the duality of girls
what i discovered in the homecoming mosh pit
Against my judgment, last Friday I went to my school’s homecoming because my best friend wanted me there. And she would have done the same for me. If you haven’t read my post about the quintessential teen experience, see the excerpt below. I was brutally against the idea of high school dances, particularly in my participation in them.
I skipped homecoming last year, when I was a sophomore. Mostly because I hated it when I was a freshman. I looked around at all the flashing lights, and the music seemed to only get louder and more obnoxious throughout the night. Down in the pit, kids screamed to the music and danced feverishly with the reeking scent of alcohol and weed wafting off of them. The experience was much too much for me, and I couldn’t think of anything except for leaving. Should I put myself through that state of panic again for the sake of hoping to create good memories? Homecoming seems like a part of the quintessential teen experience. I have a ticket for this year, and it’s sitting on my desk. But I’m not quite sure if I’m going yet.
My best friend says we should go in the mosh pit for “just ten minutes, so we can say we did it”, which I hesitantly comply with because I’m trying to step more outside my comfort zone. And I was right, it did smell slightly of alcohol, and everyone was grossly sweaty, but in the moment I allowed myself to forget it. We stayed in the mosh pit practically the entire time. Here, reader, allow me to retract what I thought about homecoming just two weeks ago, because I loved it! I allowed myself to ignore that I wasn’t meant to like it, or so I thought, and enjoyed it in every cheesy way a high schooler is allowed to.
I’m not necessarily saying I disagree with my previous post, but I would like to emphasize now that I’m happy I went. I spoke about worrying about resenting my choices on skipping out on “quintessential teen experiences”. I’m so grateful that I gave homecoming another chance, and embraced the experience. It seems silly in perspective, but I think I learned a lot about myself in that mosh pit full of sweaty high schoolers yelling “FEIN FEIN FEIN”.
I would like to highlight a note I saw on Substack last week, in which I don’t completely remember how it goes or the poster. But it said something along the lines of this: “Other girls are out clubbing and I’m sitting on my bed watching romcoms and writing my next Substack post. We are NOT the same”.
The rhetoric of two very different types of girls only being able to coexist in different people thrived in the context of myself; I could only be one or the other. I chose the inherently more introverted option, and considered myself to be so quite heavily. I was right in thinking large social events aren’t usually my forté, but this mindset limited me from experiences I could have had. People are so often categorized and pigeonholed into a certain persona to take on face value, in which they often feel as they must perpetuate. But individuals are more than a singular entity, which is what makes us complex and human. You are at your own disposal to experience the world and opportunities in front of you, and then decide who you are from those.
Girlhood feels so curated nowadays, you experience it in your individual way, but you also must experience it in a certain way. Online, we are squared away into different types of people, the extremes of aesthetics and clichés grasping us at surface level. Neither of these types is inherently superior to the other, which the original note poster implied. Each “distinct group” is not fundamentally different from the other; both groups actively indulge in the things they enjoy. Our current choices do not define our complex identities.
What ultimately comes from stereotyping different types of girls and what they do for fun? Girls have always been diminished into a singular label, whether that be the “party girl” or the “tomboy”. But we are simply more, and we should have no pressure in reinforcing these labels or personas we assume we must conform to because that’s how we typically act.
I am not obligated to act how you think I must because of how I have previously presented myself. And I say this to myself as much as I say it to those around me.
Sure, it’s fine to completely hate homecoming. I also know I walked into it freshman year expecting to. It’s in human nature to make assumptions, but I am learning now to admit I was wrong. I was wrong about girls, I was wrong about myself, and I was wrong about homecoming. I hope that in the future, I will allow myself to walk into things in a more unbiased sense.
I love this so much ❤️
What a profound experience in the mosh