Hi! We’re Dana and Melany and we’ve known each other for a month. Which makes us pretty qualified to talk about friendships with girls. I think that we can all agree that being friends with a girl is one of the hardest things to do. The passive aggressiveness, the pettiness, the fights, the drama, the mess, etc. but we also are the best kinds of friends there are. We are loyal (for the most part), we care a little too much, and we will always be there to listen. Trying to make friends is a super difficult task, but we’re here to help. In this issue, we will be discussing how to make friends and how to maintain a healthy friendship.
Five ways to make friends with teenage girls
1. Approach with confidence: Yes. we know. Most girls this age are not confident. But if you just approach someone and seem like you know what you’re talking about, I guarantee you that the person you’re trying to make friends with will react positively. 2. Be your weird Okay, this one seems kind of weird and not significant, but it is. Let me explain. Friends are your friends for many reasons, but a lot of the time they are there to make you happy on not-so-happy days. Friends don’t have to but should have the same sense of humor as you, so when you do make a super-weird joke, it will make perfect sense to them. For example, Dana and I weren’t supposed to be friends, it just happened. We ended up in every class together and I thought she was weird, but it turned out she was also funny, so here we are now writing about how to make friends. Ironic, right? In conclusion, be weird. Don’t try to hide your sense of humor because if you and your friend have the same sense of humor, the best thing ever comes out of it--inside jokes. And once you have multiple inside jokes with someone, you’re gonna be close with them. 3. Don’t be disrespectful One thing we girls hate most is when someone is giving off negative energy. It won’t help you if you come off like you don’t care. Everyone wants to be surrounded by positive people and to feel loved. If you approach someone with an attitude and try to bring them down, 9 out of 10 times they won’t want to be your friend. Always be supportive of your friends and don’t try to sabotage a friend for your own gain. At points in your life, your friends will be all you have and treating them poorly will make them leave you sooner than you expect. 4. DON’T JUDGE A BOOK BY ITS COVER! Teenagers in general are the most self conscious people ever to walk the face of the earth. Sometimes, people don’t look like who they are on the inside. So to judge someone because of how they look or talk will not only bring down the person's self esteem, but you will never know if they could be an amazing friend that you just missed out on. One way to solve this problem is by approaching someone that doesn’t typically look like a friend you would normally have and try to make friends with them. You never know what can happen. After a while of being their friend, their outside won’t matter and you will forget about it. You will end up focusing on their personality. It also shouldn’t matter what other people say about the person. You should make a decision by yourself instead of having rumors determine whether a person is good or bad for you. 5. Be a good influence and make friends with good people Whether you want to admit it or not, friends heavily influence you every day, whether it’s good or bad. You always want to have friends that influence you for the better. Friends shouldn’t make you do stuff you don’t want to do. They shouldn’t support things that will put you or someone else in harm's way. Friends should help you make good decisions and you should lead friends down a good path too. At the end of the day your life is your life and if your friends are making your life worse then you should let them go. |
How women dress is none of your business
Imagine this. You go to the mall and you find a really nice skirt. You decide to wear it to school the next day. It doesn’t go against any dress code rule, but girls are telling you that you look like you don’t respect yourself and boys keep on catcalling you. Well, welcome to every girl's life. It’s not easy figuring out what to wear as a girl because there are things you also have to think about. Like, will your parents approve? Are you showing too much skin? Does it look too tight? Is it too short? Questions like these make it hard to feel comfortable finding an outfit for school or for any event. For example, I have plenty of ripped jeans in my closet, but I always wear leggings under them. My friends always ask me why or they say I’m too careful about the dress code. It’s because when I’m at school or even out in public, how "revealing" my jeans are is often the first thing someone notices. They always make weird jokes or just ask me why I chose these. “They looked like my dog got to them,” someone once said to me. Well, it’s my choice to wear them, but no one seems to like the fact that they can see my legs. When boys wear ripped jeans, it’s a whole other story, but that’s just living life as a girl. There’s not much to do to fix this problem, other than “covering up,” of course. But what you wear kind of doesn’t matter as long as you feel comfortable. Catcalling is also a big issue regarding what us young womxn wear. Womxn shouldn’t be scared to wear their favorite piece of clothing because of men being disrespectful. I have had an experience with catcalling before, which is crazy because I’m only 14. This shows that men are disrespectful to womxn of all ages. I was walking downtown one day last summer. I was waiting for the stop sign to turn green so I could walk across the street. A guy passed by me on the sidewalk and whistled. I felt so uncomfortable. I wanted to get a big coat and cover myself with it even though it was 80 degrees in the middle of the day. No girl should EVER have to determine what they want to wear because they are scared of what boys want to say aloud. Men need to learn that there is a big difference between a compliment and taking it too far. One of the most disappointing things to see is when a girl is bad mouthing another girl about what she’s wearing. As womxn, we should be lifting each other up and letting each other wear what we want to. Instead of saying to your friend that you hated that dress the girl in your math class was wearing, try to find something good about it. If you can’t, don’t say anything. Society already makes it hard enough for girls to feel confident and secure; we don't need other girls making it worse. |
Hey! We’re trying something new.
The BBC news recently published an article about whether we should spell woman "womxn" so there isn't the word "man" in it. We are going to try this for the following article. Let us know how you feel! Article link: https://www.bbc.com/news/uh-45810709 ------------------------- This week's influential womxn is: Amelia Earhart Amelia Earhart was a pilot from the United States. Born on July 24th, 1897, she usually didn’t stick to gender norms. She did things most girls her age at that time didn’t normally do, like playing basketball and taking an auto repair class in college. In World War I, she was a nurse in Toronto, Canada. During her time as a nurse, she got to look at the Royal Flying Corps train at an airfield next to where she worked in Toronto. In January of 1921, she took flying lessons. She ended up purchasing a plane. She named it “the Canary.” In December of 1921, she passed her pilot test and went on her first exhibition 2 days later. She set many records while being able to fly. She was the first womxn to fly over 14,000 feet, In 1932, Earhart became the first womxn to fly across the Atlantic, and the first womxn to fly across the United States. Earhart later became the president of an organization made up of female aviators called the 99’s. On June 1st, 1937, Earhart took off from Oakland, California to try to be the first pilot to fly across the world. During the voyage, Earhart and her co-pilot Noonan lost radio contact with the U.S Coast Guard. That was the last time anyone has heard from Amelia or Noonan. After a 2-week search authorized by president at the time Franklin D. Roosevelt, they were declared dead. There are many theories trying to explain where they went but there isn’t a valid answer yet. Amelia was an inspiration for many womxn and set a path for womxn pilots for years to come. Oprah Winfrey Oprah Winfrey is a very successful womxn who influenced many people. Ms. Winfrey is an American actress, television producer, and philanthropist. You know her from her talk show, “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” which aired from 1986-2011 in Chicago. She was also the richest African American womxn of the 20th century, and the world's only African American billionaire for 3 years running. She raised more than 50 million dollars for charities, education for girls in South Africa, and for the victims of Hurricane Katrina.Oprah Winfrey was a very significant womxn in womxn’s history, who young womxn look up to as a role model. |