This American Life - 24: Teenaged Girls

Broadcast on: 24 May 1996

All right, now this moment from the life of a teenage girl in these United States, schools just let out, perfect spring day, Cara and her boyfriend Jeremy come outside and he jumps on her back. "Get off me! Jeremy, come on. You're hurting my back. You love it. I don't." When I recorded this, I'd been doing documentary radio stories on Cara and her friends for two years, so it was natural that at this point Cara would just turn to me and say, "I already kicked his butt. Get away from me. You're too violent. Jeremy's stoned." Well, today on our program, the lives of teenage girls from W.B. Easy Chicago, you're listening to this American life, I'm Ira Glass, back for another week, to kick your butt. Not really. Back for another week, documenting everyday stories of these United States, using all the tools of radio storytelling, documentaries, monologues, overheard conversations, found tapes, anything we can think of. And to consider the question of what it's like to be a teenager in America today, consider this incident, which in Cara and Jeremy and their friends, they just come outside after a rehearsal for a school play that Cara was putting together, based on the writings of Henry Rollins. And if you don't know where Henry Rollins is, is a pop star, he plays a sort of testosterone loaded, post-punk rock. At the time of this recording, he was Cara's favorite writer. So, Cara, your favorite piece in the Rollins show? Ladies, you want a quality? She pulls out the papers that comprise the show's script and she reads to me. And I should say here that Rollins and our 18-year-old teenager get rather graphic here in a way that might not be suitable for younger listeners. Rollins in this poem says that guys are basically scum, basically. Just scum, he's not even, his vision is very unambiguous. They're scum. And he gives heartfelt advice to all women who he addresses as ladies. If you want a quality to men, it's not going to come to you in the mail or in your sleep. You're gonna have to take it, grab hold of it, wrench it out of their hairy-fisted grasp. What I'm getting to is this. Go to the gunsmiths. Get a .357 Magnum with a long barrel. Load it. Put it in your bag. Go on with your life. Okay, it's just another day. You're walking down the street, you pass this gas station. Some gas station attendant is standing there glaring at you, checking you out, smiling at you. This ugly, greasy, stupid guy comes over to you and blocks your way to try to walk down

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