#GirlsShitToo

Issuing a Retraction

The following Friday, Ms. Brooks asked me to stay after class.

The first thing she asked was, "How is your project going?"

"I don't know. I didn't want to do the paper because I was all worried about having to do revision, and I hate revision. But now I wish I could revise. You can't revise things that you've already published, though. Maybe doing publicized vlogs wasn't such a good idea."

"Well, you can't necessarily revise those things in the literal sense of the word, but you can retract them: tell your viewers that you've changed your stance."

"Well, even though I don't think nail polish sucks anymore, there were a lot of people who liked me saying that. Will they backlash if I take it back?"

"You can't know what your viewers will do. But doing the thing people want you to do isn't always what's right. This is your project, Dallas, and I trust that you'll do what you think is best."

I nodded, already planning to retract my statement and apologize to the Internet for my messy intolerance-spewing. I was sure it would leave a stain, but at least I could clean up the chunks.

Ms. Brooks said, "I wanted to talk to you about something else, too: making your project more interactive. That's something great about these social media projects: you can get your audience involved. I liked how Adree got people involved by having them post pictures of their nails last week. How might you make your project more interactive?"

"Aren't hashtags pretty interactive?"

"They're certainly a start..." she said, but by the way she said it, I knew they weren't enough.

I let out a big sigh.

"Something wrong?"

"I just feel like Adree is making this harder for me."

Ms. Brooks took a breath, then started talking. "I think that oftentimes, when someone perceives someone else as being against them, they view themselves as being opposite, and this affects their thinking. For example, because you view Adree as being your opposite, you think all of your thoughts should directly counter hers. If she wants to embrace femininity, you want to condemn it. If she wants to embrace painted nails, you want to condemn them."

"But femininity deserves to be criticized."

"I agree with you, Dallas—there are certainly aspects of what we consider to be 'femininity' that deserve criticism, and I think you should feel free to share your own criticisms with the world. I'm not saying that you shouldn't. I'm just saying...be careful that you don't lose sight of your goal. Don't let your project about celebrating women's adoption of 'masculinity' turn into a complete condemnation of femininity. That's my suggestion for you."

"Well, thank you. I'll try to keep it in mind," I said, and then I turned and left the classroom feeling angry, because... how was posting pictures of your nails "interactive"? Adree really was making things harder for me...but what was going to be really hard was swallowing my pride and retracting my ideas. I had to do all of this and think of a new idea...

That night, I invited Dylan over to paint my nails, which was part of my plan for retracting my statement. He brought over a selection of dark colors, including seven different hues of black: Matte Black, Decay, Shadow, Tar, Dark Queen, Liquid Night, and Galaxy (that one had sparkles in it). "Nail polish is more metal than I thought," I said. "Decay? Sick!" So I chose that color for my base, and then asked him to paint skulls like his own in Metallic, a cool silver hue. He spent an hour meticulously perfecting the skulls, and we got to talk about school and peers and celebrity crushes and fantasies. I told him about my prom fantasy version of Valerie, who had silver hair and chin and eyebrow piercings and a neck tattoo and a dress as metallic as my skulls, and he told me about his fantasy version of this guy Dakota from our school (who we were both pretty sure was bi) who dressed for prom wearing a completely black suit with a rose gold tie and jewelry.

When my nails were done, I sort of liked them. I didn't like how they made my nails feel as if they weighed more, although it couldn't have been more than a gram. But I didn't offer Dylan any complaints, just smiles and cheek kisses and thanks. I even told him, "These nails totally slay!" and gave him my horns up, holding my pinky and pointer finger up while I held my other fingers down with my thumb.

After he left, I took a picture of my nails, posted it to Instagram, and shared it on multiple social media platforms, including Twitter, with an inclusion of my statement of retraction:

Dallas Delaney @DallasDelaney

Retracting everything I said about nail polish sucking. Lots of things about gender roles suck, but nail polish does not suck. Sry. #DallasDelaneySucked

Dallas Delaney @DallasDelaney

Look at my awesome nails \m/ #NailPolishSlays

After that, I felt better, especially when I started receiving some good responses from some followers acknowledging that I'd done the right thing. Those responses were better than any cash back I would've received after a struggle with Buyer's Remorse. I was getting back more than I'd spent; I was getting validation that I'd grown.

But I still didn't have any idea what to do for my next vlog in two nights. I wanted to criticize gender roles, but in a good, critical way. I was trying to think about the best way to do that, one that could be both informative and interactive, when my mom brought me this drawing of mine she had just found. "Isn't it cute?" she said. "Well...at least it was before your brother ruined it."

I looked at it: it was a picture I had drawn of me and Josh. His face was really discombobulated (I had done that on purpose; he had big teeth and mismatched eyes), and I was very symmetrical. Also, he had green drool coming out of his mouth. But the best part about the picture was that I had written "Girls Rule, Boys Drool" above us, and Josh had gotten angry and colored drool coming out of my mouth, too, and crossed out the words, replacing them with: EVERYONE DROOLS.

His ruination of my lovely art had resulted in me tattling on him, but now I couldn't have been more pleased with him for defiling my artwork with some sense. Because yes: everyone drools! And his note reminded me of how little boys and little girls were taught we were so different from such a young age, when we were fed stupid poetry about girls ruling with their sugar and spice and boys drooling with their frogs and snails. We all drooled, girls should've been able to rule much more than they did, girls shouldn't always have to be nice, and frogs and snails were awesome.

That was when I knew what I was going to do for vlog #3, so when Sunday rolled around, I had gotten it all done before 9:00 pm. And I had spent a good amount of time critically examining my thoughts before I clicked "publish."

Author's note:  Okay, readers. You'll notice that this story is starting to get a bit vlog-heavy. There are certainly upcoming periods where there is a lot of narration in between vlogs, but let me know: is this too many vlogs for your taste? Some of my past readers have not been fond of the vlogs, but I had always intended for this story to be very epistolary-esque in nature. I wanted to capture how central technology- and social-media-aided communication is to teens' lives and how it influences so many aspects of their face-to-face communication. I'd appreciate your honest thoughts! XOXO -Ronni