How were your high school years? Were they great? Well, mine weren't and I am quite sure I'm not the only adult that can say they had a very "interesting" time during their teenage years. It is a good thing, however, that I can now look back and use my experiences to empower teenage girls through my nonprofit organization, The She is Me Program, Inc. At The She is Me Program, we believe that we are all agents for change, capable of using our lives and experiences to make a social impact on others.
Allow me to introduce you to one such person -- Hannah Friedman, a young woman who is using the power of the pen to create social awareness all around her. Hannah is the author of Everything Sucks: Losing My Mind and Finding Myself on a High School Quest for Cool, a memoir about her upbringing that focuses on sex, drugs, eating disorders and self esteem -- things that take place in high schools all across America. Not only has Hannah been able to write a memoir at such a young age, but she is also the youngest person to have ever been published in Newsweek. She's also a graduate of Yale University. The kicker is that she completed all of that at the ripe age of 23.
I had the privilege of asking Hannah a few questions about her book which would give us more insight into how exactly she put the power of activism in a pen.
Q: Why do you think that the prep school life is so glamorized?
A: I think that any lifestyle that represents wealth and status is glamorized in most cultures throughout history. Gossip Girl is the fabulous, fetishized aristocracy of our seeming democracy.
Q: Other than a jolt of reality, what do you think is missing from the majority of books written by young adults?
A: I wrote this book with the intention of having a conversation with my younger, less confident, more critical self. When I began the book I knew I wanted it to be different from some of the hyper-romanticized, pseudo-princess tales that I read as a teen about eternal love and perfect kisses, where the protagonist's only problem is not having a guy to validate her very existence. I set out to portray teenage-hood in all of its hilarious and awkward and angst-ridden searching for the self.
Q: What type of impact would you like to leave on those who read your book?
A: I'd love for those who read the book to be able to laugh at whatever their own bizarre, embarrassing and silly circumstances are because I think underneath we all feel a bit like a fish out of water.
Q: In writing your memoir, what are some of the things you learned about yourself, and what are some things you would like for young women in society to learn?
A: Writing the book was very cathartic. I knew that if I was writing a book for teens I wanted to be as frank as possible because so much of the frustrations of teenage-hood can be chalked up to a general lack of communication and respect on the part of adults. As a result, I ended up exposing lots of secrets to the light: things I would have been way too ashamed to share as a teenager. I learned that confronting your shame, being forgiving, and asking for help can be the most powerful tools in moving forward.
From venomous social politics to sex, drugs, Ivy League disasters and eating disorders, I tried to cover a lot of ground in this memoir. Too often kids are reduced to a mere label, especially in the media. She's a movie star or a train wreck. He's a drug addict or sex symbol. It's hard for young adults to cultivate a rounded sense of self when everything they see is so handily categorized: valedictorian or deadbeat. I was too hard on myself in prep school. It puts crazy, unrealistic expectations on a person to the point where anything short of stellar performance is worthless. I considered myself a musician, an artist, an athlete and a writer up until my teens, and then suddenly I felt like I got ranked and rated and sorted based on my portfolio, my footnotes, my clothing, my breast size, my social circle, my GPA, and my bank account. I didn't consider myself a musician anymore. I spent so much time writing thesis papers about Jane Eyre I never wanted to write for fun. I wasn't a varsity athlete so I left the court. We should be encouraging teens to explore and innovate; we should be empowering them as the future leaders of the world instead of beating them into submission with endless Scantron exams and unimaginative, un-individualized curriculum. If we focused on feeding the imagination of the coming generation instead of on ranking and testing them on rote memorization, I suspect the results would be exciting, if not revolutionary.
Take a moment to ponder this. What talents are you using to create social change?