Opinion piece- teenage girl syndrome

At the risk of being a traitor to my sex I am going to lay bare what I see as a definite weakness of teenage girls - known as ‘teenage girl syndrome.’ Symptoms include; outrageously sassy behaviour, an unnecessarily bitchy attitude, manipulative actions, over reacting to the tiniest things, a craving for drama, the need to whine about nothing and a burning hate for dressing practically for any occasion. It’s easy to blame hormones and ugly personalities but I believe that the media is influencing girls to become crazy and the pressure on them to be perfect is what really tips them over the sane edge.

Before I go into more depth on these symptoms I think we should look at some drama queens in action. Your BFF (best friend forever) Stacy has been acting a little off lately but you put it down to how busy she’s been with her new boyfriend, Genesis. All of a sudden you get a text from your other BFF Tiffany...
“Oh-maGAWSH StAcy jUst sAId thAt yOu sAid thAt my nEw hAircUt Is fUgly. OMG why wOuld yOu sAy thAt. I stUck Up fOr yOu whEn StAcy cAllEd yOu fAt thE OthEr dAy. U r such a biAtch.” Later on that day after squabbling with Tiff for hours you go onto trusty Facebook and see Stacy has removed you as a friend and updated her status to “OMG So Glad That Liar Is Out Of My Life. What A Biatch. Eghhr.  Shame She Can’t Read This. LOL. DELETED!!”
So without even a conversation your forever friendship with Stacy and Tiffany is like, so over and for the next five years of your prestigious all girls school you share a dirty look across the classroom but never speak again and never know what exactly happened.
Teenage girls will most definitely overreact especially if you are parenting them. A simple request such as “Geraldine can you please pick your socks up off the kitchen floor?” will send young Geraldine into a complete tizzy. I know this to be true from my days as blossoming teen. At the time it seemed so deserved to tell my parents they were ruining my life and that I wish I was adopted however now I’m quite embarrassed.


Teenage girl syndrome is a more recent problem spreading through teenage girls all over the western world. Could this be caused by an over indulgent society? Is having what they want when they want starting to affect the teenagers of today? Social media could be to blame magazines, ‘reality’ TV, addictive soaps (Home and away and Shortland Street) are all giving teenage girls ridiculous ideas about what it actually means to be 13-17.
Magazines such as Dolly and Girlfriend give girls the idea that you have to look and act a certain way to be accepted. ‘How to fight back against a back stabber’ teaching you how to seek revenge against a girl who has supposedly done you wrong, (I’d like to mention there was no tip that asks the girl what she actually did) and ‘Sh*t girls say’ telling you all about the compliment fishing statements teenage girls are known for, “I’m so fat”, “I won’t eat”, “I need a boob job.” Articles like this give girls the idea that they need to be perfect and that their outer beauty is more important than their inner beauty.
Shortland Street or Home and Away show teenage girls at their worst. In Home and Away you see Ruby cutting an ex friend (Indi’s) brakes on her car just to get her back for upsetting a boy she likes. You see two younger girls (Lottie and April I’d say 15) arguing over a boy, neither one of them asks said boy what he wants. Ula from Shortland Street lies about the father of her teenage pregnancy, deceiving everyone, then tries to steal her ‘best friend’ Jasmine's boyfriend. This kind of stuff is what gives young girls mixed messages about how to act.


These days teenagers are encouraged to grow up and make their own decisions rather than listening to their parents or teachers. As a result you get a lot of terrible decision making and very questionable outfits, hair colours and makeup choices. It would seem that in the mind of a 14-15 year old girl a freezing cold, windy, rainy, Wellington day is the perfect time to test out their new Supre ripped short shorts. Such shorts really do give a new meaning to the word short, I can guarantee they are feeling a breeze on their bum cheeks because I can see them peeking out. Not only do they sport tiny shorts in winter but as soon as the sun comes out so does the Kathmandu puffer jacket. I have never been able to make any sense over the fashion of teenagers and the puffer jacket trend is one I am no stranger to. In fairness to the rest of my sex I did take part in it back in year 10, but looking back I realise how ridiculous it all really was.

Even though I can now look back on all this ridiculousness that I went through during puberty and admit I did some embarrassing things.I’d like to back myself up here and say “oh I can’t help it. It was hormones.” But now I’m 17 and rather over all this bitchiness and drama, I still see it going on around me, and it makes me realise how little hormones have to do with how teenage girls are acting. I thought that once our hormones balance out and we hit 17 we turn normal again, like we got hit with a cricket bat and we snap back to reality. Although it seems it is a never ending battle for girls fighting the syndrome. You can’t hide from hormones they definitely have some responsibility in all of this. Teenagers have struggled with hormone imbalance since we crawled out of caves and we will continue too until we are all robots. Without hormones to blame the media also need to take some blame. Possibly without meaning too media forms are putting pressure on girls to look a certain way, act a certain way and be something they aren’t.

The need to be perfect is overwhelming for girls. They are constantly getting compared to each other and celebrities. So who’s to blame for that though? It isn’t just girls pressuring girls, its boy’s shallow nature and the fact they will only pay attention to ‘hot’ girls, until the age of about 17 when they realise there is more to girls than that. Adults always comparing girls to each other, parents “Why can’t you be well behaved like your sister,” or “That Gina friend of yours is very pretty isn’t she, must be nice for some.”
Magazines and movies showing perfect looking actors unrealistically looking perfect all the time and slightly too thin models displaying those tiny shorts (strictly to be worn in bad weather.)
With this is mind we realise it’s not completely their fault they’ve gone crazy but they do still hold some blame. The pressure to be perfect may be enough to make anyone a bit kooky, but teenage girls really do take it to a whole new level.

It leaves me wondering how this can be solved. Can it at all? Or is the world destined to be taken over by three million whinging 14 year old girls? As a first point I think that magazines should take example that Creme has set by being a retouch free zone, and using normal sized girls to model. Secondly I think that Facebook, Tumblr, twitter, Bebo and any other social media sites should have mediators to help avoid any ridiculous conflict.
Parents should go shopping with their young daughters and make a ban on anything that shows more than ¾ of a leg or chest. Maybe shops should avoid selling such tiny shorts also. And foremost I think these girls need role models that can show them how to be a woman not a pathetic little girl, and when needed give them a firm chat about how to behave.

Without wiping out all teenage girls there is no real cure for the syndrome. Although there is a lot of social pressure to be perfect, mixed messages from the media and hormones to blame there are still a large number of girls that are just horrible people. They are easily diagnosed with teenage girl syndrome. Symptoms include; outrageously sassy behaviour, an unnecessarily bitchy attitude, manipulative actions, over reacting to the tiniest things, a craving for drama, the need to whine about nothing and a burning hate for dressing practically for any occasion.