I met my best friend when I was fourteen.
Of course, she wasn’t my first best friend.
She’s not even my only one now.
Since I was little, I’ve surrounded myself with girls that push me in every possible way.
However, it wasn’t until recently that I really started to appreciate those relationships.
The lack of strong female relationships in pop culture is sort of like your heartbeat.
You spend years not noticing it.
But when you do, you can’t stop noticing it.
Even as I started to write this piece, I was shocked by how many of my favorite female characters don’t have a single strong relationship with another girl – at least not one the audience gets to see.
The moment I started to notice my heartbeat, I was still really young.
When I was 8, my favorite TV show was Wizards of Waverly Place.
For any of you who’ve ever watched it, you know that the relationship between Harper and Alex is incredibly strong and incredibly complex.
That was a friendship that changed my life.
I could see me and my friends, finally represented on screen, and it felt amazing.
Not only that, but I wanted to work to improve the friendships I had with other girls.
Nowadays, I hardly ever consume any pop culture that doesn’t have a strong female relationship at its forefront.
The best part is, they’re all different.
My favorite show is New Girl, where the relationship between Jess and Cece is both one of the show’s most subtle, while also being its very bedrock.
My favorite artist is Taylor Swift, someone who became widely known for the strong female relationships she developed.
Teen Wolf is unabashedly one of my favorite shows on TV, and its highlight of female friendships changed the way I think about them.
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This is a show that finds a way to put female relationships at its forefront, despite being centered around males.
The friendships between Allison, Lydia, Malia, and Kira, in all their different combinations, display an incredibly wide variety of relationships.
Some of them have dated the same boy, some of them have tried to kill each other, and some of them have every petty reason to hate each other, but they don’t.
This show has decided that its female friendships are more important than any love triangle, even though those do exist.
The show doesn’t pretend those obstacles don’t exist, they just demonstrate that the relationships formed among girls are way stronger than anything they could face.
They have found a way to put complex, varied, and oftentimes confusing female relationships on display, something I see in very few corners of the pop culture world.
I’m not the only one who’s felt the effects of seeing strong female relationships on TV.
I asked a few of my own strong female friends to talk to me about when they’ve seen their life changed by viewing those types of friendships in pop culture, and here’s what they said:
“Ann and Leslie [of Parks and Recreation] taught me that women should strive to build each other up, and that nothing is stronger than a female friendship built on pure love, loyalty, and trust. Female friendships don’t have to be filled with drama, and the best ones consider a five hour phone call about anything and everything equally as important as huge celebrations and milestones.” – Maggie
“Cristina Yang and Meredith Gray from Gray’s Anatomy depict what not only is a wonderful friendship, but a support system for one another. The fictional characters from the show have inspired me to not only be in my friends’ lives during the good times but to be there for support during the hard times.” – Sreelekha
More and more female friendships being represented is crucial, but the way they’re portrayed is also really important.
And while we like to think all female relationships in pop culture are great examples of representation, some miss the mark.
Here’s the biggest issue with the way pop culture sometimes displays female relationships – they exist only in a two-dimensional world.
An example of this comes from an often-raved about female friendship that just premiered this winter – Betty and Veronica on The CW’s Riverdale.
Now, I watch and love Riverdale, and I think there’s a lot of potential for the relationships to develop in new and interesting ways, but the way Betty and Veronica’s relationship exists now is very two-dimensional.
Disregarding the discussion of queerbaiting, and any sexual tension fans have picked up on, Betty and Veronica have the quintessential Strong Female Relationship.
Sure, they’ve both had feelings for the same guy, but that doesn’t matter!
They’re Strong Female Friends, and all they do is lift each other up.
The reason this comes across as a little unrealistic is because it is.
Look, I love my best friend with my everything I have.
I really would die for her, but sometimes I want to be the one doing the killing.
We’ve fought – a lot – and we have fought about boys!
The reason I consider our friendship one of the strongest in my life isn’t the fact that we’ve had jealous, petty moments – it’s the fact that we were able to move on.
Female relationships are just like any other relationship in life – they’re complicated.
The right way to portray a strong female relationship isn’t by following the rule book about what you think that should be.
It’s about embracing the different ways girls interact, the different ways they form bonds, and the different types of relationships that rise from those bonds.
One show that’s done this perfectly is HBO’s Big Little Lies.
Much of the miniseries is based on petty fighting between these women, but the end result (no spoilers here) is all the more satisfying because of that.
The show portrays female relationships exactly as they are – complex, frustrating, petty, and most of all, different.
All five of the main characters have extraordinarily different personalities, and the show doesn’t pretend those don’t exist.
In fact, every episode up until the finale points in a certain direction that is the destruction of those bonds.
However, the final episode clearly puts on display the way relationships between women are stronger than anything else in this life, even if their personalities don’t exactly mesh.
Despite all of this, all strong female friendships are good, just like all strong female characters are good.
The reality is, when a girl sees two other girls being friends, whether on TV, in a movie, in a book, or in real life, she’s inspired to develop those same sorts of ties with her friends.
And the effects of that are really, really good – like, scientifically proven good.
A UCLA study from 2002 suggests that women respond to stress with a cascade of brain chemicals that cause us to make and maintain friendships with other women.
Hanging out with our friends can actually counteract the kind of stomach-quivering stress most of us experience on a daily basis.
Relationships among women aren’t only good for the women themselves, they’re a necessary foundation to our entire society.
When women build each other up, instead of tear each other down, everyone wins.
And as women work to unlearn the decades of media that taught them girls should always fight over boys, the representation of female friendships in pop culture will be more important than ever.
My list of strong female relationships in pop culture to check out, not already mentioned:
Rachel, Phoebe, and Monica: FRIENDS
Blair and Serena: Gossip Girl
Cher & friends: Clueless
Hailee Steinfeld’s music
The Clone Club: Orphan Black
Ginny and Luna: Harry Potter series
Sansa Stark and Margaery Tyrell: Game of Thrones
Selena Gomez’s “Me & My Girls”
RISE NEWS is a grassroots journalism news organization that is working to change the way young people become informed and engaged in the world. You can write for us.
Cover Photo Credit: rawpixel.com/ Flickr (CC By 2.0)
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What It’s Like Being One Of The Only White Kids In A Predominately Black School
I have to confess.
I enthusiastically agreed to write this piece.
It seemed as if it would be easy to write about my life, a part that was as formative as it was unpredictable.
The truth is, I was completely at a loss for how to actually put into words my 7th and 8th grade years in Arlington, Texas.
At first, I thought I would tie in school choice.
I figured it’s a hot topic in our current political climate, and I have plenty of thoughts on the issue.
Then, I decided I would write it as if it were a platform; I’d persuade you to my side with tales from my childhood.
Instead, I’ve chosen to write you a letter.
This letter is addressed to all those who have ever feared the unknown, that have ever gone off of a preconception rather than waited for an actual personal experience, that have ever been proven right, that have ever been proven wrong, and that have ever realized that learning doesn’t stop just because you’re no longer in school.
This is for you.
My name is Bradley Pennington, and I was raised in the south as a white student in a black majority junior high.
At the time, I’m not sure this particular experience stood out as extraordinary to me, but it has come to mean a great deal.
I had no way of knowing, but the two years I spent at this school would have a lasting impact on me for years to come.
You see; an education does not consist of only the things you learn in the classroom, but also of the things you learn in the hallway, out on the parking lot, and on your walk home.
I learned innumerable lessons at this school, but I will stick to recounting three of the most valuable lessons.
The first lesson I learned was how to communicate, not only with people and about topics I was comfortable with, but also with strangers about topics that would often push me outside of my narrow view of the world and into a space where I could better learn and grow.
There’s something tremendously valuable about the coming together of multiple cultures.
There’s something equally valuable, if not slightly more chaotic, about the the coming together of multiple 14 year olds.
In any given day, I would be prompted to explain the way my family did things and hear the stories of how my classmates’ families conducted themselves.
It wasn’t the differences that stood out, but rather, the similarities.
Photo Credit: Charlie/ Flickr (CC By 2.0)
And within those similarities, I learned about universal truths; the want of a child to make their parents proud, the need for familial love regardless of whether the need is met, and the pursuit of fulfillment in life.
It is through these basic needs, that my communication skills began to blossom.
I went from being shy and nervous, to knowing exactly where I could find a commonality with a stranger.
I was now blessed with the skill of conversation. I could talk to friends, enemies, strangers, adults, kids, and anyone in between because I had finally had my eyes open to something different and realized, that at our core, differences fade and we all end up desperately seeking the same things.
The second lesson I learned was that passion is the secret ingredient in the recipe of happiness.
I’ll be honest and say that my junior high wasn’t always the easiest place to learn.
The school served the highest priced homes in the city and the homeless shelters simultaneously.
I fell in the middle of that group and never knew either extreme intimately.
With the vastly different background of the students came behavior problems.
There were students who had to be concerned more with where their next meal would come from than the Pythagorean theorem.
Likewise, there were students whose entitlement stood in the way of their ability to learn those valuable lessons outside of the classroom; the social and emotional lessons.
Neither of these groups were truly responsible for their hindrances, but the burden nonetheless fell to the same people; the teachers.
And as I watched many of the teachers deal with the 16 hours outside of the classroom just as much as the 8 hours within the walls of the school building, I learned about putting your passion into action.
True happiness can only come from finding what you want to do and seeking it with a reckless abandon.
The teachers were stakeholders; they mentored, they educated, they loved, and they sacrificed.
Every day that I wake up, I pray that I can be half as passionate as them.
The last lesson is one more spiritual in nature.
I learned that fate, or God in my belief, puts us right where we need to be at any given moment.
Had my parents had another option, they may not have placed me at this particular junior high.
There were other, more prestigious junior highs in the city, and I was a young man that had an affinity for learning.
But had I not been there, I don’t know that my eyes would have ever been fully opened to the world around me.
I was challenged at this school.
The teachers didn’t care that some of their students walked in the door having all the resources in the world at their disposal while others walked in without a single pencil; they expected our best, consistently.
I was made to give up on making excuses because mine weren’t as good as some and any excuse I could think of had surely already been told before.
And ultimately, I learned that is our shared responsibility on this earth to do right by each other.
No one is going to make it through this life alone.
There is no use in cutting ourselves off from new opportunity and new friendship.
I was destined to be at that school because it would play a major role in who I would become.
Would I have learned these lessons at any other school?
I have no way of knowing that.
But I do know this: Diversity breeds intuitiveness, and intuitiveness leads to understanding.
Often times our world leaves us wishing people had more understanding for their fellow man.
I wish everyone could have an experience like I did.
Being the minority, even if it’s only for 8 hours a day, opens your eyes and allows you to see the world for what it is.
I treasure my days in junior high because they ultimately taught me about humanity.
So my advice to you is to reach out to someone you would have never thought about talking to before.
Make time for personal growth and learning.
The world can be your classroom and every person you encounter has the chance to be your teacher.
You’ll never know until you are far enough removed from a situation whether it was one that can transform you forever.
RISE NEWS is a grassroots journalism news organization that is working to change the way young people become informed and engaged in the world. You can write for us.
Cover Photo Credit: justine warrington/ Flickr (CC By 2.0)
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ICYMI: Apple Unveils 3D Touch
By Kris Mitchell
These days Apple press events happen so regularly you can set your Apple Watches to them. Sept. 9, The Cupertino company announced new gadgets that will surely bring a little joy to any enthusiastic Apple fan. The event introduced new additions for the company’s smartwatch, a 12.9 inch iPad Pro, a new Apple TV model with Siri voice control; a touchpad remote and upgraded models of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus.
If the timing of Apple annual events are becoming easier to predict then the same can be said for the Apple rumor mills. For months, tech websites reported, with increasing certainty as the Sept. 9 event drew closer. The iPad Pro has been a persistent rumor with some predicting that the larger device would also launch with a stylus to take advantage of its new features. The substantial rumors turned out to be true, which comes as a surprise from one of the world’s most secretive companies. Apple has been having some difficulty keeping details of its production line a secret from scrupulous bloggers and journalists.
The headline new feature of the iPhone 6S is 3D Touch, which allows the touchscreen of the new iPhones to register the pressure of a touch and gives users new dimensions to interact with apps. For example, an iPhone 6S user could hold down on a message in Apple’s Message app and see it at a glance without leaving their current location. But, holding down on the message for longer could bring up the message in full. Apple demonstrated similar technology named Force Touch earlier this year with its new MacBook computer that featured a remodeled touch pad with haptic feedback and pressure sensitivity.
The iPhone 6S includes a 12 MP camera capable of shooting 4K video; a new FaceTime camera with a focus on taking high-quality selfies. The new iPhone is also made of a custom aluminum alloy designed by Apple that the company says is “the strongest [Apple] has ever used in a smartphone.” Given the stories of bendable iPhones that Apple battled since the original iPhone 6’s debut last year there will likely be considerable scrutiny behind the company’s claims.
The Apple TV had its chance to shine today with Apple’s little box getting faster hardware, an all new interface and access to the App Store. There have been stories about Apple failing to gain the licensing permissions that it needed to premiere an all new subscription service rivaling that of current cable providers such as Comcast. Apple has yet to comment on the details of any talks, but the absence of such a subscription service comes as bit of sour news for fans.
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Saturday Night Live Honors Paris In Touching Moment Before Show
Saturday Night Live honored the victims of the Paris terror attack before the start of the show with a touching bilingual moment presented by cast member Cecily Strong.
We stand with you, Paris. https://t.co/hqUX4oqWMj
— Saturday Night Live (@nbcsnl) November 15, 2015
Strong said in English and then repeated in French:
“Paris is the city of light. And here in New York City, we know that light will never go out. Our love and support is with everyone there tonight. We stand with you.”
Cover Photo Credit: NBC/ Screenshot
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