Now, I love a good coming-of-age movie. Ladybird, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Booksmart, Superbad are some of my favorites, to name a few. Despite the diversity in their story and plotlines (Ladybird would not be caught dead with Fogell. She’d probably spit on him.), they all have one thing in common—all the protagonists are in their mid-to-late-teens and in high school.
I’ve always thought that was strange. I’ve certainly had my fair share of rites of passage in high school (first kisses/relationships/talking stages/loves, piercing my own ears with a sewing needle, going to house parties in the Bay Area suburbs, the list goes on), but it wasn’t until I got to college where I realized that I, in fact, did not know who I was in high school. Most of us don’t at that age.
Truly, it wasn’t until I got to college where I had my coming-of-age. I’m not gonna give you the fluff, the canon events, the lore—yes I got a septum ring my parents don’t know about, yes I cut my hair in my dorm with a pair of Dollar Tree scissors, yes I realized I don’t have to become a doctor like my parents wanted me to—but that’s not what I’m talking about when I say I had my coming-of-age (and still am) in college. When I say coming-of-age, I mean I am starting to really feel grounded in my identity and secure in my individuality despite knowing how much it’s going to change over my time as an undergraduate and beyond.
I really think that, if there’s a time to come of age, it’s college. You’re forging your own way in (probably) a new city, with new people you’ve never seen before; everything sounds and feels and smells different. Everything is different. And when you come back home it’s not going to feel the way it did and it will never feel the way it did. You’ve had experiences that people you’ve grown up with since kindergarten don’t and will never know about. The life you’re starting to live is so scarily foreign.
Lorde writes astutely about adolescence and coming-of-age in her album Pure Heroin. Reflecting on the writing and creation of the album, she states,
“All my life I’ve been obsessed with adolescence, drunk on it. Even when I was little, I knew that teenagers sparkled. I knew they knew something children didn’t know, and adults ended up forgetting.”
I feel like I’m only starting to know that something that children don’t know and that adults end up forgetting. I turn nineteen next year. I turn twenty the year after that. And yet, I feel like I’ve only started to live. Like Ladybird, I did have my first kiss and relationship with a White boy of the Month at age fourteen. And like Amy from Booksmart, I did horrendously embarrass myself when I began to really navigate romantic relationships with women. I’ve done most things that coming-of-age heroes and heroines do. But I don’t know if that’s made me “grown” or really given me perspective compared to truly starting to live life on my own terms.
The truth is, I didn’t do any of the “coming-of-age” shit I did in high school because I wanted to. I did it because I felt like I had to; I was never intentional with anything the way I am now (and even then, everything is kind of for the plot for me nowadays)—some could argue that’s the appeal of the high school coming-of-age. However, I think the intention behind the decisions that comprise a college coming-of-age is what makes it so meaningful.
And by intention, I don’t mean being smart and making good decisions because your prefrontal cortex is starting to develop. I mean living, like truly living, and experiencing new things and people because YOU, not anyone else, want to. All the friends I’ve made in college are friends I want to have, not people I was kind of grouped in with just because. The people I’ve talked to were all people I wanted to talk to (for better or for worse). Everything in my life is meaningful to me now. And everything I do is not to “check something off the list” (for a lack of better word) because I’ll feel behind if I don’t.
And that’s why we need a college coming-of-age movie. The idea that you have to have done certain things in high school and know all this stuff about yourself before coming to college is unrealistic. I’m not saying that high school coming-of-age movies are at all problematic. I’m just saying that, yeah, I did get a kick out of watching Logan Lerman fake-trip on LSD and it did remind me of the time I was on the floor-greened out at a function when I was sixteen, but did I really have to do that to come of age? Does anyone?
My high school “coming-of-age” experiences do not hold a candle to the female friendships I’ve forged, the Target runs and beach trips, the soundtrack of my freshman year that is our laughter and hope. So, Greta Gerwig, I am once again asking you to make a movie about a college girl in a beach town who is just starting to learn how to live for herself and not for others.