Media Matters

To start with the forming of my ideas of teenagers, I got the majority
of my information from the Disney Channel, Hannah Montana,
High School Musical (and HSM2) , Stuck in the Suburbs, and The Suite Life of Zack and Cody
were my overall favorites. They were my first real exposure to teens and high school.  I think the 
biggest impact of all of these wasthe character of Maddie Fitzpatrick from the Suite Life. 
She was a smart and studious, hard working '"good girl" and 
When I was eight or nine I wanted to be just like her and a lot of my personality was really 
framed by her as a character. I related to her as a kid,being from a big family with not a lot of money,
 and I really valued a lot of the same things, and these carried over into the first half 
of my teenage years and really formed how I approached being 
a teen. 

From January of my junior year to October of my senior year of high school,
I had read Looking for Alaska by John Green somewhere around 11 to
13 times. I carried my copy of this book with me everywhere I went, and was reading it
 constantly. During my junior year, I went through a huge transition as a person, and as I did,
I kept this book by my side, quotes from it were everywhere, in my journal, written in sharpie on
my skin, in papers I wrote for school. I used it as a guide as I went about my last two years
of high school, and it really shaped how I went about social situations and academics.

Tumblr. was the main social media I used throughout high school. It was a social
media platform that was completely separate from any adults that I knew, as well
as separate from any people from my school, it was an exposure to teen life beyond just
my town. While a lot of my blogging was puns and pictures of Taylor Swift, I interacted
with people and posts, in a space where a lot of teens felt that they could just be teens.
It was exposure to political discussions and varying views than those I got from my home,
and everyone was more willing to discuss their opinions and experiences, as well as just
popular teen culture of shows, music, movies, etc.

I know there's only supposed to be three of these but I needed four because
I realized I forgot about Taylor Swift. She became my absolute fave when I was in 7th grade
and with that, I began to braid my hair every night so that the next day it would be curly.
I went through a period where I tried writing my feelings into songs ("Argyle Sweater" really
 could have been a hit) and then there was the whole cowboy boots every day for a year thing.
But beyond that, she was shown as  the epitome of being a teen icon, and while she was in
the beginning of her twenties when I was a teen, her music and music videos were all aimed towards
teens. She specifically exemplified and shaped my understanding of young relationships, as well as
dealing with other life and high school teen things. Often, comments like "it's like she read my
diary and wrote a song about it" were made by both myself and other teen girls, and that really made
her music eem so realistic and representative of teens.