hotter in my academic regalia than I have felt in

any other outfit that I've worn during the duration of this project. How anti-Seventeen this is, especially since I was wearing an identical outfit as 275 other girls.

The ceremony itself was fairly boring. I pomped. I circumstanced. I listened to a bunch of adults who I didn't know address the class of 2010, but actually address our parents, using metaphors about butterflies and the like. I sweated. I waved to my grandparents. I asked kids sitting near me overly personal questions about their sex lives. I counted how many people in the stands brought umbrellas for sun protection. I sweated some more. I cheered really loud for my friends. I got my diploma. Then I was graduated.

Initially I was surprised how easy it was to graduate. The only two skills you need are walking and sitting. My seat mate kindly reminded me that I actually had to do 12 years of work to earn the right to walk and sit. This observation made me feel stupid, but also accomplished. I know that school is mostly compulsory, but it felt really great to complete an endeavor that took twelve years, especially when I sometimes fail to finish projects intended to last an afternoon.

In the spirit of closure and accomplishment, I'll acknowledge the fact that today is the technical last day of this project. I'll save conclusions, summaries, and lessons learned for a future post, but I just wanted to sort of frame out what the rest of this blog is going to look like for everyone. Today is the last official day of The Seventeen Magazine Project, as outlined by my initial post. I am going swimming at my cousins' house for Father's Day, so I'll dress bikini confident and blog about it tomorrow. That will be the last fashion/beauty post.

The week to come is going to include lots of stuff related to teens and media and fair portrayal, including a list of pro-teen media that seems to "get" the teenage experience. I'll also be putting together a short project, a little bit of a fuck you to Seventeen, that lots of people will have the opportunity to get involved with. This will run all week. Hopefully we can affect some change in the ladymag industry. It'll be fun/badass/a little subversive I think. I'll introduce it in detail tomorrow probably.

EDITED TO ADD: Fan me on Facebook, and then maybe delete my personal profile from your friends? I am trying to figure out an easier way to keep in touch with people. My real life friends find the current system to be REALLY annoying.

Food Fearless

Yesterday was the gap day between my last day of high school and my final exams, which meant that it was a day devoid of any formal plans, an occurrence otherwise known as the best kind of day ever. If you are a fan of technicality, and I suppose that I am, then I guess that it was also the first day of my summer vacation, since all academic obligations had been accounted for up until that point. I decided that this day was an excellent opportunity to heed my call of duty as a dedicated Seventeen reader by partaking in one of the activities mentioned on the magazine's "17 Things You Need to Do This Summer!" list. Number 15, engaging in a food-fearless taste test, seemed like something worth making a day out of. Then again, I may have just been excited by the fact that a magazine targeted towards women was actually encouraging me to eat something, a welcome foil to the usual dieting advice that ladymags are all too happy to push.

I had some errands to run in Philadelphia, so I ended up hopping a train to the city, where I figured I could be food-fearless more cheaply than I could here in the suburbs. Once you stray too far north of Philadelphia, the result tends to be such that financing a decent Indian meal requires a second mortgage on your home and the sale of an organ, infant, or both. Thus, its not often that I get to eat Indian food.

I arrived in the city around noon and pursued lunch at Reading Terminal Market, a public marketplace in center city Philadelphia that falls somewhere between Epcot and street vendor on the spectrum of authentic marketplaces. Don't get me wrong-- the taste and variety of food is fantastic-- but Reading Terminal is uncharacteristically pristine for Philadelphia, a trait that I find somewhat unsettling.

Anyhow, the food was pretty good at Nanee's Kitchen, the Indian counter at which I ended up dining. When I go to restaurants where I don't know what I like, I tend to ask what the house specialty is-- in this case it was the vegetarian plate. Some of the foods were sweet, some were spicy. I'm not a picky eater, but I seemed to have missed the part of eating Indian food that was supposed strike fear in my heart. Seventeen's food-fearless reccomendation was obviously praiseworthy in encouraging girls to try new things, especially things of the food variety, but it would have been nice to see the suggestion presented in a light that didn't cast a negative shadow of fear on eating or make the previous experiences of girls seem so limited. After all, some girls may have eaten Indian food before, or might actually, gasp, be Indian.

On a tangent note, I'm not the first to notice the bizarre conflation of emotion and morality with food. Desserts are frequently described as sinfully sweet. Chocolate is a guilty pleasure. Waiters tell you to "be bad" and go ahead and order dessert. I could have sworn I read a post on this over at Sociological Images, or maybe it was Jezebel, but I can't seem to find anything right now. I would like to link to this post if I can. Anyone know what I'm talking about?

Edit: Commenter LiberalElitist15 found the Jezebel article here. It's as great as I remembered.

For my day out, I accessorized my favorite (vintage) floaty dress, with a fun vintage sash belt, both inspired by Katy Perry. Unfortunately, my arm and Indian food platter are obscuring your view of the outfit. An article with pictures of this outfit will run eventually in the Philadelphia Inquirer, so I'll steal their pictures once that goes up.

Overall the day was pleasant, but not any more so than the day-to-day fun that I plan for myself.

P.S. GRADUATING TOMORROW! :)

Fashion Sinner

I strayed from the project this morning and wore Birkenstocks to the supermarket. Tomorrow I will be back on the blogging/beauty wagon, promise! Weekend was packed full with graduation parties/other relevant end-of-year celebrating.

Edited to add: Doing some research for a post on LGBT teens in media. Hope to get this post up by tonight. If you want to help me out, send this interview survey to the gay/bi teen girls in your life please! http://tinyurl.com/17magLGBTquiz