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WHEN I SAY THAT WE ARE ALL TEEN GIRLS

by Olivia Gatwood what I mean is that when my grandmother called to ask why I didn’t respond to her letter, all I heard was, Why didn’t you text me back? Why don’t you love me? And how can I talk about my grandmother without also mentioning that if everyone is a teen girl, then so are the birds, their soaring cliques, their squawking throats, and the sea, of course, the sea, its moody push and pull, the way we drill into it, fill it with our trash, take and take and take from it and still it holds us each time we walk into it. What is more teen girl than not being loved but wanting it so badly that you accept the smallest crumbs and call yourself full; what is more teen girl than my father’s favorite wrench, its eternal loyalty and willingness to loosen the most stubborn of bolts; what is more teen girl than my mother’s chewed nail beds, than the whine of the floorboards in her  house? What is more teen girl than my dog, Jack, whose bark is shrill and unnecessary, who has never once stopped a burglar or heeled on command but sometimes when I laugh, his tail wags so hard it thumps against the wall, sometimes it sounds like a heartbeat, sometimes I yell at him for talking too much, for his messy room, sometimes I put him in pink, striped polos and I think he feels pretty, I think he likes to feel pretty, I think Jack is a teen girl. and the mountains, oh, the mountains, what teen girls they are, those colossal show-offs, and the moon, glittering and distant and dictating all of our emotions. My lover’s tender but heavy breath while she sleeps is a teen girl, how it holds me and keeps me awake all at once, how I sometimes wish to silence it, until she turns her body and the room goes quiet and suddenly I want it back. Imagine the teen girls gone from our world, and how quickly we would beg for their return, how grateful would we be then for their loud  enthusiasm and ability to make a crop top out of anything. Even the men who laugh their condescending laughs when a teen girl faints at the sight of her favorite pop star, even those men are teen girls, the way they want so badly to be so big and important and worshipped by someone. Pluto, the teen girl, and her rejection from the popular universe, and my father, a teen girl, who insists he doesn’t believe in horoscopes but wants me to tell him about the best traits of a Scorpio, I tell him, We are all just teen girls, and my father, having raised me, recounts the time he  found the box of love notes and condom wrappers I  hid in my closet, all of the bloody sheets, the missing  socks, the radio blaring over my pitchy sobs, the time I was certain I would die of heartbreak and in a moment was in love with a small, new boy, and of course there are the teen girls, the real teen girls, huddled on the subway after school, limbs draped over each other’s shoulders bones knocking, an awkward wind chime and all of the commuters, who plug in their  headphones to mute the giggle, silence the gaggle and squeak, not knowing where they learned to do this, to roll their eyes and turn up the music, not knowing where they learned this palpable rage, not knowing the teen girls are our most distinguished professors, who teach us to bury the burst until we close our bedroom doors, and then cry with blood in the neck, foot through the door, face in the pillow, the teen girls who teach us to scream.

@stinkylittleman27

Jul 2, 2024

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Women who run with the wolves

I got a natal chart reading from one of my favorite astrologers, Naimonu James, on my birthday a couple years ago and she recommended this book - and it’s stayed at my bedside since. Written by Jungian psychoanalyst and poet, Dr. Clarissa Pinkold Estes, it’s a beautiful research piece on the myths and stories that have been passed down through folkloric traditions. The essence of the book is how women regain their wild intuition in the context of a patriarchal culture that strips it. It’s excellent and I recommend it to everyone, especially femme-identifying people.

@sophia-callahan

Dec 3, 2020

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I think i had an unusually adventurous and fairly gender neutral upbringing

and I feel lucky about that; it made me who I am today! But as an adult woman I can definitely relate and I imagine what it would be like to feel that sense of freedom from being perceived as a woman and the societal expectations that come with that. Sylvia Plath said it best in her journals: “Yes, my consuming desire is to mingle with road crews, sailors and soldiers, barroom regulars—to be a part of a scene, anonymous, listening, recording—all this is spoiled by the fact that I am a girl, a female always supposedly in danger of assault and battery. My consuming interest in men and their lives is often misconstrued as a desire to seduce them, or as an invitation to intimacy. Yes, God, I want to talk to everybody as deeply as I can. I want to be able to sleep in an open field, to travel west, to walk freely at night...” I do think though that it’s fruitless to fixate on these things, imagining the grass to be greener on the other side and essentially wishing you could have grown up and lived as another person, because 1 it’s not possible 2 the life you imagine has so many downsides to it too that you can’t even imagine not having experienced itself and 3 if you were a different person then the You you are now wouldn’t exist, and that would be a shame! I also think men are having a tough time now and many of them are probably just as neurotic, inhibited, and fearful as women. Obviously people are free to reject these notions and live life as whoever they want, and I respect and appreciate those who choose to do this, but I’m not interested in doing that for myself. Instead, I challenge the boundaries of what it means to be a woman in the ways that I can, which feels like the right choice for me!

@taterhole

Jun 28, 2024

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Top Recs from @gabz

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Being hot & sexy on instagram.

It’s okay. it’s not for validation, it’s for performance art. Linda Montano said living life itself is her lifelong performance because she declared that it was. Trisha Paytas has carried on that performance practice. So I’m hot on instagram when the spirit compels me to be. But in like a durationally artistic way and for my future lifelong archive, to show my granddaughters that I was also young and fertile once and my boobs were decently sized and semi perky. They should know. That I was that girl once before I was grey and a bit wrinkled and more bitter than I am currently; for traditional reasons.

@gabz

Mar 14, 2024

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Leaving this app for like 4 months and then randomly coming back

I’m post-grad, unemployed, no direction, sick with a stomach flu or something, went on 3 back to back trips so like I spent a lot of money, clearly have lots of time to write and recommend and ponder and not be ridden with confusion and anxiety these days. So yes, of course here I am. Back at last to Perfectly Imperfect. You’ve caught me red-handed. Crawling back as I’m glued to my couch currently on a nocturnal sleep schedule due to perhaps a combination of my illness and my body remaining in a time zone opposite to the one I must adjust back to. Hope someone out there missed me. The bitch is back.

@gabz

Jul 28, 2024

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Eating expensive food

Once upon a time, in another life, all I invested what little money I had was in weed and cheap alcohol and clothes I don’t wear anymore and I can’t remember what else. Now I often focus on treating myself (with a friend) to a restaurant outside of our pay grade that we bookmarked off ig reels and everyone there is 5-50 years older than us. I’d rather spend $$$ on delicious wine and fire pasta or afternoon tea or a bougie burger etc. etc. at a place I’m not destined to run into someone I’d rather not run into. Embrace giggling the whole time at how perfect the butter and focaccia was and constantly overly-reassuring each other spending this much on a dinner we won’t ever forget is a perfectly valid expense on a biweekly paycheck. We deserve it. Even if we have to split it into 4 payments via the chase app. Some people throw hundreds a month or week into alcohol, coke, ketamine, weed, and the likes. To each their own. So I refuse to feel too guilty when I get the bill and it’s equivalent to 3-4 hours of labor, if I enjoyed every bite and I’m a little tipsy off Pinot. Everyone has their vices, and suddenly mine is a $18 dessert.

@gabz

Feb 4, 2024