A Tangle of Discourses: Girls Negotiating Adolescence by REBECCA C. RABY

Raby's article is a classic example of dense feminist theory. Her work is fascinating but often hard to fully understand and decipher.
Raby's research surrounded a very interesting topic that I have wanted to dive deeper into recently: the generation gap. Her study is based around interviews with 30 Toronto based teens (13-19) and their relationships with their grandmothers. Teens of the millennium are obviously quite different from people that were teenagers 50 years ago, or are they? The grandmother's religions, backgrounds, and occupations are fascinating. She chose a varied group which makes her findings all the more pertinent to the discussion of discourse.
I understand that Raby breaks down the analysis of adolescence into five parts; the storm, becoming, at-risk, social problem, and pleasurable consumption.

The Storm: The turbulent, "risk-taking" and "experimental" angst of teens.

Becoming: "Self-discovery" and finding ones identity.

At-risk: The inevitable factors that teens are susepable to in teen years do to experimentation "drugs and alcohol, depression, eating disorders, sexual diseases".

Social Problem: Teens and teen issues are often seen as a problem for guardians and society as a whole.

Pleasurable Consumption: Teens are clearly high consumers and much of commericials and product development is targeted to teens who eat it up.

I would like to further research the idea that teens are innately self-centered. This seems to be an idea that popped up alot in this text.
This video by BBC entitled "The Grumpy Guide to Teenagers" is ridiculous. There is quote after quote from adults speaking about teenagers as if they are not human. One man, Stewart Maconie states, "the teenage boy is barely human". I think this video is amusing but also very disconcerting. Its a bit frightening that there is such a disconnect between adults and teens. The teens years form much of what a person becomes and the people in this documentary seem to disassociate from childhood entirely. Kids need to be better understood not just pushed aside as having, for example and 'attitude problem. Maybe as a society we should ask questions like, "Why is that 16 boy so angry at the world?" or "Why does that 15 girls throw up after every meal?" rather than pawn those sorts of issues off as typical teen problems.