Face Value by Autumn Whitefield-Madrano

Author:Autumn Whitefield-Madrano
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

The Adolescent Within: Vulnerability and Friendship

You may have noticed something in reading the friendship anecdotes throughout this chapter: Many of them relate tales of girlhood, not womanhood. A variation of “When I was younger, but not anymore” was the most common response to inquiries into the nastier side of beauty—competition, jealousy, exclusion, and the like. Such behavior is called mean-girl stuff for a reason. Just as many of us indulge in some catty behavior as tweens and teens, most of us grow out of it, usually as young adults. The extraordinary self-consciousness of adolescence dwindles, leaving us with merely ordinary self-consciousness—and a heightened awareness of how such behavior does a disservice to all women. As forty-two-year-old Kerry stated when I asked how she transitioned from the intense competition she felt in high school into her relatively unfettered existence of today, “I grew out of it, that’s all.” Even if we find ourselves lapsing into competitiveness or jealousy surrounding looks, we’re likelier to spot it early and nip it in the bud or dismiss our own emotions as silly. An acquaintance in her sixties put it this way when we were casually talking about feeling jealous of beautiful women: “I still get that way, but I can’t be bothered to dwell on it anymore,” she said, fluttering her hand as if shooing the thought away. “Who has the time?”

Yet maturity and its lack thereof aren’t usually accounted for in the glut of studies about women, beauty, and competition. Solid as the research I’ve cited in this chapter may be, we’re still seeing a participant pool of mostly college students. So when it comes to examining women’s triangulated relationship with appearance and friendship, these studies reflect not a sample of the general adult female population but the attitudes of educated women ages eighteen to twenty-three who are taking their first tentative steps into the waters of adulthood. Were these studies conducted at the average workplace or, say, senior centers, the results might well be different. (Or maybe not, as I found when I visited my grandparents at their retirement community. A woman in her eighties told me over dinner that my grandmother has exquisite taste—“not like some of the women around here,” she added in a whisper, looking to me for a chuckle.)

Still, it would be a mistake for adult women to dismiss the intensity surrounding female friendship in the teen years as strictly a thing of the past. The last time I moved apartments, I asked a friend for advice on paring down the enormous box of mementos I’ve been collecting for thirtysomething years. His advice: “Go through the box, item by item, and get rid of anything that doesn’t make you feel something.” I did this successfully, whittling down the collection of playbills and concert tickets to the size of a shoe box—until I hit the notes. I’d kept nearly every single note written to me by friends from sixth grade onward, and though my intention had been to keep

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