The fourteen year-old girl I wasn't

I was clearing out some old bookmarks when I came across Flavia's Tiger Beatdown piece on Lana Del Rey, specifically the criticism that she's patently "anti-feminist" devoid of any agency, and exists only as an "object of desire." I've linked to this piece before, for sure, because it's one of the most nuanced things I've read about the woman. That's not what struck me, though. This was, so much that I had sort of an "ah-ha" moment:

Because I, too, hoped my very own James Dean would rescue me from such unforgettable shame. The shame of growing up, of having a body that didn’t fit, of being a lonely and sad teenage girl. The kind of girl who grew up to be a staunch feminist but who would have also loved Lana Del Rey.

I actually relate to a lot of what Flavia wrote: I didn't fit the blonde, blue-eyed, lithe ideal -- not by a long shot, but (and I included this in the comment I left on the original post) I didn't fantasize about having a James Dean-type swoop down and save me, as much as I fantasized about being James Dean myself: kind of a cool, aloof loner. I did my best to cultivate that attitude through high school. I'm not saying it was a superior choice, but it did, and still does to an extent, inform the way I process things. It's easy to be critical once you're set on being the consummate outsider.

I almost didn't want to write this, because it seems unduly judgmental of other women and how they navigated through adolescence -- but I suspect a lot of women nodded in agreement.

I keep going back to a quote from Lynda Barry I read some years ago. Maybe it's only tangentially related, but it comes closest to illustrating my own childhood reluctance to embracing all things girly: "On my street there were a lot of girls, but girlish girls were few. Mostly we were tomboys." Most of the girls I grew up with were James Deans, too, once they grew out of their tomboy stage.

I'm not sure if I have a larger point to make other than within contemporary feminism, there's a huge emphasis placed on choice: the choice to wear lipstick, shave one's legs, and wait for that James Dean. I don't begrudge other women's choices, and I think I've been around long enough to know that you can have those things without turning in your feminist card. However, someone who doesn't embody "traditional femininity" (yes, I realized that's a loaded term) should chalk her choice up to internalized misogyny. It's seems irresponsible not to, but it's also a little reductive. Growing up on the poor side of working-class, a lot of what passes for traditional femininity simply wasn't available to me. We couldn't afford the outward signs of girldom -- the canopy beds and pretty dresses -- I learned not to desire them.  Plus (and this is a big plus) I didn't want to seem meek or silent: being tough and cool, "like one of the guys" was a way out. In her book Skin, Dorothy Allison touches on the problems feminism has historically had with class. She states: "Traditional feminist theory has a limited understanding of class difference and how sexuality and self are shaped by both desire and denial. " Feminism is still in class denial.