Ingénues, BFFS and Rebels: Finding Inspiration on the Small Screen
It seems everywhere we turn, someone is pointing out the age gaps between generations: Boomers did this, Millennials did that, Gen Z is doing something else.
But let’s set the blame game aside for a minute. Yes, age gaps are very real and can be highly alienating. But just as children look to adults for guidance and role models, adults can see children and teenagers as more than such if they try.
This concept unexpectedly applies to the creation and consumption of pop culture. Specifically, what’s on our television screens. In fact, entertainment can still be inspiring and motivating despite a significant age gap between viewer and character.
There are so many “ideals” of youth: naivety and innocence, a sense of adventure, un-jaded courage, curiosity, following your heart regardless of consequence — these are often the ones that seem to “die” with age. They don’t have to. We just forget to tend to them in the same ways we maintain physical youth with exercise, hair growth treatments and collagen creams.
There are countless series available at this very moment featuring pre-teen girls or women in their teens and early 20s. Yet it’s easy to often turn a blind eye because watching shows like these can become uncomfortable or even painful for the viewer — reminding us of those parts of ourselves we outgrew, that no longer exist or that we wish never did. But growth is not without discomfort, and we all want to continue to grow as humans. To be better than we were. Experiencing these youthful journeys all over again with younger characters, falling in love with them and participating in their pain and victories can reawaken the youth inside each of us.
Look at Cobra Kai, the Karate Kid franchise spin-off. While it’s a renewal story for the original characters, there is a whole fresh batch of youngins, quite often led by the girls Sam and Tori. While it can’t go without the over-the-top and literal butt-kicking high school drama, the girls are always fighting for themselves, for those they love and for what’s right.
Pen15 is so painful and extraordinary. It’s 100% pubescent awkwardness and 100% accurate. Maya and Anna struggle to keep their priorities in line in the midst of family drama, cringy middle-school boyfriends and searching for identity in the pop-culture defining year 2000. But they always come back to each other. We all know that struggle.
Devi in Never Have I Ever is considered an overachiever, intelligent, witty and competitive. But she’s healing from trauma and is desperately searching for her place in the world. Sound familiar?
All the girls in The Baby-Sitters Club reboot are just as they were in the 90s -- wildly different, but their friendship and sisterhood always comes first.
Grown-ish is centered around many young women – Zoey, Nomi, Ana, Sky, Jazz – who are all just like us: ambitious, talented, outspoken, strong. But just like each of us, they are flawed.
All of these characters are flawed, but that’s what makes them real. They come off the screen and feel like daughters, sisters, nieces. And just like our own real-life daughters, sisters and nieces, they should inspire us.
Challenge yourself to go on that journey with a younger character. Let their courage and ferocity and naivety consume you. Remember how it feels to be young, dumb and in love. Or young and angry. Or young and unstoppable. Find those feelings and take them back.
Take them back, reflect on your own life’s lessons, and find the crossroads. Fuse them and equalize them. Let the young ladies on your television re-ignite the youthful, butt-kicking, best-friend-wielding, brave and unstoppable spirit in you.
We’re only young until we decide we’re not.
Emily Cunningham is a freelance magazine writer with a passion for wildlife conservation, civil and societal issues, and artistic pursuits including dance, creative writing, film studies, and handmade art.
