When we are at a sleepover, we never know what we may do or what we might talk about. However, despite this unpredictable nature, I have noticed that sleepovers are just as much structured as they are impulsive. In this week’s article, I discuss five elements that I believe are intrinsic to all adolescent sleepovers.
1. Mother Nature
Ah, Mother Nature, with her blessings of menstruation cycles, body hair, and everything else that we cannot control. As girls, we hate what we are burdened with, but we certainly love to talk about it. We also love to incessantly grumble about how boys have been spared from the wrath of being bloated and overwhelming emotional every month- it really is absolutely absurd that females have to endure so much more physical pain than men do. Unfortunately we are unable to do anything about it, so we just stick to what we’re good at:
2. Pessimism
Movies depict sleepovers horribly. Contrary to giggly pillow fights, time spent in real sleepovers is devoted more to ranting, rather than recklessly covering the room in feathers. A common misconception of sleepovers is that they entail total happiness, as movies have only ever shown the idyllic scenes of fuchsia pink bed sheets and chocolate facemasks. At my attempt at trying to intellectualize sleepovers, they really are so much more than that; we philosophize and rant about our problems and frustrations, just as much as we laugh.
3. Jessica Alba
Jessica Alba has been the crème de la crème of female celebrities for absolutely ever; it has almost passed the stage of being extremely irritating (I will reiterate that it has almost passed the stage, because it is still extremely irritating). I use her as a paradigm for male fantasies, as she leaves men salivating over her, whilst us normal girls are left feeling scorned and fed up. At every adolescent sleepover I have attended, the words “Jessica Alba” (“Megan Fox” has also been a popular one) and “overrated” have always been used in the same sentence- figure that one out! Yes, she is physically flawless, but a clay flowerpot could act better than she does. Men, let go of this cliché fantasy of yours, it is so incredibly tedious.
4. Dichotomous Feelings Towards Men
Which brings me on to my next element. Sleepovers are spent both glorifying and incriminating the men in our lives. We love to hate them, and also hate that we helplessly love them. We are infuriated by how they can never see past Jessica Alba’s pouty lips and into her vacant, insipid soul (to make another analogy, my grandmother’s wallpaper has more emotional depth than she does), yet we are still so attracted to them. This admiration and vexation will continue to be the bane of our existences!
5. The Future
The future is both daunting and endearing to us, so we talk about it to try to make sense of it all. We worry how we will meet that one person, when we will get married or whether we will choose to get married at all, where we might reside, and what we will make out of our lives. The day that my child will come up to me and ask whether they can go to a sleepover, I know that my lips will curl into a small smile, as all my memories of assembling in pyjamas and talking about the future will seem as tangible as ever.