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"Colony Girl"
A rebellious young Eve stands at the center of a novel about a Midwestern religious cult.
By Sarah Vowell
[09/16/99]

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"Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything"
The more efficient we get the less efficient we feel, and other paradoxes of the sped-up world.
By Edward Neuert
[09/15/99]

Ivory Tower
The call of the past
The strange echo resembling a bird's call in the Mayan Temple of Kukulkan has two disparate academic fields collaborating. Will acoustical archaeology dig up the next batch of history?
By Jennifer Ouellette
[09/15/99]

Jelly maker
Despite what liberal critics say, Michael Jordan is the true heir to the radical legacy of Muhammad Ali.
By Larry S. Platt
[09/14/99]

Dear Mr. Blue
When I'm 63
I love sex and I love men, but the only ones who ever ask me out are married. Where can I go to meet interesting, sexy men?
By Garrison Keillor
[09/14/99]

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Class and race are omnipresent forces in the scenes Vida visits, however, they barely show up in her interpretations. She writes of Cuban-American families who get their daughters professionally photographed for their quinces: "like mannequin dressers in a department store, Monica's mother and sister tend to her ... from the way Monica is dressed and the way her mother and sister are acting, I'm sure she is headed off for the biggest party of her fifteen-year-old life ... [Monica] says, 'I decided not to have a party. Instead, my mom and I agreed that for my fifteens I would have my pictures.' This is it, she is telling me and this, I think, is bizarre." Monica's folks are not actually throwing a quince party because they don't have enough money. But Vida doesn't probe why the strapped family strives so hard to maintain a "good life" façade or consider that a transplanted Cuban bourgeois clan might be so ashamed of their current impecuniosity that they would do anything to keep up appearances.

Likewise, when Vida hangs with gang girls like Alicia, "a striking 17-year-old of Mexican descent," she doesn't give much thought to the clearly essential role of Latino and working-class identity in the fighter demimonde Alicia inhabits. Vida's most salient observation is that Latina gang girls have "highly arched, extensively plucked eyebrows." Monica, Alicia and the rest are, in her eyes, little more than varnished babes.

Vida quotes the girls she studies only briefly, usually when they issue sitcom-ready bon mots. In a chapter on young brides, Vida goes to a Las Vegas chapel and writes about teen brides-to-be. Why are they getting married in Vegas? "Because we saw it on TV and we thought it would be cool," says one. Which show? asks Vida. "'Hard Copy,' the bride answers. Other brides look at the chapel's wall of photos. One cries ecstatically. 'Is that Ricki Lake?' another chimes in. 'Ricki Lake got married here?!'" Vida recounts tales of food-phobic sorority sisters freaking out at the very mention of pasta. "'I especially love anything Italian,' Yvonne continues. 'I love pasta,' I exclaim ... Both girls stare at me -- not just at me, but more specifically at my thighs." Vida depicts these girls as little more than caricatures -- each one a mass of dark lips, shiny hair and toned gams.

There's a psychological block at the center of Vida's book and at the center of Hine's as well: These authors are afraid of adolescence. Hine unwittingly provides this self-diagnosis when he quotes Anna Freud on why adults forget their own puberty -- Freud says it's because teenage experience is so filled with "pain, trauma and turmoil that our conscious minds suppress it."

"Ophelia Speaks," a bestselling collection of writing by teenage girls, doesn't gloss over adolescent angst. Many of the book's agonized authors write freely about their eating disorders (the book's teen editor writes that each meal she eats is a decision not to be anorexic). As one girl puts it: "All of a sudden I'm insecurity-laden, nervous and dedicated to becoming Miss Skin 'n' Bones Teen USA." Others write of depression and addiction and pregnancy: "After the suicide attempt, I grew stronger. The reality of the situation became clear to me. I found a purpose to live for -- my baby." Meanwhile, coddled girls rage at their mothers.

Next page | "Ophelia Speaks": The triumph of pop psych