As a kid, my favourite activity was to read children’s encyclopedias and learn about dinosaurs and ancient Egypt and how elevators worked. Of these, my favourite entry was about aboriginal vision quests. Boys are cast into the wilderness to meditate and discover their life direction; they emerge men of truth and purpose. (No mention of the female equivalent.)
As a high-schooler, I spewed a geyser of emotion into a well-guarded journal. In English class, I learned about Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own. (Her theory: “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write.”) It made me wonder if my self-reflection was my own rite of passage — a notion explored in She’s Shameless, an anthology “about growing up, rocking out and fighting back” to be released next week by Shameless, a Toronto-based alt-magazine for young women.
The essays are honest — about getting knocked up, knocked down, first times, first loves and finding your voice — but as co-editors Stacey May Fowles and Megan Griffith-Greene wrote in the book’s introduction, “This is not an after-school special.”
Cautionary tales abound — a pregnant 16-year-old contemplates, then rejects, abortion; a fourth-grader’s French teacher peers down her shirt; a virginity is lost to a slimy married father twice her age — but that’s not the point.
Young women are rarely ever heard from in society. It’s adults, often men, that are invited on TV to wring their hands about teen-girl crises (pregnancy, anorexia, depression, promiscuity) and asked how to “fix” these problems.
Grow up, be smart, take responsibility, teens are told — but in practice they’re not often given that agency, which is what makes She’s Shameless remarkable. The essays neither condone nor condemn; some are full of regret, but the contributors’ bios tell of eventual successes — writers are “proud feminist mamas,” university graduates, artists.
As it turns out, a writer shared my vision quest. Teri Vlassopoulos on making zines (photocopied, handmade booklets of writing and art), which quieted her restless thoughts: “Even if the zines eventually get thrown away or if they’re a little embarrassing or if there’s some bad spelling in there, it’s OK. That part doesn’t matter. What matters is the importance of having tangible evidence and amassing proof. We should make things that we can keep around for later, even if just to burn them.”
Some feminists believe women are absent from history books (and kids’ encyclopedias) because they were written by men. If that’s true, all the more reason to write.
