April 21, 2017 • 33 mins
Adolescence: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
M h. Welcome to the stuff of life. I'm your host,
Julie Douglas. The early teens are years of upheaval and turmoil,
their years of physical and glandular change, new and wider
(00:22):
relationships with people, and new inner feelings in the early adolescents.
In the book A Field Guide to Getting Lost, author
Rebecca Solnitt writes that when she pictures herself at age fifteen,
she can see flames shooting up. She says, she sees
herself falling off the edge of the world, and she
(00:42):
is amazed that she survived, not the outside world, but
the inside one. Parents of almost every child find the
age of puberty or early adolescence full of problems. The
knowledge that these difficulties are normal and usually only temporary,
helps fitter and family friction into more constructive channels. There's
(01:03):
no doubt that the teenage years are marked by turmoil,
but this betwixt and between stage is a relative newcomer,
born out of the twentieth century, when increasingly wealthy nations
did away with child labor and instead focused on education.
By the nineteen fifties, adolescents emerged as its own bona
fide phase of development. The adolescent is self centered, bills
(01:27):
responds to every situation that's concerned with how it affects him. Today,
we treat teenagers like another species, beings fumbling for the
portals into adulthood. We admire them, we fear them, but
mostly we forget that at our core, each of us
is still falling off the edge of the world. We
(01:48):
are still that teenager. In this episode, we talked to
a neuroscientist about the teenage brain. As a result of
the increasing activity of this biole logical stress system, UH,
teen and young adults seem to have a more robust
reaction to stress. And we talked to some intrepid teens
(02:09):
about what it feels like to be on the edge
of adulthood and what the media gets right and what
the media gets wrong. Well, of course there's a whole
other experience compared to back then, but there's even a
different experience because of your gender or like like your race,
like it goes even deeper than just being simply that age.
(02:30):
But first, let's take a step into the inner sanctum
of the teenage girl with photographer Ronya Matar. Have a
photo in the book about like a little teen age
girl in the Palestine refugee camp, and she's she's wearing
a headscar but she's addressed exactly like a picture in
her closet of Hannah Montana, as she's striking the exact
same places Hannah Montana, And there was something so endearing
(02:52):
about that. So I photograph girls in the United States
and in the Middle East. I mean, for me, this
was also the whole project about identity, but it's also
about my current identity at my daughter's identity as being
from the two cultures. And it so happened that anytime
you might put the news on now you're going to
hear about some terrorists, something happening in the middles or
(03:15):
about refugees, and we forget that there's the normal people
behind the scenes are just the same. So for me,
this work became really on focusing on that universality through
the girls and Ronne's book A Girl in Her Room,
An essay by Susan Minett describes the bedroom as the
first cocoon a girl will create for herself. This is
(03:37):
a chrystalis. If we could see inside, we would witness
one of the most extraordinary changes in the animal kingdom
metamorphosis the girls in a way are really growing up
and trying to to kind of get a sense of
who they are and how they are perceived in the
(04:01):
world by their friends, by other adults. By I mean,
they're really trying to come to terms with their identity.
And I said that the room was the place where
they would experiment with that. What they surrounded themselves on
the walls, stuff on their bed everything. It was such
an intimate setting. The impetus for a girl in her
room came from Ronney's then newly emerging teenage daughter. When
(04:25):
my daughter turned fifteen, especially saw the change in her.
She had been a townboy soccer player before, and all
of a sudden, she was just like becoming this girly
girl who I felt I hardly recognized. So I kind
of became fascinated with with the changes she was going
to and thought I was one of photographs something. And
then her friends would come and I started kind of
(04:47):
photographing them, and then I realized that these girls are
in the case of my daughter, because I don't know
some of them as well, but my daughter was like
a whole different person that I had never seen, and
they all kind of started to sound all was the same.
It's the same expressions and ponalities and the same straight hair,
and um, so I decided, you know, maybe it would
(05:08):
be more interesting for me to photograph each girl by herself.
And when I started photographing each girl, I kind of
started originally with that friends of my daughters or daughters
of my friends, and um, it so happened that we
did it in their bedroom, and I quickly realized that
this was my project. The room not only provided sanctuary,
(05:31):
but it reflected aspects of the girl's personality back to
the camera. When the girl was around in her room,
it was she was more she was being herself. Second,
I could see that there was such an interesting, really
organic relationship with this with the girl in her space.
(05:51):
And Ronne's book of photos Susan Mine Rights Pink gives
way to glitter, stuffed animals, to figurings. Pictures of animals
are replaced by pictures people and with objects no longer
selected by a parent. Then to the she adds her
own creations, and soon the walls are taken over and
the closets in the bed. The teenager's room is her cave.
(06:14):
So perhaps these scenes of girlhood morphing into womanhood are
so compelling because they reach across time and connect to
all of us who, at one time or another we're
grasping for who we were or who we wanted to become.
You know. It's something very interesting happened because at that
point I was really interested in photographing girls in this
(06:35):
country and because this is where I lived and where
my girl, my daughter's growing up. And then somewhere as
I'm doing this project, it's really struck a chord with me,
like I was those girls when if I gave earlier
in a different country and different culture, but I was
I was the same, and there was something This is
when it tissed me at the whole universality of it,
and I decided to include girls in the Middle East.
(06:57):
But it's exactly what you say, like, um, it put
me back into my teenage here just like something. There
are things that never changed. And maybe the pictures on
the wilds are of different rock stars, but I also
had pictures of rock stars back then. I mean I
had something a little different happening. As I was growing
up doing the living in Civil Wars, I was collecting
(07:19):
sharpnell and bullets, bullets also from the street like whenever
they was fighting. The next day I would go out
with my friends and little collectors, and they were also
stayed in my room. But this was also part of
the identity I was growing up. The team's geographical locations
in socio economic status varied widely, but still there were
(07:41):
more commonalities than differences among them. The cover of the book,
her name is Chris Pilla. I love this photo because
you you look at it and you really think this
is a young woman in the United States or anywhere.
You would never think this is a living new girl.
She's blonde or faith blonde. She's so she has a
gigant to take photo of Marlin Monroe behind her, and
(08:02):
she has this kind of attitude playing down, which is
for another kind of universal teenage girl in her bedroom
attitude as and and it shows people off a little
bit because people assume that if she's going to be
from the Middle East, she has to be covered or
oppressed of blah blah blah with the whole kind of
rhetorically here all the time, and that's not the case.
(08:28):
There are other markers of teenage universality beyond pop culture expression.
And what was interesting is even in the refugee camp
and anywhere it felt like there was always the mirror
and often the laptop and Facebook. And for me, these
were like in some way the outside world coming into
(08:49):
the room, or because the mirror is like okay, all
they're kind of seeing how they want to portray themselves
to others right in some way, and and Facebook is
the way they come indicating with the outside words from
the comfort of their bedroom. In this sense, mirrors and
social sites like Facebook are conduits to identity. Think of
(09:11):
all the images and expectations that team girls are inundated
with now, think of all the attendant anxieties that come
along with living in a time where the gaze has intensified.
But they put on the wall is often what they
want to be. And there's another young woman, her name
is Fianna, and she surrounded herself with all these beautiful
(09:32):
models in her wall, and there was something painful about
that in some way, and and she said something like,
you know, as I was getting photographed, I kept thinking
how do I look? And compared to the pictures on
my wall. We tend to think of teenage girls is
armored up in their makeup and their defiant stances. But
(09:53):
as Ronya points out, that's often the condition of vulnerability.
I found with the the gut to have that they
have this armor for the outside world, and if you
take the time to really be with them in the
room and kind of whatever, you see how vulnerable they are.
This was really a revelation to me. It was all
the girls. There was another girl in the book as well,
(10:13):
and her name is Dizzy, and she was wearing a sweater,
and as I was photographing and she got more at these,
she showed she took off for a sweater and I
could see that she had cuts on her arms, and
and she's somebody who when I saw on the street,
looked like somebody who had build an armor, and she had,
you know, she had the attitude you might think off
(10:34):
a teenage girls, and all of a sudden, when she
took off that, I'm like, oh my god, she's she's struggling.
And it was really actually very powerful moment to me
because then she told me, I do want to photograph
them because when I look at them, it reminds me
of what I overcame, where I was, and where I am.
So there was something also very powerful about that that's
(10:55):
also very vulnerable. Photographing the girls gave me a portal
into teenagers that helped her to reconsider her own children.
With me spending so much time with them and really
building that trusting relationship, I could see the vulnerability and
how hard it is to be a teenage girl. And
it really made me so much more understanding of my
(11:16):
own kids in some way, to give them more space
in some way and to often ignore this kind of
um attitude that I could have worried about otherwise, because
I'm like, Okay, no, this is this is just part
of growing up and they have to do that part
of cutting the cord. And I'm their mom, and these
young women I was photographing there's no way their mom
(11:38):
could have taken the photos I took. So it was
something that really made me understand that quite a bit.
One thing that's interesting is as I'm photographing them, I'm
really bonding with them after the point that I think
I'm one of them, and I'm would pass the mirror
and I'm like, oh my god, what am I thinking?
So what just wron? You want you to take a
(12:00):
way from what she saw through her lens. Some people
have a harder time looking young girls being photographed. All
of a sudden, people associate also of uh, you know, like, okay,
there's sexuality and those I'm like, there's nothing sexual. It's
it's there's something empowering about owning up to being a
girl and too. You know, you could be you could
go plase soccer the next day, but you still are
(12:21):
owning up to your body changing and all that. And
there's something I feel like, it's important for me to
look at the work with respect that the girls deserves.
To wear her hair and clothes, according to the latest
style is much more important than to wear them in
the most becoming ways. She's not mature enough yet the
world knows best, and she wants to be sure of
(12:43):
her place in the world. And the Wired article a
troubling adaptation the beautiful teenage brain. David Dobbs writes, quote
in scientific terms, teenagers can be a pain and ass
but they are quite possibly the most fully crucially adaptive
(13:04):
human beings around. Without them, human beings might not have
readily spread across the globe. In this segment, we talked
to Elaine F. Walker about vulnerability and the teenage brain.
Early teens are years of uneven development, that are spirits
of mental energy as well as physical and at other
(13:26):
times nothing seems to be happening. Research on adolescent brain development,
brain function and behavior is an area that is very
active right now and we have a lot to learn.
(13:46):
I'm Elane Walker and a professor of psychology and you're
a science at Emery University. For thirty years, Elaine has
been conducting research on risk factors for aarious mental disorders,
especially schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders. And guess what being
a team can be a risk factor, depending on, of course, genetics,
(14:09):
but also the kinds of stressors teams are exposed to.
Not to mention certain drugs. Certainly, at this point, there's
plenty of evidence that adolescents are more responsive to certain
emotional stimuli than either younger children are adult. And then
there's the stress response as regulated by the hp A
(14:31):
axis or hypothalamic pituitary adrenal access. The main thing is
that cortisol, the stress hormone, is released, and the brain
gets wind of this hormone and tells the hypothalamus and
pituitary glands to chill out, which both puts the body
on high alert, but make sure that it doesn't go overboard.
(14:52):
The problem is when there's a persistent elevated cortisol released
that left unchecked, can lead to changes in brain struck
and behavior in and of itself. That normative increase in
cortisol release may make adolescence a more vulnerable period because
(15:15):
the stress system hp A axis is ranting up its activity.
It's basically one part amped up emotional response to stress
and one part dicey environmental conditions along with the brain
still under renovation state that could present a tipping point.
The fact that so many psychiatric disorders have their peak
(15:40):
onset period during adolescents in young adulthood is probably a
function of the fact that brain maturation during adolescent is
playing a role in triggering the manifestation of vulnerabilities. This
means that for teens who are at the risk of schizophrenia,
(16:03):
puberty could set the stage for the disorder, and hints
of it can emerge in something called prodromal symptoms. Symptoms
that are associated with heightened risk for latter schizophrenia include
subtle version of the defining features of schizophrenia and and
other psychotic disorders. Uh The individual might report that they
(16:28):
think fromtimes that they're hearing their name called, but when
they check, there's no one there, and they attribute that
perceptual anomaly to just their imagination. Turns out that those
who go onto full blown psychosis have higher levels of cortisol,
have exposure to more stress, and are more likely to
(16:51):
use cannabis. The thing about this that's so fascinating is
that the same underlying plasticity that sets the conditions for
vulnerability to brain changes like psychosis. Maybe the saving grace
for the team who can be identified early on this
work is still in the investigated stages, so many of
(17:17):
the studies have not yet been replicated. However, it does
appear that the likelihood that an individual will develop a
psychotic disorder can be reduced if they are provided with
cognitive therapy after they begin to show the prodromal sign.
(17:41):
This kind of neuroplasticity is in itself a big risk
by nature the idea that to ride the edge of development,
you have to ride the razor's edge of a shape
shifting brain, negotiating the twists and turns of risk, reward,
and emotion. Let's watch some of these youngsters as spend
Friday afternoon and evening we'll see what some of the
(18:03):
common troubles are. Oh no, I don't think they're ready
for these hot tracks. Good Ready. Box Communications is a
multimedia and journalism program for uncensored teen publishing and self expression.
(18:26):
Four vox teams took over the studio to record their
thoughts on gender, how they're represented in the media, and
how media like you know, high school musical shaped their
ideas about adolescence. My name's Catherine, a k A. Cat
On eight seen my glorious gap years ending gloriously. My
(18:50):
name's Manuel. I am eighteen years old. I turned nineteen
on Sunday. I graduated from North Atlanta High School at
last year, and I also took a gap year. My
names some Eira. I'm seventeen. I go to the Cap
School of the Arts. I'm Caleb. I'm eighteen. I'm girl
in status now I go to Best Academy High school.
(19:12):
What do you think the media gets wrong and right
about being a teenager? I don't know. I see a
spectrum really like I either see like teen celebrities like
Kylie or like local news teenagers that are only like
you know, oh you know, they were body slapped by
a police officer. In the classroom or you know, there
(19:32):
was something crazy on the streets. What I see our
minority teens only being reported on when something bad happens,
and um, when non minority teens white people. Um, you
see things like these four college girls died in a
(19:52):
car accident. Well that's that's sad, of course, but that
happens all the time. Why are you following that? And
of course here in Atlanta we have a huge operiods
and jug abuse, but it's really only reported on minorities
who are doing it, when in reality it's the wealthier
(20:14):
areas of the city that have the highest use. When
I think about teams, I think about how we're portrayed
in movies. Yes, as if like every single high school
in America has this major peg mentality. Gods to your loaners, here, jogs, here,
(20:35):
the popular kids. I'm like, that never worked at my school.
I just want to say that high school musical let
me down, because I thought it was going to be
exactly like that. It's not musical schools all boys, But
I just there are, like you, all the jocks, and
then there are the nerds and the geeks and like
(20:56):
the people that just don't do anything at all. But
I think that, like from from what I've been able
to experience from high school, Like, even though there's division,
I feel like teams now aren't judging like millennials aren't
judging each other based on like characteristics. More teams are
(21:16):
really now judging itself off of like what's our resume
look like girl? Or like what you're doing, or like
you like your status? Like it isn't really about like
I mean, physical appearance is still always going to be
something teams you know, if you think or not. But
other than that, I mean the whole like jocks versus nervousing.
(21:37):
That is, today's teams seem to be on the whole
better adjusted. In two thousand and fifteen, the Centers for
Disease Control released the results of the Youth Risk Behavior
Surveillance Survey and found that today's teens smoke less, drink less,
and have sex less in the previous generation. For instance,
(22:00):
ten point eight percent of teens today smoked cigarettes twenty
years ago. That was thirty four point eight percent. Today's
teens are also forty six percent less likely to be
in strength and teenagers twenty years ago. In fact, they're
twenty one percent less likely to have ever tried alcohol
at all, and yet they just can't shake the reputation
(22:20):
that they're overdoing it, especially emotionally. What adults have said
in my life like, um, when I overreact about things, Um,
they say, because by the time you're an adult, the
things that we think about are much are like small
things to them, like all that petty stuff that goes
on in school, that small stuff. At some point it's
(22:41):
kind of like it's non existent, like an adulthood. So
they don't really according to at least when my adults
like adults, But I feel like adults really just like something.
Adults probably just lied to you because adults have been
justice petty teenager. I mean, since social media is huge,
(23:02):
adults are just as petty on Facebook as we are petty,
oh gosh, Like they're making memes just like we are,
and they're laughing at all the same things that go down,
just like we are. And if adults are exposing themselves
as petty and social media, even as a mirror points out,
(23:25):
they tell teens that the little indignities of life don't matter.
What exactly does it mean to be in an adult anyway?
For me? Adulthood isn't necessarily turning eighteen or getting a
car or a bank account. It's how you carry yourself.
It's how you react to situations, how you adapt to things,
(23:46):
how how you express yourself, and how you treat others. Yeah,
that's that's basically how I view it. As an adult,
you're only pushed to build relationships for other adults who
have opportunities for you. So understanding that whatever you say
(24:07):
or whatever you do has a consequence to it. I mean,
I think that's what adult means. Sometimes it's hard to
argue what adult hood means because you know, like people
are human, so they're gonna they're gonna slip up sometimes. Yeah,
Like adulthood has so many different nations to so many
different people. Yeah. I think I'm pointing to say, is
(24:27):
that adulthood has nothing to do with your age. I
think that's something that we all kind of agree on. Yes,
I remember when I turned eighteen, I'm thinking, oh my god,
there's gonna be this amazing flash of light, gains superpowers.
I'm gonna say, save the word. I was just so
in my imagination. I'm sorry, but like, but like, truthfully,
(24:53):
I feel the same way that I felt when I
was five, when I was ten, and I was twell, like,
there's no grand transition to this. One day you just
look up in your eighteen and the first question, I'm like, oh,
I'm an adult. And then I'm like what, No, Like, wow, okay,
new transition. Is there an an instruction? Man? This leads
(25:21):
to a discussion of expectations. I guess from the African
American point of view, as a black man, you know,
you're supposed to go out what's supposed to do and
come home and bring home the money to support your family.
Now I completely agree that, I mean from from the base,
(25:42):
from the baseness of that, as a man, you're supposed
to do that. But I feel like, then, well, well
I'll take you along adding a black man to that.
From what my family has shown me what a black
man is supposed to be, I feel like in society
and I'm not I'm not playing the victim here because
(26:04):
I don't like playing the victim here, but black men
are really like I'm not even gonna use exercise because
that's just such a huge and loaded word. Yeah, but
I feel like black men have to do even more
than just what a regular let's just say white man
has to do. I mean, I feel like our image
(26:25):
is always under attack. Kleen feels the pressure of holding
up the mantle of being a black man to project
and work to attain a positive image that his white
male counterparts are already impuged with. And this is very
much part of the culture of patriarchy in our American culture.
(26:47):
We're still definitely living under this patriarchy that men have
to be this way and do this and women follow afterwards,
which I personally would like to challenge um on my
in my personal life and in family. I know my
mom she likes the idea of the patriarchy man doing this,
(27:08):
but I know, I think that's kind of boring. I
think it is two And like I feel like my
mom at times like she would want for a man
to like be able to, you know, do all of
those magical things that a man in America is supposed
to do. But I feel like I feel of the
day and she feels like, well, I could really do
this all by myself exactly, and what is and I
(27:33):
hate to be the person, but like what does it
mean to be a man or what does it mean
to be a woman? And stuff like that. That's really
the truth of it. Women can do the same things
men can do. UM from from the female perspective and
from what my family UM I believe expects from me.
(27:58):
Is that you know, they want me to stand tall
and hold my own ground. Like you know, they firmly
believe in the fact that there are things that women
can do then men can do. So they hold me.
I think, I feel like they hold me up to
some pretty high expectations, which I feel like is both
(28:20):
really amazing because they have such faith in me, but
it's also a little constricting because what if I want
to go off and do something else, and so it's like,
m well, then I feel like it's two things to that.
Like one since we grow true, I mean, that's a
decision that we get to make for ourselves. But then too,
(28:41):
I feel like with the teenagers of today, I feel
like that like the lines between men and women are
completely blurred. So what do teens want from their parents
and society? What you experience in life is letely different
from what somebody else has experienced alive. So don't push
(29:04):
your expectations or what you know or what you think
somebody should know onto everyone. If you enjoyed high school
and you did the typical prom prom queen, prob king
things like that. That's cool, but let some let us
as teens be us, let us discover ourselves without your interference.
(29:30):
And it's great that you know who you are. But
I would like to experience my life and maybe be
better or not as great doubt. Yeah, guide on the
sign at stage on stage. Manuel's now and his second
(29:53):
semester at Oglethorpe University. We reached out to him to
see what his thoughts are about current events. Hi, Julie
Lass has changed since we last spoke in June. Here's
some of my follow up thoughts. There is that political
correctness that went out the door when the whole election started,
(30:18):
and people are just you know, covering it up with oh,
the economy is bad, this and that. But at the
core of it, it's still this American thing, this American racism.
I mean, there's I hate to say it, but sometimes
there's the there's nothing more American than being racist. If
(30:43):
there's nothing else that I want for myself, it's just
to be treated like a human being. Um. Right now,
we don't know what's going to happen next with Trump
in office m M m M. One of the most
(31:39):
poignant stories we tell about ourselves is about emerging from
the chrystalis of childhood into adolescence, a fleeting time when
we lived our emotions like a fever dream. That's because
it's a time of radical transformation, one that we need
not just to have the courage to take a risk
to survive, but to change the world. A Stuff of
(32:05):
Life has written an executive produced by me Julie Douglas
and co produced by Noel Brown. Original music is by
Noel Brown and editorial oversight is provided by contributing producer
Dylan Fagan and Head of production Jerry Rowland. This episode
also featured music by Tristan McNeil, Aaron Grubbs, and Dylan Fagan.
If you're wondering about the instructional clips for parents raising teams,
(32:28):
those are from the nineteen fifty three film Age of
Turmoil from archive dot org. We'd like to thank Ronya
Mattar for walking us through the minds and spaces of
teenage girls. You can find her book, A Girl and
Her Room and stores and learn more on Ronya Matar
dot com. Thank you to Elaine F. Walker at Emery
University for explaining the wonders and the pitfalls of the
(32:49):
teenage brain. And many many thanks to our team participants
from Box Team Communications Caleb Anderson, Manuel Portillo, Catherine Boyd,
and Amra Dischaber for the adults out of the studio
and recording your insights. You can find out more about
Box Team Communications at vox A t l dot com.
(33:09):
If you like what we do here at the Stuff
of Life, visit us on Facebook and Twitter. In the meantime,
you can email us at the Stuff of Life at
how stuff works dot com.
M h. Welcome to the stuff of life. I'm your host,
Julie Douglas. The early teens are years of upheaval and turmoil,
their years of physical and glandular change, new and wider
(00:22):
relationships with people, and new inner feelings in the early adolescents.
In the book A Field Guide to Getting Lost, author
Rebecca Solnitt writes that when she pictures herself at age fifteen,
she can see flames shooting up. She says, she sees
herself falling off the edge of the world, and she
(00:42):
is amazed that she survived, not the outside world, but
the inside one. Parents of almost every child find the
age of puberty or early adolescence full of problems. The
knowledge that these difficulties are normal and usually only temporary,
helps fitter and family friction into more constructive channels. There's
(01:03):
no doubt that the teenage years are marked by turmoil,
but this betwixt and between stage is a relative newcomer,
born out of the twentieth century, when increasingly wealthy nations
did away with child labor and instead focused on education.
By the nineteen fifties, adolescents emerged as its own bona
fide phase of development. The adolescent is self centered, bills
(01:27):
responds to every situation that's concerned with how it affects him. Today,
we treat teenagers like another species, beings fumbling for the
portals into adulthood. We admire them, we fear them, but
mostly we forget that at our core, each of us
is still falling off the edge of the world. We
(01:48):
are still that teenager. In this episode, we talked to
a neuroscientist about the teenage brain. As a result of
the increasing activity of this biole logical stress system, UH,
teen and young adults seem to have a more robust
reaction to stress. And we talked to some intrepid teens
(02:09):
about what it feels like to be on the edge
of adulthood and what the media gets right and what
the media gets wrong. Well, of course there's a whole
other experience compared to back then, but there's even a
different experience because of your gender or like like your race,
like it goes even deeper than just being simply that age.
(02:30):
But first, let's take a step into the inner sanctum
of the teenage girl with photographer Ronya Matar. Have a
photo in the book about like a little teen age
girl in the Palestine refugee camp, and she's she's wearing
a headscar but she's addressed exactly like a picture in
her closet of Hannah Montana, as she's striking the exact
same places Hannah Montana, And there was something so endearing
(02:52):
about that. So I photograph girls in the United States
and in the Middle East. I mean, for me, this
was also the whole project about identity, but it's also
about my current identity at my daughter's identity as being
from the two cultures. And it so happened that anytime
you might put the news on now you're going to
hear about some terrorists, something happening in the middles or
(03:15):
about refugees, and we forget that there's the normal people
behind the scenes are just the same. So for me,
this work became really on focusing on that universality through
the girls and Ronne's book A Girl in Her Room,
An essay by Susan Minett describes the bedroom as the
first cocoon a girl will create for herself. This is
(03:37):
a chrystalis. If we could see inside, we would witness
one of the most extraordinary changes in the animal kingdom
metamorphosis the girls in a way are really growing up
and trying to to kind of get a sense of
who they are and how they are perceived in the
(04:01):
world by their friends, by other adults. By I mean,
they're really trying to come to terms with their identity.
And I said that the room was the place where
they would experiment with that. What they surrounded themselves on
the walls, stuff on their bed everything. It was such
an intimate setting. The impetus for a girl in her
room came from Ronney's then newly emerging teenage daughter. When
(04:25):
my daughter turned fifteen, especially saw the change in her.
She had been a townboy soccer player before, and all
of a sudden, she was just like becoming this girly
girl who I felt I hardly recognized. So I kind
of became fascinated with with the changes she was going
to and thought I was one of photographs something. And
then her friends would come and I started kind of
(04:47):
photographing them, and then I realized that these girls are
in the case of my daughter, because I don't know
some of them as well, but my daughter was like
a whole different person that I had never seen, and
they all kind of started to sound all was the same.
It's the same expressions and ponalities and the same straight hair,
and um, so I decided, you know, maybe it would
(05:08):
be more interesting for me to photograph each girl by herself.
And when I started photographing each girl, I kind of
started originally with that friends of my daughters or daughters
of my friends, and um, it so happened that we
did it in their bedroom, and I quickly realized that
this was my project. The room not only provided sanctuary,
(05:31):
but it reflected aspects of the girl's personality back to
the camera. When the girl was around in her room,
it was she was more she was being herself. Second,
I could see that there was such an interesting, really
organic relationship with this with the girl in her space.
(05:51):
And Ronne's book of photos Susan Mine Rights Pink gives
way to glitter, stuffed animals, to figurings. Pictures of animals
are replaced by pictures people and with objects no longer
selected by a parent. Then to the she adds her
own creations, and soon the walls are taken over and
the closets in the bed. The teenager's room is her cave.
(06:14):
So perhaps these scenes of girlhood morphing into womanhood are
so compelling because they reach across time and connect to
all of us who, at one time or another we're
grasping for who we were or who we wanted to become.
You know. It's something very interesting happened because at that
point I was really interested in photographing girls in this
(06:35):
country and because this is where I lived and where
my girl, my daughter's growing up. And then somewhere as
I'm doing this project, it's really struck a chord with me,
like I was those girls when if I gave earlier
in a different country and different culture, but I was
I was the same, and there was something This is
when it tissed me at the whole universality of it,
and I decided to include girls in the Middle East.
(06:57):
But it's exactly what you say, like, um, it put
me back into my teenage here just like something. There
are things that never changed. And maybe the pictures on
the wilds are of different rock stars, but I also
had pictures of rock stars back then. I mean I
had something a little different happening. As I was growing
up doing the living in Civil Wars, I was collecting
(07:19):
sharpnell and bullets, bullets also from the street like whenever
they was fighting. The next day I would go out
with my friends and little collectors, and they were also
stayed in my room. But this was also part of
the identity I was growing up. The team's geographical locations
in socio economic status varied widely, but still there were
(07:41):
more commonalities than differences among them. The cover of the book,
her name is Chris Pilla. I love this photo because
you you look at it and you really think this
is a young woman in the United States or anywhere.
You would never think this is a living new girl.
She's blonde or faith blonde. She's so she has a
gigant to take photo of Marlin Monroe behind her, and
(08:02):
she has this kind of attitude playing down, which is
for another kind of universal teenage girl in her bedroom
attitude as and and it shows people off a little
bit because people assume that if she's going to be
from the Middle East, she has to be covered or
oppressed of blah blah blah with the whole kind of
rhetorically here all the time, and that's not the case.
(08:28):
There are other markers of teenage universality beyond pop culture expression.
And what was interesting is even in the refugee camp
and anywhere it felt like there was always the mirror
and often the laptop and Facebook. And for me, these
were like in some way the outside world coming into
(08:49):
the room, or because the mirror is like okay, all
they're kind of seeing how they want to portray themselves
to others right in some way, and and Facebook is
the way they come indicating with the outside words from
the comfort of their bedroom. In this sense, mirrors and
social sites like Facebook are conduits to identity. Think of
(09:11):
all the images and expectations that team girls are inundated
with now, think of all the attendant anxieties that come
along with living in a time where the gaze has intensified.
But they put on the wall is often what they
want to be. And there's another young woman, her name
is Fianna, and she surrounded herself with all these beautiful
(09:32):
models in her wall, and there was something painful about
that in some way, and and she said something like,
you know, as I was getting photographed, I kept thinking
how do I look? And compared to the pictures on
my wall. We tend to think of teenage girls is
armored up in their makeup and their defiant stances. But
(09:53):
as Ronya points out, that's often the condition of vulnerability.
I found with the the gut to have that they
have this armor for the outside world, and if you
take the time to really be with them in the
room and kind of whatever, you see how vulnerable they are.
This was really a revelation to me. It was all
the girls. There was another girl in the book as well,
(10:13):
and her name is Dizzy, and she was wearing a sweater,
and as I was photographing and she got more at these,
she showed she took off for a sweater and I
could see that she had cuts on her arms, and
and she's somebody who when I saw on the street,
looked like somebody who had build an armor, and she had,
you know, she had the attitude you might think off
(10:34):
a teenage girls, and all of a sudden, when she
took off that, I'm like, oh my god, she's she's struggling.
And it was really actually very powerful moment to me
because then she told me, I do want to photograph
them because when I look at them, it reminds me
of what I overcame, where I was, and where I am.
So there was something also very powerful about that that's
(10:55):
also very vulnerable. Photographing the girls gave me a portal
into teenagers that helped her to reconsider her own children.
With me spending so much time with them and really
building that trusting relationship, I could see the vulnerability and
how hard it is to be a teenage girl. And
it really made me so much more understanding of my
(11:16):
own kids in some way, to give them more space
in some way and to often ignore this kind of
um attitude that I could have worried about otherwise, because
I'm like, Okay, no, this is this is just part
of growing up and they have to do that part
of cutting the cord. And I'm their mom, and these
young women I was photographing there's no way their mom
(11:38):
could have taken the photos I took. So it was
something that really made me understand that quite a bit.
One thing that's interesting is as I'm photographing them, I'm
really bonding with them after the point that I think
I'm one of them, and I'm would pass the mirror
and I'm like, oh my god, what am I thinking?
So what just wron? You want you to take a
(12:00):
way from what she saw through her lens. Some people
have a harder time looking young girls being photographed. All
of a sudden, people associate also of uh, you know, like, okay,
there's sexuality and those I'm like, there's nothing sexual. It's
it's there's something empowering about owning up to being a
girl and too. You know, you could be you could
go plase soccer the next day, but you still are
(12:21):
owning up to your body changing and all that. And
there's something I feel like, it's important for me to
look at the work with respect that the girls deserves.
To wear her hair and clothes, according to the latest
style is much more important than to wear them in
the most becoming ways. She's not mature enough yet the
world knows best, and she wants to be sure of
(12:43):
her place in the world. And the Wired article a
troubling adaptation the beautiful teenage brain. David Dobbs writes, quote
in scientific terms, teenagers can be a pain and ass
but they are quite possibly the most fully crucially adaptive
(13:04):
human beings around. Without them, human beings might not have
readily spread across the globe. In this segment, we talked
to Elaine F. Walker about vulnerability and the teenage brain.
Early teens are years of uneven development, that are spirits
of mental energy as well as physical and at other
(13:26):
times nothing seems to be happening. Research on adolescent brain development,
brain function and behavior is an area that is very
active right now and we have a lot to learn.
(13:46):
I'm Elane Walker and a professor of psychology and you're
a science at Emery University. For thirty years, Elaine has
been conducting research on risk factors for aarious mental disorders,
especially schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders. And guess what being
a team can be a risk factor, depending on, of course, genetics,
(14:09):
but also the kinds of stressors teams are exposed to.
Not to mention certain drugs. Certainly, at this point, there's
plenty of evidence that adolescents are more responsive to certain
emotional stimuli than either younger children are adult. And then
there's the stress response as regulated by the hp A
(14:31):
axis or hypothalamic pituitary adrenal access. The main thing is
that cortisol, the stress hormone, is released, and the brain
gets wind of this hormone and tells the hypothalamus and
pituitary glands to chill out, which both puts the body
on high alert, but make sure that it doesn't go overboard.
(14:52):
The problem is when there's a persistent elevated cortisol released
that left unchecked, can lead to changes in brain struck
and behavior in and of itself. That normative increase in
cortisol release may make adolescence a more vulnerable period because
(15:15):
the stress system hp A axis is ranting up its activity.
It's basically one part amped up emotional response to stress
and one part dicey environmental conditions along with the brain
still under renovation state that could present a tipping point.
The fact that so many psychiatric disorders have their peak
(15:40):
onset period during adolescents in young adulthood is probably a
function of the fact that brain maturation during adolescent is
playing a role in triggering the manifestation of vulnerabilities. This
means that for teens who are at the risk of schizophrenia,
(16:03):
puberty could set the stage for the disorder, and hints
of it can emerge in something called prodromal symptoms. Symptoms
that are associated with heightened risk for latter schizophrenia include
subtle version of the defining features of schizophrenia and and
other psychotic disorders. Uh The individual might report that they
(16:28):
think fromtimes that they're hearing their name called, but when
they check, there's no one there, and they attribute that
perceptual anomaly to just their imagination. Turns out that those
who go onto full blown psychosis have higher levels of cortisol,
have exposure to more stress, and are more likely to
(16:51):
use cannabis. The thing about this that's so fascinating is
that the same underlying plasticity that sets the conditions for
vulnerability to brain changes like psychosis. Maybe the saving grace
for the team who can be identified early on this
work is still in the investigated stages, so many of
(17:17):
the studies have not yet been replicated. However, it does
appear that the likelihood that an individual will develop a
psychotic disorder can be reduced if they are provided with
cognitive therapy after they begin to show the prodromal sign.
(17:41):
This kind of neuroplasticity is in itself a big risk
by nature the idea that to ride the edge of development,
you have to ride the razor's edge of a shape
shifting brain, negotiating the twists and turns of risk, reward,
and emotion. Let's watch some of these youngsters as spend
Friday afternoon and evening we'll see what some of the
(18:03):
common troubles are. Oh no, I don't think they're ready
for these hot tracks. Good Ready. Box Communications is a
multimedia and journalism program for uncensored teen publishing and self expression.
(18:26):
Four vox teams took over the studio to record their
thoughts on gender, how they're represented in the media, and
how media like you know, high school musical shaped their
ideas about adolescence. My name's Catherine, a k A. Cat
On eight seen my glorious gap years ending gloriously. My
(18:50):
name's Manuel. I am eighteen years old. I turned nineteen
on Sunday. I graduated from North Atlanta High School at
last year, and I also took a gap year. My
names some Eira. I'm seventeen. I go to the Cap
School of the Arts. I'm Caleb. I'm eighteen. I'm girl
in status now I go to Best Academy High school.
(19:12):
What do you think the media gets wrong and right
about being a teenager? I don't know. I see a
spectrum really like I either see like teen celebrities like
Kylie or like local news teenagers that are only like
you know, oh you know, they were body slapped by
a police officer. In the classroom or you know, there
(19:32):
was something crazy on the streets. What I see our
minority teens only being reported on when something bad happens,
and um, when non minority teens white people. Um, you
see things like these four college girls died in a
(19:52):
car accident. Well that's that's sad, of course, but that
happens all the time. Why are you following that? And
of course here in Atlanta we have a huge operiods
and jug abuse, but it's really only reported on minorities
who are doing it, when in reality it's the wealthier
(20:14):
areas of the city that have the highest use. When
I think about teams, I think about how we're portrayed
in movies. Yes, as if like every single high school
in America has this major peg mentality. Gods to your loaners, here, jogs, here,
(20:35):
the popular kids. I'm like, that never worked at my school.
I just want to say that high school musical let
me down, because I thought it was going to be
exactly like that. It's not musical schools all boys, But
I just there are, like you, all the jocks, and
then there are the nerds and the geeks and like
(20:56):
the people that just don't do anything at all. But
I think that, like from from what I've been able
to experience from high school, Like, even though there's division,
I feel like teams now aren't judging like millennials aren't
judging each other based on like characteristics. More teams are
(21:16):
really now judging itself off of like what's our resume
look like girl? Or like what you're doing, or like
you like your status? Like it isn't really about like
I mean, physical appearance is still always going to be
something teams you know, if you think or not. But
other than that, I mean the whole like jocks versus nervousing.
(21:37):
That is, today's teams seem to be on the whole
better adjusted. In two thousand and fifteen, the Centers for
Disease Control released the results of the Youth Risk Behavior
Surveillance Survey and found that today's teens smoke less, drink less,
and have sex less in the previous generation. For instance,
(22:00):
ten point eight percent of teens today smoked cigarettes twenty
years ago. That was thirty four point eight percent. Today's
teens are also forty six percent less likely to be
in strength and teenagers twenty years ago. In fact, they're
twenty one percent less likely to have ever tried alcohol
at all, and yet they just can't shake the reputation
(22:20):
that they're overdoing it, especially emotionally. What adults have said
in my life like, um, when I overreact about things, Um,
they say, because by the time you're an adult, the
things that we think about are much are like small
things to them, like all that petty stuff that goes
on in school, that small stuff. At some point it's
(22:41):
kind of like it's non existent, like an adulthood. So
they don't really according to at least when my adults
like adults, But I feel like adults really just like something.
Adults probably just lied to you because adults have been
justice petty teenager. I mean, since social media is huge,
(23:02):
adults are just as petty on Facebook as we are petty,
oh gosh, Like they're making memes just like we are,
and they're laughing at all the same things that go down,
just like we are. And if adults are exposing themselves
as petty and social media, even as a mirror points out,
(23:25):
they tell teens that the little indignities of life don't matter.
What exactly does it mean to be in an adult anyway?
For me? Adulthood isn't necessarily turning eighteen or getting a
car or a bank account. It's how you carry yourself.
It's how you react to situations, how you adapt to things,
(23:46):
how how you express yourself, and how you treat others. Yeah,
that's that's basically how I view it. As an adult,
you're only pushed to build relationships for other adults who
have opportunities for you. So understanding that whatever you say
(24:07):
or whatever you do has a consequence to it. I mean,
I think that's what adult means. Sometimes it's hard to
argue what adult hood means because you know, like people
are human, so they're gonna they're gonna slip up sometimes. Yeah,
Like adulthood has so many different nations to so many
different people. Yeah. I think I'm pointing to say, is
(24:27):
that adulthood has nothing to do with your age. I
think that's something that we all kind of agree on. Yes,
I remember when I turned eighteen, I'm thinking, oh my god,
there's gonna be this amazing flash of light, gains superpowers.
I'm gonna say, save the word. I was just so
in my imagination. I'm sorry, but like, but like, truthfully,
(24:53):
I feel the same way that I felt when I
was five, when I was ten, and I was twell, like,
there's no grand transition to this. One day you just
look up in your eighteen and the first question, I'm like, oh,
I'm an adult. And then I'm like what, No, Like, wow, okay,
new transition. Is there an an instruction? Man? This leads
(25:21):
to a discussion of expectations. I guess from the African
American point of view, as a black man, you know,
you're supposed to go out what's supposed to do and
come home and bring home the money to support your family.
Now I completely agree that, I mean from from the base,
(25:42):
from the baseness of that, as a man, you're supposed
to do that. But I feel like, then, well, well
I'll take you along adding a black man to that.
From what my family has shown me what a black
man is supposed to be, I feel like in society
and I'm not I'm not playing the victim here because
(26:04):
I don't like playing the victim here, but black men
are really like I'm not even gonna use exercise because
that's just such a huge and loaded word. Yeah, but
I feel like black men have to do even more
than just what a regular let's just say white man
has to do. I mean, I feel like our image
(26:25):
is always under attack. Kleen feels the pressure of holding
up the mantle of being a black man to project
and work to attain a positive image that his white
male counterparts are already impuged with. And this is very
much part of the culture of patriarchy in our American culture.
(26:47):
We're still definitely living under this patriarchy that men have
to be this way and do this and women follow afterwards,
which I personally would like to challenge um on my
in my personal life and in family. I know my
mom she likes the idea of the patriarchy man doing this,
(27:08):
but I know, I think that's kind of boring. I
think it is two And like I feel like my
mom at times like she would want for a man
to like be able to, you know, do all of
those magical things that a man in America is supposed
to do. But I feel like I feel of the
day and she feels like, well, I could really do
this all by myself exactly, and what is and I
(27:33):
hate to be the person, but like what does it
mean to be a man or what does it mean
to be a woman? And stuff like that. That's really
the truth of it. Women can do the same things
men can do. UM from from the female perspective and
from what my family UM I believe expects from me.
(27:58):
Is that you know, they want me to stand tall
and hold my own ground. Like you know, they firmly
believe in the fact that there are things that women
can do then men can do. So they hold me.
I think, I feel like they hold me up to
some pretty high expectations, which I feel like is both
(28:20):
really amazing because they have such faith in me, but
it's also a little constricting because what if I want
to go off and do something else, and so it's like,
m well, then I feel like it's two things to that.
Like one since we grow true, I mean, that's a
decision that we get to make for ourselves. But then too,
(28:41):
I feel like with the teenagers of today, I feel
like that like the lines between men and women are
completely blurred. So what do teens want from their parents
and society? What you experience in life is letely different
from what somebody else has experienced alive. So don't push
(29:04):
your expectations or what you know or what you think
somebody should know onto everyone. If you enjoyed high school
and you did the typical prom prom queen, prob king
things like that. That's cool, but let some let us
as teens be us, let us discover ourselves without your interference.
(29:30):
And it's great that you know who you are. But
I would like to experience my life and maybe be
better or not as great doubt. Yeah, guide on the
sign at stage on stage. Manuel's now and his second
(29:53):
semester at Oglethorpe University. We reached out to him to
see what his thoughts are about current events. Hi, Julie
Lass has changed since we last spoke in June. Here's
some of my follow up thoughts. There is that political
correctness that went out the door when the whole election started,
(30:18):
and people are just you know, covering it up with oh,
the economy is bad, this and that. But at the
core of it, it's still this American thing, this American racism.
I mean, there's I hate to say it, but sometimes
there's the there's nothing more American than being racist. If
(30:43):
there's nothing else that I want for myself, it's just
to be treated like a human being. Um. Right now,
we don't know what's going to happen next with Trump
in office m M m M. One of the most
(31:39):
poignant stories we tell about ourselves is about emerging from
the chrystalis of childhood into adolescence, a fleeting time when
we lived our emotions like a fever dream. That's because
it's a time of radical transformation, one that we need
not just to have the courage to take a risk
to survive, but to change the world. A Stuff of
(32:05):
Life has written an executive produced by me Julie Douglas
and co produced by Noel Brown. Original music is by
Noel Brown and editorial oversight is provided by contributing producer
Dylan Fagan and Head of production Jerry Rowland. This episode
also featured music by Tristan McNeil, Aaron Grubbs, and Dylan Fagan.
If you're wondering about the instructional clips for parents raising teams,
(32:28):
those are from the nineteen fifty three film Age of
Turmoil from archive dot org. We'd like to thank Ronya
Mattar for walking us through the minds and spaces of
teenage girls. You can find her book, A Girl and
Her Room and stores and learn more on Ronya Matar
dot com. Thank you to Elaine F. Walker at Emery
University for explaining the wonders and the pitfalls of the
(32:49):
teenage brain. And many many thanks to our team participants
from Box Team Communications Caleb Anderson, Manuel Portillo, Catherine Boyd,
and Amra Dischaber for the adults out of the studio
and recording your insights. You can find out more about
Box Team Communications at vox A t l dot com.
(33:09):
If you like what we do here at the Stuff
of Life, visit us on Facebook and Twitter. In the meantime,
you can email us at the Stuff of Life at
how stuff works dot com.
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