Borderline Girlhoods: Mental Illness, Adolescence and Feminity in Girl, Interrupted

Note: This is a paper I found online and I am doing a summary of the main points.

The main points of the paper include:

Susanna Kaysan's interview with a psychiatrist ran only 20 minutes.

She spent nearly two years in the psychiatric institute.

The book 'straddles the border' between young adult and adult literature.

Cultural curriculum links adolescent girlhood to vulnerability.

In the 1990's social scientists linked feminine adolescence to a period of crisis when girl's academic achievement and self-esteem start to plummet.

The hospital allowed her to hover between girlhood and adolescence.

She takes on the image of the wounded adolescent girl.

A girl's sexual practices at times are linked to her mental health.

Her behavior is defined as promiscuous.

There are many differences between the film and the actual book.

The film is aimed at a young adult audience, apparently.

Popular cultural forms enter a girl's life through the texts and the way the texts enter a girl's life.

The cultural pedagogy teachers girls to turn their anger inwards and to view self-destruction as a viable option.

They live under the potential threat of gender-based violence.

They are lead to believe (at times) that their reaction to oppression is pathological and that their bodies 'incite gender-based violence.' (In other words it's like saying that it's a girl's fault if she is pretty and a guy wants her because of that.)

(It's the concept of 'let's blame the victim' instead of dealing with acutal physical and mental assaults against a girl or a woman.)

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