Why The Yearning? What Being “A Teenage Girl In Her 20s”
Young woman lost in thought. Andrea Piacquadio via Pexels
When I open my Snapchat for the first time every day, I’m prompted to look at an auto-generated “On This Day” feature that shows me the stuff I did a year ago, two years ago, or sometimes six years ago. Most of it is some variation of me complaining about something or a silly video of my friends and me behaving like degenerates. Much of the time, I don’t think twice about these memories. However, sometimes the older memories saved, especially from my early to mid-teens, bring me to pause.
These are photos of me body-checking myself at 16 (and many pounds ago). Or, it’ll be a series of selfies I never liked. Maybe the series of photos shows a group of old friends and I, or an ex-boyfriend much to my dismay. Or, it’ll be a photo tagged with a date that reminds me of the mental space I was sitting in when it was one of the worst points of my life.
So, why do I yearn for this time again? What does it mean to crave this time in my life again when the going gets rough as a 21-year-old? Well, I guess it just means I’m a “teenage girl in her 20’s.”
This term has been turned out by the cycle of niche, self-identifiers that social media cultivates. Alexis Morillo writes in her piece about the phenomenon of being a teenage girl in her 20s, that for women who identify with this statement, “Realizing their core interests endure as they get older can be extremely validating and can remove shame they may have felt liking inherently “girly” things when they were younger.” Morillo points out how the recent resurgence of popular 2000s cultural signifiers is a big nostalgia point for many women in their 20s who yearn for the ease of their teen years.
As she writes, The Jonas Brothers are touring, Taylor Swift is re-recording her most beloved records and low-rise jeans are the only available jean style nowadays. The material nostalgia is being capitalized on as Morillo points out. Yet, this situation goes deeper than just being sold the nostalgia of the 2000s. The overriding sentiment comes from a yearning to recultivate the ease of being a teen, despite the fact that hell has no wrath like a teenage girl.
A TikTok by creator @abbyjordanb under the hashtag #teenagegirlinher20s, which has 4.3 million views, offers a perspective that speaks to the experience of being a teenage girl and entering young adulthood. She says in the video that she’ll be going about her day when the thought comes to mind that “I’ve already got my license, had a prom, turned 16, 17, 18, and 21,” along with completing high school and starting college. She reflects that after this point, life milestones include graduation, a career, and starting a family. She concludes, “That just doesn’t feel right.”
Another TikTok shares a similar sentiment, but reflects more on the pressure of adult responsibility, despite feeling like they haven’t made it past the age of 15. Someone shared the realization of changing from being a teenage girl to an adult and from watching TikTok in their childhood room mid-pandemic to in their college dorm room in their 20s.
While material and cultural nostalgia is a large component of the trend itself, the more intimate feelings behind the trend speak louder to the state many young adult women are in. It speaks to how many of us between the ages of 18 to 25 were thrust into a brand-new world with little time to process what feelings were already occurring. The CDC published a report in February stating, “Nearly 3 in 5 (57%) U.S. teen girls felt persistently sad or hopeless in 2021—double that of boys, representing a nearly 60% increase and the highest level reported over the past decade” which is an astonishing piece of data. Teenage years aren’t easy by any means, but this represents a large base of teenage girls who are reporting significant levels of sadness. This then raises the question, why would those of us who made it out onto the other side of our teenage years still desire that time in our lives, especially for those of us newly 20-somethings who had several formative years curtailed for various reasons?
Answering that question isn’t necessarily easy, nor is it a uniform explanation for all women in their 20s who agree. Pulling from personal experience and conversations I’ve had with my peers, the desire to turn back is the desire to connect with unfinished business. I never went to prom, COVID-19 robbed me (and many of us) of a final year of high school to close a decade-long chapter, and major life decisions and shifts occurred when my most basic toolkit to cope wasn’t complete. Sure, the material nostalgia means something when it comes to setting the scene, but the underbelly of it is the yearning for a comparatively less confusing time that was underappreciated as teens. Today, I find myself having to offer my younger self a lot more grace and finding solace in a shared experience with other women my age.
From seeing this trend and the discourse around it, I believe to be a teenage girl in her 20s is not something to necessarily be ashamed of, but something to appreciate as part of growing up in a time that is strange and unique for young women. Maybe it is the time to allow ourselves some grace for who we are now, and who we were then (maybe that means deleting your worst Snapchat memories…).