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This was a book that I did not think would have a significant impact but was good for a couple of laughs and a fair amount of amusement. Little did I know that it was much more then that but an in-depth and personal-able look into growing up and recognizing the misconceptions, stereotypes and pit falls and normals aspects of life that no one really shows on our television screens. One aspect that really took me back was when Mindy Kaling was discussion her teen years growing up in 90s and the lack of an teen characters that were like her . Just the mention of that made me think about how 10 years later when I was starting my teens years little had changed. 
Growing up as a kid I remember watching Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Clueless, Sabina the Teenage Witch , Breaker High and Saved By the Bell among other shows. Theses shows gave the greatest delusion of high school where being pretty, stylist, having a boyfriend , driving and being invited to all the "cool" events were of the highest importance. Luckily I discovered before entering high school that this was probably not going to happen and that I did not want my life to be like those one-dimensional characters with the same theme going on and on.
At the time when I was entering my pre-teen and teen years shows like Gilmore Girls, Gossip Girl, 90210, The OC, One Tree Hill and Degrassi: The Next Generation were on the screen and were major television successes. It seemed at the time, that the teen genre was exploding with tons of television shows and movies yet many of the characters fell short to being recognizable to any aspect of how I was and in many ways still am today. The closest I got to a relateable character at the time was Rory Gilmore from Gilmore Girls who had a quiet personae that she display to the world, parents who were more bad ass then her and a quirky mother. And that were the similarities end because I would never have that mother-daughter relationship because that just was not me, I would not be overly active in after school or community events because I enjoy hanging out at my best friends house after school so much more and I would not have Dean Forester as my boyfriend because no body look like him in high school.
Ironically it was only towards the end of my teen years that I found characters that had some significant qualities to my person yet both shows were short lived and were created way before the burst of teen shows. It was shows like My So-Called Life with the character Angela Chase where the reality of being a teen is that nothing really happens and most the time the most the exciting aspect in your life happen in your head. Also the fact that she fell for Jared Leto character who did not really notice her as anything yet he had fantastic hair would have been something I typically would have done back then.
Another gem was Freaks and Geeks with the character Lindsay Weir who wanted to reinvent herself from being nerdy to cool with the burnouts because she wanted to not go through high school as a process but live it ; yet later she realizes it not all what she thought it would be. Lindsay was the closest to me in retrospective because I had odd sentiments to masculine clothing, I did not fuss about getting dolled up or even brushing my hair most days, she was too good to be bad and always felt guilty and I was a sucker for guys with great hair but a lousy personality . Luckily like Lindsey, I realized I did not want the Daniel Desario(James Franco) of the world but Nick Andoplis (Jason Segel).
These characters are great but they do not sum up all of me . Something was still missing where was the quirkiness, the wit , the sarcasm, and the sheer mountain of laughter ...they just seem so serious which when you really get to know me you will quickly realize I am a major goof-ball. Where are the Tiny Feys, Kristen Wiigs, Maya Rudolphs , Sandra Bullocks and Jennifer Lawrences in youth television.
The problem with television is it can never truly represent one type of person completely. And generally when we try to match characters to our personality it seems to be very restricted by gender. I think as an experiment in the future when examining character on the big screen I am going to avoid looking at just individuals around my age and gender.
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