At 15, I was already embarrassed by my 13 year old self; so immature, so giddy.

I listened for the wrong sort of music and wore unflattering clothes. If you show me a picture of her, my old self, I scoff in utter shock that I was ever that girl. This pattern continues for each year of my pre-adult life, and I, along with most women, will consequently shake my head at any mention of my past self. I barely know her, I say, and attempt to change the conversation and redeem myself. Women are born with shame built in them.

We are naturally comfortable with wanting to be smaller, to be quieter, because these are the ways that our culture has taught us to exist. This manifests itself in various habits, like in the way it is second nature to shrug off interest, for women to blush when attention is put on them, and to be humble when their talents are recognized. Whether it is drawn to biology or history or society, the most feminine thing one can do is be ashamed—the perfect woman is uncomfortable in her own skin.  We have conversations about how dumb we were at 15, how foolish we were for our clothes and interests. It is natural for everyone, all genders alike, to be embarrassed at your younger self. To cringe at highschool photos and interests, to question our fashion choices and perhaps to lie about our favorite band back then. However, for women in particular, as everything that is so humane to being a girl is frowned upon, this embarrassment runs so much deeper. Our teen mistakes are less innocently cringey and are viewed as more serious flaws, as we ponder why we ever did such a thing or worse such a heinous outfit.

Sadly, feeling shame rather than nostalgia for our teen selves means that we look back on these years through a lens of hatred. But being a teen girl is such a specific experience, one unlike anything else. It is indescribable, those few years in which every emotion feels so big and every new experience, life-changing. Despite the beauty behind this mess, the teen girl is the most ridiculed caricature in society. The screaming, the crying, the makeup and drama. We belittle her, so much so that by the time she is old enough to look back in fondness, she cowers in embarrassment over what is nothing more than just innocence. Or, on the other hand, we teach her counterparts to hate her to the point that they do everything to not be her. The notion of being “Not like other girls” has always flooded the internet-sphere as a joke, a nod towards the girls who try so hard to be different they are just as embarrassing as the stereotype they are trying to stray from. And regardless of what side of this, we are taught that both are to be ashamed of. Whether you were a self-proclaimed “boys-girl” or a Lululemon wearing, boy-crazy, Taylor Swift aficionado, the internet and overall world sees you as silly and tries to compress you down into a stereotype.

The ideal woman should, according to the way society reacts to her every action, be ever changing and responsive to her criticism. If your interest becomes embarrassing, you should change it and refute the fact that you ever had such a hobby. If a trend becomes “cheugy,” you should throw out any evidence you partook in it and begin practicing your response when people bring it up—the head shake, the face in palm, the laugh at how you cannot believe you ever did that. But why are we so ashamed to be a girl? To laugh in malls and to obsess over our hair and to shriek at our favorite band. To feel so deeply and to love so hard.

There are many complex ways one can tackle misogyny and celebrate womanhood, and more and more I am trying to combat that internalized gaze, the voice that echoes the sexist rhetoric that tries so hard to make us small. The one that wants to make me cower away at the memory of the girl I was. At its core this phenomenon connects to the way in which women are criticized for everything and anything. A pack of pre-teens screaming at a boy band is hysteria but a group of men shouting at other men to throw a ball around is good ol’ fashioned sportsmanship. We are taught that the behavior of a teen girl is nonsensical, and so we respond with hatred for the teen girls we all once were. 

As I enter a new decade of my life, I have a hard time deciphering whether my embarrassment over my teen self is genuine or not. While I would never repeat certain outfits I made or act in a way I once did, those trends and phases of my life were fundamental to my overall growth. Every phase we go through as young girls is a puzzle piece to the picture of womanhood, from the mistakes we make to the fashion choices we stand by. We must remember that there is nothing more pure than my past selves. How little we knew about the real world but how strongly we felt about everything; these phases are integral to who we are now. I do not want to hate my younger self because each silly thing I did was so genuine to her existence, despite the fact that the world saw it as something frivolous.

 I cheer the cherry flavored lip chap of age 12, the unflattering selfies of my freshman year of high school, my shriek when I see a girl I know at a party. I would never personally wear an American Eagle sweatshirt again, nor would I sit down and binge on a silly tv show, but I am filled with adoration for the girl who would. While it is inherently human to look back at our past selves in disdain, I am in a new state of being proud of my younger self, naïveté and bad makeup and all. 

I want to celebrate all the girls I have been and the women I will become.