While being a rebellious teenage girl is an inherently romantic experience—one that’s been fetishized by the stories I grew up on, both in the tabloids I devoured and in the pages of the novels that I sought refuge in—the romance doesn’t last long. There’s a very short window between the time in which society places these girls and their exploits on a pedestal and when they decide their escapades have gone too far, are too much. Turning on them for their refusal to conform to the standards of upper-middle-class white morality. Maligning them, sidelining them, and shaming them. Labeling them as
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