From eleven to sixteen, you are always looking for something. In most cases, that “something” is as elusive as it is nagging, constantly playing a nasty game of ping-pong against any other thought that would probably be more suitable in any adolescent’s head. But this “something…” It’s exactly as it sounds: it’s some… thing. A thing that cannot and will not take form until it’s right there in front of your fresh and hungry eyes, often out of reach. And when this thing, this barely tangible ghost of an idea, a dream, suddenly materializes in front of you. The seeds plant themselves in your brain and sprout through the neural tissue, taking root and refusing to budge for what could be forevermore.
“I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?” The final scene in a particular endlessly-acclaimed film, Rob Reiner’s Stand By Me (1986), ends with this single blinking – literally blinking on a computer screen – quote. Its universality, which I’ve found to be truly ubiquitous in ways I’ve found nothing else to be, is almost beyond the point here. The first time my eyes landed on those neon-green words and the flatscreen in my twelve-year-old friend’s basement faded to black, something had shifted. The “something” was no longer elusive; it was an ember that hurtled toward an inferno and would continue to roar for years to come.
The Call for Adventure
Adventure. Hopping on a bike at an hour when heads should be cozy on pillows with kitschy sheets you’ll outgrow in a year—crawling through dilapidated houses that could call for tetanus shots. Forming a secret society with your best friends, huddling under a cave as you read poetry from a leather-bound book. I longed greatly for the kind of recklessness I discovered, as the patina glossing my boyish dreams began to dull and crack, was essentially reserved for just that: boyishness, boys.
Yeah, sure, it’s pretty damn unlikely that any real-life group of ragtag boys hailing from safe-until-it’s-not suburbia is off fighting any demon-alien-hybrid from another realm or defeating a killer clown that likes to hang out in sewers, but it’s the insinuation that maybe they could. If anyone had to be up for the task, it just might be your local tweenage underdogs. Bravery was a glimmering possibility. Noble heroism wasn’t so far out of reach.
The Absence of Female-Centric Adventures
But this possibility, this potential for greatness and glory acting as a beacon of light during the most awkward years of one’s life, does not exist for girls. For starters, there are, like, no widely popular movies in which thirteen-year-old girls get to indulge in any sort of escapade arm-in-arm. Seriously, only a single movie included in Screen Rant’s “15 Greatest Childhood Adventure Movies Ever” has a young woman and a girl as principal characters.
We’re not lacking in mainstream media about teenage girls, not anymore. But tweenage girls? It’s a different story entirely. Though Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade (2018) indeed does a masterful job of conveying the pervasive loneliness accompanying the average eighth-grade girl, its realism is as crushing as it is impressive. Pre-teen girls no longer need realism; they need excitement, thrill beyond what Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging (2008) (though it’s genuinely a near-perfect film) offers. Tales of friendship beyond the very earnest horrors of buying your first thong and learning to kiss, despite how precious these memories become in adulthood.
The Gender Gap Knows No Age
And though we may not be fighting for young women and girls to be seen as, well, people beyond a male protagonist’s desire anymore, this doesn’t go to say there aren’t glaring discrepancies between films depicting the lives of young women versus young men. These films with female protagonists are often resigned to bleak subject matter, regardless of whether or not they fall into the box of comedy or drama; the hurdles seventeen-year-olds must leap through to access reproductive healthcare or strained mother-daughter relationships as the crux of the plot. This is not to erase the brilliance of these films because they often are brilliant, and it certainly doesn’t mitigate the number of films depicting a boy’s internal and external battles, nor detract from their brilliance. But there’s hardly anything resembling Project X (2012), Animal House (1978), American Pie (1999) that stars women.
Perhaps the closest we have now is Olivia Wilde’s razor-sharp Booksmart (2019), or Emma Seligman’s stupid-in-the-best-conceivable-way Bottoms (2023), even Augustine Frizell’s stoner comedy Never Goin’ Back (2018). And these films are great, riddled with raunchy punchlines and cringe-inducing violence. One even has an Avril Lavigne needle drop. But they’re not enough. And it should have taken so long to get here.
A Glimmer of Hope
Adventure, whimsical and fantastical or as adventurous as small-town suburbia can get, eludes young women. What’s worse is that there is hardly any place for this yearning. Where can this aching desire for what can only be described as boyish camaraderie be satiated? It wouldn’t do any harm to audiences to see a group of tween girls go in search of a dead body or treasure for a change instead of reliving the incredibly potent and bleak realities of increasingly strict laws on abortion and other harsh truths. Or maybe just in addition.
Wonderful developments have been and continue to be made in the world of adventure and slapstick comedy for girls and young women. However, there’s still a long, winding road ahead. One can only hope that by the time the next generation of tweenage girls rolls around, they’ll get to see themselves flying high on bikes past a full moon with an alien friend, too.
Featured Image: The Goonies (dir. Richard Donner) / Courtesy of Warner Bros.
