Slow Takes: “Pen15” and Embracing Alternate Girlhoods
Watching the first season during what I considered my second puberty was miserable. I could acknowledge its effectiveness, but I felt alienated.
Watching the first season during what I considered my second puberty was miserable. I could acknowledge its effectiveness, but I felt alienated.
If you want to live in a reality show, go ahead and sow chaos, but if you’d rather have a romcom, you have to let go.
“I remember little moments so vividly — like Ashley kissing Spencer on the shoulder while they looked in the refrigerator for something to eat. This is what I wanted. And I wasn’t afraid of wanting it anymore.”
“I have enough of my own grief, I don’t need yours, too.”
“Do you have something to tell us?” my mom joked. It was a joke, because of course I didn’t. “No,” I said with a laugh. And I thought I was telling the truth.
It’s 2017, and married power lesbians Jenny Schecter and Shane McCutcheon face some tough stuff only days before Carmen De La Pica Morales is coming in for a weekend visit that turns out a whole lot cooler than anybody could’ve predicted.
“I did not intend to have any experiences outside the range of what I had previously proven to myself I was comfortable with or could understand. Scully and I both convinced ourselves that this was possible, that it had ever been a possibility.”
“I was angry. Really fucking angry. Angry because Jenny Schecter was right.”