{"id":75,"date":"2026-05-20T10:06:05","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T10:06:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=75"},"modified":"2026-05-20T10:06:05","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T10:06:05","slug":"the-life-and-times-of-an-american-tween","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=75","title":{"rendered":"The Life and Times of an American Tween"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n

Every Wednesday, at exactly 2:15 P.M.<\/em>, the electronic bell at San Francisco\u2019s A.\u00a0P. Giannini Middle School sounds with a dull, droning buzz, and hundreds of students stream from the building. They wear big pants and bucket hats, cropped tanks and cargo jeans, Athleta sets and Air Force 1s. They carry ergonomically unsound backpacks dripping with bag charms and key chains: athletic affiliations, memorabilia, miniature stuffies. They pull thick socks up over their leggings; fix hydrocolloid stickers, star-shaped and cutesy, atop angry, interloping zits. Their lip tint is red and thickly applied. Their water bottles are status symbols. Their press-ons are shellacked and combat-ready. There are boys, too, small and gangly. They move in packs, magnifying their bulk like synchronized minnows. They look dressed by their mothers. On early-dismissal days, the afternoon yawns with possibility. The students dash to the bus or wander the nearby commercial drag, which has little going for it save the hardware store, where there is candy. They exchange their allowance for matcha ice cream at Polly Ann; gobble Domino\u2019s to no intestinal detriment. They buy boba and punt each other with tapioca bullets. They flock to Starbucks for magenta Cannon Ball Drinks, creamy Pink Drinks, sludgy Dubai Chocolate Mochas. They chug the unchuggable. Twelve blocks to the west, the Pacific Ocean glitters and threatens, waves dragging out in the wind.<\/p>\n

Read more Why Spain Is Standing Up to Donald Trump<\/a><\/p>\n

On a Wednesday afternoon, I was joined outside A.P.G. by Mira, a sixth grader with an open, angelic face and an ebullient presence. It is often chilly and overcast in the Outer Sunset, but this was a warm and clear day, and Mira, who is interested in matters of fashion, wore low-slung cargo sweatpants and a white tube top. Her hair, which is long, dark, and curly, had recently been treated to a bathroom Manic Panic job, and the front strands were dyed a light peach. She smoothed a strand as one might the tail of a cat. Mira is good company: frank, funny, and self-deprecating in a way that suggests confidence rather than its lack. At four feet eight, she is small for her age, but manages to occupy space laterally. She moves with a noodle elasticity, and is prone to breaking into dance moves while going about her business: a full-body wave from wrist to wrist, an entire sequence from a Katseye music video. The first time we met, we were mid-conversation when she inexplicably dropped into a side split, grabbed her ankles, and rolled backward, placing her toes on the floor behind her head. \u201cAt the beginning of the year, I couldn\u2019t do an aerial\u201d\u2014a hands-free cartwheel\u2014\u201cand I can kind of do one now,\u201d she told me, harrowingly assuming the starting position.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

Mira is twelve years old and lives in the Avenues, San Francisco\u2019s foggy western neighborhoods, with her mother, Michalle, who is a nurse practitioner, her father, Patrick, who is a full-time parent, and her sibling, Dylan, who is nine. (Last year, Dylan requested to use they\/them pronouns, which the family mostly remembers to honor.) Like most kids her age, Mira exists in the murky, thrilling bardo between childhood and maturity. She is a gracious host\u2014quick to offer guests a Spindrift\u2014who totes a lunchbox adorned with a sticker of a unicorn. She is learning to cook, mostly quesadillas, but if she could she would live on Cheetos, boba, Tr\u00fc Fr\u00fcs, and Coke. She razzes her parents in a way that makes them laugh, but no longer tells them everything. Mira\u2019s first middle-school dance was coming up, and there was discussion among her friends about dresses and hair styles. I was excited to see which of her dance moves would make an appearance.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

For years, Mira has been agitating for more independence. Last August, she began commuting to and from school alone, hurtling around the edge of the continent on the public bus. Since fifth grade, she has worn a silver Apple Watch, a glorified tracking device, which she pushes to the outer limits of usability. She is a member of several large group chats, including one called \u201c4th Period Baddies,\u201d and regularly consults Siri, summoning facts and images from the ether. (\u201cPhotos of hazel eyes.\u201d \u201cWhat does A.S.M.R. stand for?\u201d) Still, the watch is no phone. A phone would be much cooler; would be, perhaps, the coolest thing. An Apple Watch was a bridge from childhood to adulthood. A phone would be a portal.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n
\n
\n

That Wednesday, Mira went to Polly Ann with her friends Kaitlyn and Sloane. At the counter, the girls realized no one had brought money. They began plumbing their wallets\u2014pink, pleather, flat\u2014for stray coins. Sloane called her mother on her Apple Watch and, in a mix of English and Mandarin, requested a transfusion of Apple Cash. She hung up just as Mira and Kaitlyn discovered, miraculously, that if they pooled their assets they could afford to split something. \u201cNever mind we found money exclamation point,\u201d Sloane said into her watch.<\/p>\n

\u201cSloane, no!\u201d Mira said. \u201cWe were going to get money!\u201d Giggling, the girls ordered a pint of watermelon ice cream, requested three spoons, and dropped their last dime into the tip jar. They headed to a playground, a regular hangout spot for their peers, and settled onto a boulder. Smaller children from a nearby elementary school were availing themselves of climbers, slides, and beams. But by the boulder the real action was social and discursive. Two sixth-grade boys appeared, one tall and floppy-haired, the other wiry and blond. \u201cMira, I have a question for you,\u201d the floppy-haired boy said. \u201cAre you straight?\u201d Mira looked at him, her face grave and blank. \u201cNo, no, not for me, for one of my friends,\u201d he said, putting his hands out in front of his body, as if to distance himself from any association with crushing. Mira wanted to know who had dispatched him, but the boy wandered off to a playground structure, singing Jimmy Eat World to himself.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

Across the way, at a picnic table, two slightly older students, a boy and a girl, were entwined, snakelike, engaging in light frottage: not kissing, but hugging and caressing, petting each other\u2019s cheeks, collapsing into each other\u2019s laps. To the sixth graders, this behavior was repulsive and compelling. I asked Sloane what was up with them. \u201cGirl, I know<\/em>,\u201d she said. \u201cThey told Mira they were cousins.\u201d Some of the sixth graders began heckling. \u201cI don\u2019t think you should be doing that if you\u2019re cousins!\u201d Floppy Hair shouted. He turned to his friends. \u201cI\u2019ll give anyone twenty dollars to go over there and ask if they can join,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll do it!\u201d a girl said.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou two should touch asses!\u201d Floppy Hair yelled. He turned to the blond boy. \u201cWe should start making out. And then, when they look, say, \u2018Yeah, how do you like me now?\u2019\u00a0\u201d He sat down near the older students. The blond boy followed, plopped down into Floppy Hair\u2019s lap, then popped back up and pogoed away.<\/p>\n

The wind was picking up, and the playground was starting to empty. On the edges of the park, middle schoolers could be seen raising their wrists to their mouths, requesting more time. Mira and two friends moved to a low wall and huddled around their own smartwatches, whispering and laughing. \u201cWe\u2019re catfishing someone,\u201d Mira explained. The girls had called a male classmate on Kaitlyn\u2019s watch, but another girl had done all the talking. \u201cWe\u2019re, like, \u2018We know who you are,\u2019 in an evil way,\u201d Mira went on. \u201cAnd it\u2019s funny because he doesn\u2019t know who we are.\u201d I laughed: this sounded more like old-fashioned prank-calling than catfishing. But Mira gave a sombre little nod. \u201cThis is what we do with our time,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The literature on adolescence marks middle school as a turning point, a time when kids begin to pull away from their parents, discard childish pursuits, and pursue, full thrust, the exhausting project of individuation. It is a period of intense, hormonally driven emotional flux. Self-consciousness sets in. The adult world is studied and emulated in a manner that suggests praxis but no theory. There is an aspect of camp to it all: a kind of LARP<\/em> or drag, as young people transition from play-acting adulthood to inhabiting it. Actual adults are ancillary. Tweens and teens look to each other for clarity and guidance on how to behave and how to feel, all the while gambling with each other\u2019s social confidence and self-esteem. It is natural, and it is psychotic.<\/p>\n

The psychoanalyst Erik Erikson described the period between twelve and eighteen as one of essential identity formation: a time of trying on personas and roles. Writing in the mid-twentieth century, Erikson was sensitive to the ways that society could shape personality, but no one could have anticipated the explosion of potential identities, interests, aesthetics, subcultures, and life styles that children would be exposed to by globalization and, later, the internet: now there are clean girls, tomato girls, vanilla girls, office sirens, femboys, e-boys, looksmaxxers; one can be avant basic, old money, new money, quiet luxury, cottagecore, goblincore, fairycore. Adolescent anxiety and depression have been on the rise for years, and there is abundant public debate about why: economic inequality, strained family ties, sleep deprivation, smartphones. Childhood has never been easy, but these days the on-ramp to adulthood seems somehow shorter and more perilous.<\/p>\n

Mira\u2019s parents, Michalle and Patrick, met as college students and have been together for almost twenty years. \u201cMy mom grew up pretty poor,\u201d Mira told me one day, unprompted. And then, with learned dismissiveness: \u201cMy dad grew up as a rich white boy.\u201d Michalle is petite, good-natured, and very pretty, with dark eyes and a radiant smile. She was raised in Marin County, the daughter of Salvadoran immigrants. Patrick was raised between the Pacific Northwest and the suburbs of Silicon Valley, and was on the University of Chicago debate team. He is sincere, analytical, and ripped\u2014the kind of dad whose biceps come sheathed in a T-shirt reading \u201cFind Yourself,\u201d over a picture of Waldo meditating. (Mira picked it out.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

Mira was an amiable baby, a daredevil toddler, and, once Dylan arrived, a menace. When asked if she had memories of the transition from being an only child to having a sibling, she said, dryly, \u201cI remember peace, and then awful screaming.\u201d As a little kid, Mira was \u201cspunky\u201d (Michalle), \u201cassertive, directorial\u201d (Patrick), and \u201cblunt, stubborn, annoying\u201d (Mira). But her parents were wary of overdoing it on discipline, especially with a girl. \u201cIt\u2019s easier to work with a fire than try to build one up later,\u201d Patrick said.<\/p>\n

During COVID<\/em>, Mira\u2019s elementary school moved to remote learning, but Michalle, an essential worker, was able to enroll her children in a series of camps. Mira received minimal educational instruction\u2014\u201cYou can\u2019t learn handwriting through a screen,\u201d she said, witheringly\u2014but thrived socially. She has earned straight A\u2019s in middle school, including in P.E., which for a time she was \u201cessentially failing.\u201d (She had a B.) Her rowdiest class is English language arts, which operates on \u201cmutual respect,\u201d and where students regularly talk over the teacher, walk around, and flick paper darts into the ceiling tiles. Her favorite class is dance. \u201cThat one is amazing, because it\u2019s all girls,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

A few years ago, Mira\u2019s family moved into a new apartment, in part to give her and Dylan separate bedrooms. The place, a rental, is furnished without pretension\u2014cushy sectional, vintage Tabasco poster, board games. A whiteboard leans against the wall of the dining area, with a running list of movies for the family\u2019s weekly movie night. \u201cMy dad does squat things down here,\u201d Mira told me, prancing through the hall. \u201cBefore, he was just an average person. He would just be regular. And then he was, like, I\u2019m going to be healthy, because this is not a good life style if I want to keep it for when I\u2019m a hundred years old. So he stopped drinking, and drinking caffeine. Now he counts all his calories, every night\u2014it\u2019s kind of annoying.\u201d For most of Mira\u2019s life, Patrick worked in product management at a large tech company. In 2024, after a revealing sabbatical, he quit. \u201cHe\u2019s more of a chauffeur now,\u201d Mira told me. \u201cHe\u2019s been jobless for two years.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

\u201cJob-free<\/em>,\u201d Patrick, who was within earshot, corrected.<\/p>\n

\u201cJobless<\/em>,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

One afternoon, I found the kids hanging out in the dining area, banging around near a sideboard that held decorative ceramics. Dylan, who is dimpled and impish, with long eyelashes and a curtain of dark bangs, picked up a small container and examined it. Patrick, laughing, warned that the vessel held cremains. \u201cThis is Grandad,\u201d he said. When Patrick\u2019s father died, two years ago, Patrick and his siblings divided his ashes among themselves, and a portion rested in a columbarium; the urn was small.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you think this is just, like, an eyeball?\u201d Mira asked, holding up her paternal grandfather. \u201cIf he was a ghost, it would just be, like, his arm, floating?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s probably a small amount of lots of parts of him,\u201d Patrick said.<\/p>\n

\u201cLike little bits of flesh,\u201d Dylan said, chuckling.<\/p>\n

Patrick, who is prone to gentle didacticism, tried to turn the conversation into a teachable moment. \u201cIn the early internet, the internet speed was pretty low, so when images would load, it would load rows interlaced, so you could tell roughly what it was while it was loading, as opposed to waiting for the whole asset to load the way it does now,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s like that. It\u2019s like a low-resolution picture of Grandad.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWeird<\/em>,\u201d Dylan said.<\/p>\n

For any adolescent, a private bedroom is both sanctuary and mood board. It\u2019s a safe haven for experimental selfies, a shelter for incognito-mode Google searches, an internal switchboard for the exchange of secrets and dreams. Over the winter, Mira conducted a \u201croom refresh\u201d and parted with her childhood desk, some toys, and the bunk bed she and Dylan once shared. The room now held a gleaming white loft bed, with a small den of executive function underneath. \u201cI don\u2019t get homework yet, but if I did, this is where I would do it,\u201d Mira said, gesturing at an under-bed desk. When I first visited, last fall, the room had been graced by a larger-than-life-size cardboard cutout of Taylor Swift, but it had since disappeared. \u201cShe died,\u201d Mira said. \u201cDylan broke her. A few times.\u201d Dylan, who shares a room with a leopard gecko, is still steeped in the unambiguous stuff of kid-world. (\u201cI think mythical creatures can crossbreed with anything,\u201d they mused one afternoon, apropos of nothing discernible, over a mayo-slathered bagel. Then, seconds later: \u201cNever go near a dead whale. They can explode!\u201d) Like many younger siblings, Dylan is both antagonist and accomplice: privy to everyday intimacies, but not allowed to hang out in Mira\u2019s room. \u201cIf they do, I will shun them,\u201d Mira told me. \u201cI will go\u2014HYAH!\u2014get out.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the other side of Mira\u2019s room was a proud vanity, replete with Hollywood mirror and leather-topped stool. It was covered in a tantalizing explosion of tubes and dupes, gloops and glops: setting sprays, concealer, eyeshadow palettes, Unicorn Snot body glitter. \u201cThis is the pink drawer,\u201d she said, excavating a Trader Joe\u2019s gummy-bear-flavored overnight lip mask. \u201cIt\u2019s just whatever\u2019s pink.\u201d Over the vanity hung a neon sign in curlicue magenta script. \u201cMira,\u201d it glowed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

I picked up the concealer. \u201cWhat are you concealing?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have bags under my eyes,\u201d Mira said. I looked at her face, which had the interior illumination of a Renaissance portrait, and felt we were somehow both being gaslighted. \u201cI like to read at night,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m supposed to get ten hours of sleep, but I get nine.\u201d<\/p>\n

During the week, Dylan and Mira are not allowed to have screen time, but when the iron curtain is lifted, on Friday nights, the children enjoy unlimited access to a shared laptop, or \u201cthe Dylan family computer,\u201d as Mira calls it, because Dylan tends to hoard it to play a dizzying, headachy civilization simulator called WorldBox. (\u201cI\u2019m making monoliths to make humanoid versions of animals,\u201d they explained one afternoon, incomprehensibly.) There is also a family iPhone, which connects to Wi-Fi but does not have a data plan. This is Mira\u2019s\u2014de facto, not de jure. \u201cMira doesn\u2019t let me use the phone,\u201d Dylan told me. \u201cShe kicks me out of her room before I can get to the phone.\u201d Mira is not allowed to have TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, or other social media. \u201cI\u2019m allowed to officially have a phone when I\u2019m fourteen,\u201d she said. \u201cProbably fifteen for social media.\u201d (Patrick denied this, saying that it \u201chasn\u2019t been litigated yet.\u201d) Her activities of choice are perusing Pinterest and surfing YouTube Shorts\u2014essentially a high-latency TikTok. \u201cThere\u2019s this whole thing called BookTube<\/em>,\u201d Mira told me, singing the last word while arcing her arms in the shape of a rainbow. Recently, scanning BookTube\u2014dupe BookTok\u2014I found myself in the Venn diagram between nerdy and thirsty, where young women in matte makeup memed in front of bookcases stuffed with romantasy. Mira also enjoys content from the influencer Salish Matter, a sixteen-year-old with an intra-Target Starbucks habit who shares a channel with her father, also an influencer. I watched a bunch of the Matters\u2019 videos (\u201cHiding from 24 BOYS<\/em> in 24 HOURS<\/em>\u201d; \u201cMy Daughter Survives TEN BROTHERS<\/em>\u201d) and, feeling demented, decompressed by scrolling through Shorts and watching a woman eat her way out of a bathtub filled with popcorn.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n
\n
\n

Mira\u2019s favorite narrative trope is \u201cenemies to lovers,\u201d in which hatred is transmogrified into passion. \u201cMe and Mom read a lot of the same things,\u201d she told me. \u201cWell, when I can read them, because they\u2019re all smut novels.\u201d (\u201cThat\u2019s not true!\u201d Michalle said. \u201cMy favorite book is \u2018Cutting for Stone.\u2019\u00a0\u201d) Mira loves the \u201cOnce Upon a Broken Heart\u201d books, which are twisty, whimsical, and wildly popular among young women. For romance novels, they\u2019re also pretty tame: one chili pepper out of five, for chaste kissing and no action below the neck.<\/p>\n

We settled on the floor of her room so that she could show the books to me. Homemade fan art of Jacks, the series\u2019s love interest, fluttered out of a collector\u2019s-edition case. \u201cA kiss worth dying for,\u201d I read out loud. \u201cIf you kiss him, and you\u2019re not his soulmate, you will die,\u201d Mira explained. We did not dwell on the sexual politics of this conceit. \u201cIt\u2019s very dark,\u201d she said. \u201cHe doesn\u2019t tell people that he kills people when he kisses them, but he also doesn\u2019t not tell them. People want to because\u201d\u2014her voice rose to a high, fluttering falsetto, a falsetto that suggested a superior world of sophistication in which one did not deign to do kissing\u2014\u201che\u2019s so dreamy.\u201d But Jacks was not without his flaws, promiscuity among them. \u201cHe has technically murdered thousands of people,\u201d Mira said.<\/p>\n

I asked Mira what drew her to the books. \u201cI really like the writing style,\u201d she said. \u201cAlso, he\u2019s blond. That\u2019s very unique.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s unique that he\u2019s blond?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople like them dark,\u201d she said, and sprang up to stand by the bookcase. \u201cWe shall go through.\u201d She began tapping the spines of her books. \u201cBrown hair, brown hair, brown hair, brown hair, brown hair,\u201d she said, then paused, finger suspended in midair. \u201cI don\u2019t know what color hair he has. Brown hair, brown hair, brown hair. This doesn\u2019t have a love interest. Brown hair, brown hair. Brown hair.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the winter, Mira told me that her celebrity crush is a waifish actor from \u201cStranger Things\u201d named Finn Wolfhard (brown hair), who has high cheekbones, minimal facial hair, and looks a bit like Miranda July. Wolfhard is the ideal middle-school celebrity crush: sexually nonthreatening and pretty, like Joseph Gordon-Levitt in 1999. Civilian crushes were a different story. \u201cI don\u2019t really like anyone,\u201d Mira told me. \u201cAll the guys in my school are, like, either jerks, ugly, or both. There\u2019s not great variety.\u201d I inquired about another sixth grader Mira had mentioned previously, but she waved the idea off. \u201cWe\u2019re ninety-five per cent sure he\u2019s gay,\u201d she said, as if this had ever precluded the affections of a middle-school girl. \u201cHe\u2019s really zesty.\u201d She and her friends had been joking with him about this, but Mira reassured me, \u201cI\u2019m bi, so it\u2019s O.K.\u201d She was drinking a strawberry matcha, a slurry of fruit, milk, and L-theanine, and slurped the jammy dregs. I asked when she first understood that she was bisexual. \u201cBecause men are just annoying,\u201d she said, shrugging. This spring, she said that her celebrity crush was Sabrina Carpenter.<\/p>\n

In the weeks leading up to the spring dance, Mira had been experimenting with hair styles, including braiding her hair into tiny little hearts against her scalp. But to hear her tell it\u2014at least, to me\u2014Mira\u2019s interest in romance was purely literary. She was masterly at deflecting: once, when I asked if she was excited about potentially dating in the future, she changed the subject to a specialty-pie bakery we were passing. I took her point. Maybe crushes were happening, maybe not; none of my business. Maybe widespread openness toward sexual identity and gender weren\u2019t enough to offset the raw vulnerability of wanting to be special to someone. I asked Mira if she\u2019d followed up with Floppy Hair, who had delivered news of a crush by proxy. He still wouldn\u2019t tell Mira who it was, and she couldn\u2019t be bothered to get it out of him. \u201cIt\u2019s so much work,\u201d she said. \u201cI could be listening to an audiobook instead of doing that.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

One evening, I asked Mira if she ever felt anxious in social situations. What I had in mind was pedestrian: cliques, drama, new people. She was leaning in the doorframe of her kitchen, eating dessert, and took a moment to think. \u201cWhen there are men,\u201d she said. \u201cOld men. Like Dad\u2019s age and older.\u201d Patrick and Michalle, who were sitting with me at the dining table, looked surprised.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause I don\u2019t like men, they\u2019re weird,\u201d she said. \u201cWe live in a world of pedophiles and rapists. And I don\u2019t want that.\u201d Recently, she explained, she\u2019d been at Maple\u2019s house, and they had put on the Netflix documentary series \u201cJeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich.\u201d \u201cIt was really disgusting,\u201d Mira said. (\u201cWe haven\u2019t talked about the Epstein files,\u201d Patrick said.) Her distaste extended to American politics, and to the President. \u201cI think he was mentioned more times in the Epstein files than Harry Potter was mentioned in all eight books,\u201d she said. This statistic was somewhat inaccurate: there are not eight Harry Potter books; there are seven. After the first episode, the girls had switched to watching a rom-com.<\/p>\n

From Mira I learned about Merit Beauty and \u201cPop Star Academy: Katseye.\u201d I learned that the trick to a manicure is to wait for the first hand to dry before doing the second, though that\u2019s hard if you\u2019re impatient; that \u201cKPop Demon Hunters\u201d is good the first time but dulls by the fourth; and that, to do the wave, you have to go fingers, fist, down, elbow, shoulder, chest, shoulder, elbow, down. I learned that Taylor Swift spends, like, thirty-five million dollars a year on her cats. I learned that Lucky Charms cereal is, like, seventy-five per cent sugar, bananas are poisonous to monkeys, and you should rinse Popsicles before eating them to avoid losing taste buds. I learned that you can kind of just say \u201cslay\u201d whenever, as filler, that you can address both your girls and your dad as \u201cbro,\u201d and that, at least in Mira\u2019s telling, her whole life doesn\u2019t revolve around her mom, but her mom\u2019s whole life revolves around her. (\u201cAs it should be,\u201d Mira said.)<\/p>\n

Every week, Mira receives an allowance of twelve dollars, a cute amount commensurate with her age. With Patrick\u2019s help, she tracks and budgets her assets in an Excel spreadsheet. In fourth grade, shortly after discovering online shopping, Mira found a cheap, appealing dress on Shein. She showed it to Patrick, and asked him to buy it for her using her allowance. Instead, he offered a lesson in Xinjiang internment camps and the global supply chain. \u201cTurns out there\u2019s, like, lead in their things, and child labor, forced labor, thirty-two cents a day, not great,\u201d Mira said. Patrick, who framed it as a moral choice, handed the decision to Mira. \u201cGreat thing to do for a fourth grader,\u201d she told me, sarcastically. After wrestling with it, she decided to swear off Shein\u2014but only once she\u2019d bought the dress.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

Mira\u2019s politics are still primarily shaped by her parents, but the culture creeps in. She is nervous about the prospect of \u201cWorld War III\u201d\u2014\u201cStill got a few years, you never know,\u201d she said\u2014and she harbors some anxiety about global warming. (\u201cWe\u2019re not gonna make it,\u201d she told me, knowingly.) Once, we were on the light rail and passed a billboard advertisement for a software company, touting a new A.I. product. \u201cBoooo, A.I.,\u201d Mira said, as we rattled along. \u201cBoooo. It\u2019s killing the polar bears.\u201d I asked if the ad hadn\u2019t been for Patrick\u2019s former employer. \u201cMm-hmm,\u201d she said. \u201cHe did hard and\/or soft<\/em>ware.\u201d She leaned forward in her seat. \u201cThey\u2019re so similar. Why make them so different, but so similar?\u201d At school, Mira is participating in a marine-science program called Ocean Ambassadors. Learning about seal malnutrition has been sobering. \u201cI\u2019m not helping,\u201d she acknowledged. \u201cI still buy from Amazon.\u201d<\/p>\n

One afternoon, I picked Mira up from school and we drove to Stonestown Galleria, a mall on the edge of San Francisco. She sat in the front seat, as she is wont to do, despite not clearing the recommended height. Whenever we spent time together, I experienced a kind of duality: relating to Mira, while being very much a middle-aged mom. As she climbed into my car, I had a brief moment of dissociation: how could we be driving, when we were only twelve? \u201cI don\u2019t like it here,\u201d she said, as we passed through a neighborhood of detached, single-family homes. \u201cWhy is there so much space in between the houses? You could make it taller, and then you can have more people that live there.\u201d Any doubts I might have had about Patrick\u2019s YIMBY<\/em>-ism vanished. We passed a Volkswagen Beetle, and for the second time in ten minutes, Mira punched me in the arm. \u201cSorry,\u201d she murmured.<\/p>\n

In the Stonestown parking lot we circled, looking for a spot, and found ourselves stuck behind a Waymo. \u201cYou can\u2019t honk at it, because it won\u2019t do anything,\u201d Mira advised. Her friend Fiona sometimes took Waymos, but Mira had never experienced one firsthand. A Waymo was cool. There were no parents in a Waymo, no little siblings. A Waymo was the next best thing to having your own car. \u201cI wanna go in a Waymo!\u201d she cried, in a cartoonish voice of anguish.<\/p>\n

We parked, entered the glossy, brightly lit tomb of the mall, and piloted to Sephora like two homing pigeons. Each new generation adopts the consumer tendencies of its time, and Generation Alpha has demonstrated an unquenchable desire for skin-care products: on TikTok, tiny influencers with Minnie Mouse voices and infinitesimal pores post \u201cGet ready with me\u201d videos in which they offer squeaky endorsements for products like retinol and eye cream. Mira has a multi-step skin-care routine, which she performs every night, using the materials at hand. First, face wash, procured by her parents from Costco. Then toner, usually Glow Recipe\u2019s Watermelon Glow. Next, she conducts a targeted strike on the skin beneath her nostrils. \u201cI had<\/em> a really dry nose, around here,\u201d she told me, touching her face, which betrayed no history of any aberration. \u201cIt was, like, crispy,\u201d she said. \u201cSo I do that so it doesn\u2019t come back, because it\u2019s evil.\u201d Her product of choice is Target-brand petroleum jelly\u2014\u201cdupe Vaseline,\u201d she joked. Finally, she applies peppermint lip butter.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

It would be easy, having made it safely past the shores of puberty, to make light of these rituals and ablutions. But the rituals are very important\u2014in fact, they\u2019re everything. They\u2019re experiments with externalizing private self-perceptions, and dalliances with potential selves. They\u2019re a way of projecting into the future: to imagine being noticed, maybe even seen.<\/p>\n

Read more The Confessions of Isaiah Rashad<\/a><\/p>\n

That afternoon, Mira was in the market for a tinted sunscreen, but distractions abounded. At the display for Milk Makeup, a self-described \u201cclean beauty\u201d brand, she sampled a tube of Cooling Water Jelly Tint, a jiggly blush-slash-lip stain the color of rubies and the texture of aspic. As I tried to imagine the adult woman who would put this on her face, Mira poked the goo and smiled. \u201cJelly,\u201d she said, in a weird voice. We entered the sunscreen section, and examined a product called Supergoop! Glowscreen. \u201cNineteen dollars for a mini,\u201d she said remorsefully, and set it back down.<\/p>\n

We made our way to Salt Tree, a Californian chain boutique. By this point, I had read enough prescriptive nonfiction about raising adolescent girls that I understood sexy clothing to be distinct from sexuality in practice; I had consulted parents of teen-agers, who explained that their daughters\u2019 revealing clothing was not a capitulation to the male gaze but a refutation of its power. This did not prepare me for Salt Tree. The store was blazingly lit; metal racks overflowed with petroleum-based fabrics and shivered to the bass line of throbbing pop music. There were crop tops in fuchsia mesh, tube tops in cheetah print, chain-mail halters, and puff-sleeved sweaters. There were plaid miniskirts in multiple colorways, pleather shorts, and denim corsets. There were distressed jeans, and cargo jeans, and jeans studded with pearls and rhinestones. There were tiny shirts that said \u201cBe Kind\u201d and \u201cTequila Made Me Do It,\u201d and nostalgic shirts with vintage lettering that read \u201c \u201976\u201d and, appallingly, \u201c \u201993.\u201d There were body chains. It felt like an A.I. hallucination of nineties fashion. I was immediately transported to my own preteen cabinet of horrors: Mystique Boutique, just off Canal Street in Manhattan, a wild cornucopia of stretchy basics and barely-there going-out clothes, everything slashed and shrunken. In a season of knockoff Kate Spade bags, bar-mitzvah pencil skirts, and gratuitous training bras, it had produced in me a sick, horny covetousness: not for the clothes themselves, but for the idea of womanhood\u2014flirty, filled-out, smoochable\u2014that they implied.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

In the early eighties, Neil Postman, the media theorist and critic, argued that the boundary between childhood and adulthood had long been one of information asymmetry\u2014adults had secrets, whereas children had only their natural instincts and limited experience\u2014and it was eroding, which he largely blamed on television. Children were exposed early to death, sex, violence, and money; one consequence, Postman claimed, was an undifferentiated culture in which children acted like adults and adults acted like children. (Postman died in 2003, too early for family dance challenges on TikTok to kill him.) At Salt Tree, I wondered about the vision of adulthood the clothes conveyed, and the women I had imagined when I was small. Did they exist, or were they always just twenty, only ever twelve? I hadn\u2019t grown up and spent my life knocking back Diet Cokes, voluptuously, at the club. But kids didn\u2019t aspire to dress like work-from-home moms in machine-washables. This was one of the raw edges of adolescents: in their eager imitation of maturity, they conveyed an incomplete but inevitably uncomplimentary reflection of adult life.<\/p>\n

Mira had recently been to Salt Tree with her friends to shop for the dance. Initially, she had wanted a dress there with a tulip hem and an off-the-shoulder neckline\u2014like Aurora\u2019s dress, from Disney\u2019s \u201cSleeping Beauty,\u201d she told me\u2014but she ultimately rejected it, because it shed glitter. That dress, which cost thirty-eight ninety-nine, still hung limply in the store, twinkling. Instead, she had chosen a dress that was blush pink, with three tiers of ruffles, a strappy back, and a ruched bodice. It was coquettish for a woman, and perfect for a girl.<\/p>\n

In the sale section, we appraised a bustier with a photo of a Yorkshire terrier on it. \u201cNo,\u201d Mira said, shoving it back into the rack. Also \u201cNo\u201d were neon-green tank tops (\u201cToo eighties\u201d), a long denim dress patterned with embroidered flowers (\u201cA mother dress\u201d\u2014whose mother?), and a ruffled white polka-dotted situation (\u201cNot O.K.\u201d). Mira pulled out a fifties-style blue frock. \u201cThis has Sabrina Carpenter vibes,\u201d she said, flipping, perusing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

A few moments later, I lifted a high-necked, long-sleeved, ribbed skater dress from the rack, and said, horribly, \u201cThis feels a little bit like \u2018Taylor Swift in the winter\u2019 vibes.\u201d Mira looked at it, then at me, and chose grace.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

For a while, Mira thought she might want to be a backup dancer, probably for someone like Sabrina Carpenter. \u201cI don\u2019t want to be famous, but I want to be friends with famous people,\u201d she explained. Her ambitions changed after she consulted Siri and learned that background dancers aren\u2019t particularly well remunerated. \u201cThen I wanted to be a physical therapist, but I figured out they get paid the same amount as background dancers,\u201d she said. \u201cSo, a dermatologist could be cool.\u201d In the future, she pictures herself living like Patrick\u2019s mother, JJ, a retired marketing executive who travels often and has two cats. But, unlike JJ, Mira will not live in the suburbs\u2014especially not the suburbs of Sacramento, where her parents may move someday, because they would like to own a home\u2014and she will not get married. \u201cMore hassle,\u201d she said. Children were also not in the picture. \u201cThey\u2019re annoying, and they steal your money,\u201d she said. She was seated at a toddler-scale table by the living-room window, making a valentine in the shape of a notebook, which she planned to keep for herself.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe it\u2019s worth it,\u201d I suggested sentimentally.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot for me,\u201d she said, cutting, gluing. \u201cI want a low-responsibility life.\u201d<\/p>\n

That week, San Francisco public-school teachers were on strike, and Patrick\u2019s \u201cDaddy day care\u201d was in session. Mira and Dylan had gone to support their teachers on the picket line; a cardboard sign decorated with hearts and the words \u201cTeachers Deserve Better,\u201d written in careful script, leaned against the living-room wall. The school dance had been postponed. It was a rainy afternoon, and Mira was waiting on a delivery from Amazon: a nail kit with a salon-style U.V.-light dryer. At fifty-nine dollars, the purchase had drained about half of her savings, but she planned to leverage it. \u201cI\u2019m starting a nail business,\u201d she told me. \u201cIt\u2019s fifteen dollars for gel, and then twenty-five dollars for Gel-X.\u201d<\/p>\n

Patrick turned on the Winter Olympics, and Europe\u2019s fernlike male figure skaters took turns gliding across the ice. Mira began absent-mindedly rolling and unrolling a fine-tooth comb through her curls. After a few minutes, she said, \u201cIt\u2019s stuck.\u201d The comb dangled mid-forehead.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, Mira,\u201d Patrick said. He crossed the room and tugged gently on the comb, which did not budge. \u201cThis is just who you are now,\u201d he said, shaking his head.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is just who I am now,\u201d Mira agreed.<\/p>\n

Michalle arrived home from work, appraised the situation, and burst out laughing. \u201cMira, you\u2019re not allowed to use combs without supervision,\u201d she said. She sat down next to Mira, who bowed her head. \u201cI\u2019m sorry, Mira, we\u2019re gonna just have to cut some of this,\u201d Michalle said. She retrieved a pair of small scissors, and the room fell quiet.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

\u201cNo!\u201d Mira shouted. \u201cNo, NO!\u201d<\/p>\n

Slowly, Michalle began to snip. Patrick said, \u201cYou\u2019re gonna be somewhat limited\u2014or, potentially have new opportunities for how you do your little\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. What do you call the little front styling that you do?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s called a front strand!\u201d Mira said, annoyed. The comb came free, and she examined herself in the mirror. The damage was minor, but not invisible. She smoothed and tucked, shaking her head. \u201cYou know, another reason I don\u2019t want kids is this,\u201d Mira said. \u201cI\u2019m a great example of why I don\u2019t want kids.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mira is not exactly overscheduled, like many children of her generation; rather, she is locked in. Five days a week, she travels to the San Francisco Circus Center, where she performs feats of unfathomable abdominal strength. (A bi circus performer: San Francisco\u2019s not dead.) Mira\u2019s specialty is the aerial hoop, in which she executes tricks and contortions on a suspended metal circle, and she recently joined the center\u2019s in-house performance troupe. Most of the other troupe members are already in high school. When I asked what was different about hanging out with older kids, she replied, thoughtfully, \u201cThey\u2019re usually the base.\u201d<\/p>\n

One afternoon, I joined Mira to watch her aerial-hoop class, taught by a Russian master. She dashed into the large, brightly lit gymnasium, and I settled onto the wooden bleachers, which were painted cerulean and speckled with yellow stars. After half an hour of mat stretches, Mira and two other students climbed onto Swedish ladders, hung with their backs to the wall, and did a set of leg lifts, tapping their feet against their heads. Finally, Mira chalked her hands, boosted herself onto a dangling metal hoop, flipped upside down, and hung from a single knee, arms spread out like a rotor. She twirled slowly, her face fixed in an expression of focus and resolve. Alone in the bleachers, I watched as her childlike elasticity was transmuted into something I knew she would draw on for the rest of her life: a determined, hushed discipline.<\/p>\n

Middle school is, famously, a time of petty cruelty and small-scale social Darwinism. Mira has seen \u201cMean Girls\u201d the movie and \u201cMean Girls\u201d the movie musical, but her own social experience does not reflect them. She has known most of her friends for years, and has an easy social grace. Still, hanging out with sixth-grade girls, I recalled the time as one of great sensitivity, in which carelessness could feel like a slight. Around Mira and her friends, my own insecurities were heightened. Did they think I was cool, because I had a phone? One evening, Patrick drove me and Mira to the middle-school musical; I sat in the back seat, regressing. When we got to the lobby, she raced into the theatre, leaving me loitering by the concession table. I found her close to the front, sitting with her friends Fiona and Evie. They had not saved me a place, and did not seem concerned about finding me one. (\u201cYou\u2019re still<\/em> getting interviewed?\u201d Fiona asked.) I sat down several rows behind them, watching their backs as they huddled together, laughing. I wondered what they were talking about, and hoped it was not me.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

One night this winter, Mira hosted a \u201cmovie party\u201d for some friends. When I arrived at the apartment, she and two other girls were curled on the couch in fluffy socks and athleisure, talking. The doorbell rang, and two more girls arrived, piling onto the couch. Sloane was missing, however, and no one knew where she was. \u201cWhere are you?\u201d Mira growled into her watch, excitedly. \u201cWe\u2019re all waiting for youuuuu-uh!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, my God, Ellis ate ice out of a girl\u2019s mouth the other day,\u201d someone said. The couch erupted in \u201cwhoa\u201ds and \u201cew\u201ds. \u201cHe was, like, can I have some ice, and then she spit it out, and then he took<\/em> it. She meant it as a joke, but he took it!\u201d<\/p>\n

That evening, through a confusing hybrid of democratic voting and random selection, the girls were watching \u201cThe Devil Wears Prada,\u201d a morality tale about a frumpy aspiring journalist, Andy (Anne Hathaway), who wishes to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted, but instead lands a job at a fashion magazine modelled after Vogue<\/em>, working as an assistant to its editor-in-chief, the domineering, mercurial Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep). The film is ostensibly about the hazards of sacrificing one\u2019s values for professional ambition, but it is actually a movie about outfits. As soon as it began, so did the running commentary, a Greek chorus of reheated Gen Z slang. \u201cO.K., slay,\u201d Bayla said, as Andy embarked on the first of several makeovers. \u201cGirl, she\u2019s eating.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, she did have kind of a chopped look,\u201d Mira noted.<\/p>\n

The doorbell rang; it was Sloane. All five girls jumped off the couch, stampeded toward the apartment door, and tumbled into the building\u2019s stairwell, stepping on each other\u2019s heels. \u201cO.K., here\u2019s a summary,\u201d Mira said, excitedly. \u201cSo she\u2019s working for, like, a billion-dollar company. She does not like her job, and she\u2019s so ugly. But then she got a glow-up, and she kind of likes her job.\u201d<\/p>\n

When I first saw the movie, twenty years ago, it seemed obvious that Andy\u2019s live-in boyfriend, Nate (Adrian Grenier), who primarily serves to call Andy out for betraying her own values, was meant to be the film\u2019s moral compass. In 2026, however, the gender politics hit different. \u201cClock the tea, girl!\u201d Mira cried, when Andy criticized Nate for being unsupportive. \u201cHe is just, like, not giving. I feel like he wants to be first, but she likes her job.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the chaise side of the sectional, Fiona and Izzy were giggling under a blanket, playing a makeover game on Fiona\u2019s phone. Onscreen, Andy was being seduced by a heavily jawed man with blond hair. \u201cWould you rather have him with her, or the other guy with her?\u201d a girl asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d rather not have any of them with her,\u201d Maple, whose parents are divorced, said. \u201cSingle baddies forever,\u201d she cried, flopping back on the couch.<\/p>\n

\u201cYaasss,\u201d Bayla slurred.<\/p>\n

Onscreen, the seduction was working. \u201cGo get some Botox plastic surgery,\u201d Mira heckled at the blond jaw. \u201cHe is so chopped. Get away, you crusty, dusty man!\u201d The blond kissed Andy on the cheek, and the \u201cew\u201ds kicked up again. \u201cHer outfit is eating,\u201d Bayla said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

The children munched on pizza and Caesar salad. After a montage in Paris, Miranda, eyes full of tears and face stripped of makeup, confessed to Andy that her marriage was over. \u201cShe got divorced?\u201d Fiona said, looking up from her phone.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow she\u2019s free. Baddie,\u201d someone else said.<\/p>\n

\u201cSingle baddies forever,\u201d Maple said quickly.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel bad for her,\u201d Mira said. \u201cShe\u2019s just a cool baddie that focusses on her fashion.\u201d<\/p>\n

By the time the movie finished, half the room was still watching, while the other half was on Fiona\u2019s phone. \u201cI like that she\u2019s with nobody in the end,\u201d Maple said, but the rest of the group had already moved on, comparing notes on cheaper alternatives to the Dyson Airwrap, imagining their hair being somehow more volumized, beautiful, tamed. The girls, buzzed on miniature cans of soda, lingered in the liminal space between rolling credits and parental pickup. \u201cWe could go to my room,\u201d Mira suggested, and the group leaped from the couch and chased each other like puppies, a flurry of hair and limbs and cotton-poly blend. They piled in and closed the door.<\/p>\n

In late March, A.P.G. finally held its spring dance, with the theme \u201cUnder the Cherry Moon.\u201d After school, I bumped into Mira and her friends, who were on their way to get ready at Bayla\u2019s house. They were loitering giddily on the sidewalk, shouting at Sloane, who was tearing across the parking lot\u2014barefoot, for some reason\u2014back into school, to retrieve her high heels from her first-period classroom. The dance had been called for three in the afternoon, but the group planned to arrive fashionably late, at three-thirty. It had been hard to gauge Mira\u2019s expectations. \u201cI might just stand in a corner,\u201d she told me. Most of her friends didn\u2019t have dates, though Maple was going with a girl named Sasha, and Sloane was going with Leo, a boy from their grade. \u201cHe\u2019s liked her since, like, third grade,\u201d Mira said.<\/p>\n

I was unfashionably early, and toured the sixth-grade wing of the school. A pedestalled bust of A.\u00a0P. Giannini, the founder of Bank of America and the school\u2019s namesake, was stashed behind a recycling bin. I tried to imagine what he saw, down in the atrium where the children slayed. Early adolescence was a sustained state of cognitive dissonance. It was a time of learning to take yourself seriously while wearing Unicorn Snot; of being clothed and transported by your parents while seeing them as critically as anyone ever would. It was a period when you could be aware of violent, sexual, criminal abuses of power; immediately identify the sexism of a \u201cvintage\u201d workplace dramedy; and mostly find the boys in your own life annoying. It was exhilarating, exhausting, and fleeting. Young people changed quickly and not on any predetermined schedule. From the relatively static vantage of adulthood, it could feel like any given day with a kid was your last day with that version of them. Along one wall ran hundreds of gray, two-tier lockers. The locker was both ballast and canvas. Inside, magnets and passed notes and Instax Mini prints marked the passage of time, breadcrumbs on the trail taking each child further and further from home. One of the most salient features of twelve, after all, is that it comes right before thirteen.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n
\n
\n

Inside the cafeteria, which was painted with cheerful murals of paper cranes and various translations of the word \u201ctogether,\u201d the linoleum floor was strewn with plastic cherry-blossom petals and white balloons. Pink streamers looped haphazardly from the ceiling. Two girls from the \u201cMixerz\u201d lunch club, which meets twice a week and is devoted to the art of d.j.\u2019ing, stood behind a folding table labelled \u201cDANCE FLOOR<\/em>,\u201d cuing up Kendrick Lamar and PinkPantheress. The overhead lights were off, for ambience, but midafternoon daylight streamed through the windows. The air smelled faintly of lunch and feet. Outside, on the patio, boxes of Jenga had been set out for the wallflowers.<\/p>\n

The cafeteria began to fill with students: girls in miniskirts and chunky sneakers; mididresses with ribbed ankle socks; summer dresses over jeans; strappy sandals and florals. Their bra straps showed; their hair and faces were glossy. Most of the boys, it seemed, hadn\u2019t bothered to change, though a number wore bright Hawaiian shirts. Some of them matched, whether by intention or by e-commerce algorithm. They batted the balloons into the air, kicking them and bopping each other on the head until a chaperon, tooting on a whistle, intervened.<\/p>\n

Mira arrived with her friends, wearing the pink dress and a pair of Air Force 1s. Sloane, who was dressed elegantly in a brown sheath, carried a little purple flower in a plastic cone proffered by Leo, who wore tuxedo pants and kept a restraining-order distance. The group quickly availed themselves of the refreshments\u2014pizza, lemonade, lunchbox-size bags of chips. There was the sense that nobody quite knew what to do next. It was a far cry from the middle-school dances I remembered from the late nineties, where classmates ground against each other to R.\u00a0Kelly and otherwise performed a fetid, M.T.V. sexuality they did not quite inhabit in ordinary, lights-on life. (\u201cIt should have started at five,\u201d Mira said.) Then the d.j.s put on \u201cGolden,\u201d from the \u201cKPop Demon Hunters\u201d soundtrack, and suddenly the floor was swarmed with children hopping up and down, chanting the lyrics, shaking the linoleum. They formed a circle, holding hands, pulling each other around as if they were doing the hora.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

The d.j.s announced a best-dressed contest, and Mira and her friends lined up for judgment. The idea struck me as cruel, but then \u201cSingle Ladies\u201d came on, and one by one the kids ran to the front, stunted, and were received by a roar of positivity. When it was Mira\u2019s turn, she did three theatrical twirls, ruffles swirling, and her classmates screamed in appreciation. Sloane won, and was mobbed. Mira and her friends began shoving Sloane toward Leo, with no success. The dance floor split into two groups: the girls danced in a circle, while the boys formed a conga line, looping nervously around them. Mira entered the middle of the circle, pirouetting and curtsying, kicking her leg above her head. When Tommy Richman\u2019s \u201cMillion Dollar Baby\u201d came on, she dropped to the floor and, in a display that was oddly moving, did the literal worm.<\/p>\n

Watching Mira and her chatty, cheerful gaggle, it was strange to know, with no necessary qualifications other than having once been a preteen girl myself, that within the next year, or two, or three, they would be pulled into all manner of minor dramas and major insecurities, make transformative cultural discoveries, experience lifelong personal revelations. They\u2019d have crushes, keep secrets, be teased, or be cruel. They\u2019d be tempted to betray themselves or others. They\u2019d outgrow their own taste, pull away from their siblings, stop laughing so hard and so freely at their parents\u2019 jokes. They\u2019d toss the heavily flavored balms and bottles of candy-scented spritz in the subsequent room refresh, time capsules from the final season of childhood.<\/p>\n

Around four-thirty, someone initiated a game of limbo. The speakers were blasting Zara Larsson, and the vibe was high. Mira leaned back, shimmied under the limbo ribbon, then popped up, grinning, and shot her arms out triumphantly. She rejoined her friends, looking radiant and exhilarated, and did an exaggerated sprinkler at the end of the limbo line. Her smile was wide; her outfit was eating. She wouldn\u2019t win, but it didn\u2019t matter. She\u2019d gone under, and made it safely to the other side.\u00a0\u2666<\/p>\n

Read more Can Art Teach?<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anna Wiener profiles a twelve-year-old and asks, \u201cWhat\u2019s it like to be a kid these days?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":74,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-profiles"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Life and Times of an American Tween - City Relocation News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=75\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Life and Times of an American Tween - City Relocation News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Anna Wiener profiles a twelve-year-old and asks, \u201cWhat\u2019s it like to be a kid these days?\u201d\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=75\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"City Relocation News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-05-20T10:06:05+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/d26eeb8153b8d3a55f0db599d3ee3abf.webp\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1280\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"720\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/webp\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"42 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=75#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=75\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/3e7ce0c0c60d21e12a5ac61fb2b786d4\"},\"headline\":\"The Life and Times of an American Tween\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-05-20T10:06:05+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=75\"},\"wordCount\":8485,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=75#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/05\\\/d26eeb8153b8d3a55f0db599d3ee3abf.webp\",\"articleSection\":[\"Profiles\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=75#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=75\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=75\",\"name\":\"The Life and Times of an American Tween - City Relocation News\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=75#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=75#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/05\\\/d26eeb8153b8d3a55f0db599d3ee3abf.webp\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-05-20T10:06:05+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/3e7ce0c0c60d21e12a5ac61fb2b786d4\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=75#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=75\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=75#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/05\\\/d26eeb8153b8d3a55f0db599d3ee3abf.webp\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/05\\\/d26eeb8153b8d3a55f0db599d3ee3abf.webp\",\"width\":1280,\"height\":720},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=75#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"The Life and Times of an American Tween\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/\",\"name\":\"City Relocation News\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/3e7ce0c0c60d21e12a5ac61fb2b786d4\",\"name\":\"admin\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/secure.gravatar.com\\\/avatar\\\/50b1ad2e498f523425ee0a8cc5180a210646db1622662a3d56cc405d3e0c346a?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/secure.gravatar.com\\\/avatar\\\/50b1ad2e498f523425ee0a8cc5180a210646db1622662a3d56cc405d3e0c346a?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/secure.gravatar.com\\\/avatar\\\/50b1ad2e498f523425ee0a8cc5180a210646db1622662a3d56cc405d3e0c346a?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"admin\"},\"sameAs\":[\"http:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\"],\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?author=1\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Life and Times of an American Tween - City Relocation News","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=75","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Life and Times of an American Tween - City Relocation News","og_description":"Anna Wiener profiles a twelve-year-old and asks, \u201cWhat\u2019s it like to be a kid these days?\u201d","og_url":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=75","og_site_name":"City Relocation News","article_published_time":"2026-05-20T10:06:05+00:00","og_image":[{"width":1280,"height":720,"url":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/d26eeb8153b8d3a55f0db599d3ee3abf.webp","type":"image\/webp"}],"author":"admin","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"admin","Est. reading time":"42 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=75#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=75"},"author":{"name":"admin","@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/#\/schema\/person\/3e7ce0c0c60d21e12a5ac61fb2b786d4"},"headline":"The Life and Times of an American Tween","datePublished":"2026-05-20T10:06:05+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=75"},"wordCount":8485,"commentCount":0,"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=75#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/d26eeb8153b8d3a55f0db599d3ee3abf.webp","articleSection":["Profiles"],"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"CommentAction","name":"Comment","target":["https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=75#respond"]}]},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=75","url":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=75","name":"The Life and Times of an American Tween - City Relocation News","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=75#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=75#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/d26eeb8153b8d3a55f0db599d3ee3abf.webp","datePublished":"2026-05-20T10:06:05+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/#\/schema\/person\/3e7ce0c0c60d21e12a5ac61fb2b786d4"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=75#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=75"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=75#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/d26eeb8153b8d3a55f0db599d3ee3abf.webp","contentUrl":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/d26eeb8153b8d3a55f0db599d3ee3abf.webp","width":1280,"height":720},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=75#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The Life and Times of an American Tween"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/#website","url":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/","name":"City Relocation News","description":"","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/#\/schema\/person\/3e7ce0c0c60d21e12a5ac61fb2b786d4","name":"admin","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/50b1ad2e498f523425ee0a8cc5180a210646db1622662a3d56cc405d3e0c346a?s=96&d=mm&r=g","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/50b1ad2e498f523425ee0a8cc5180a210646db1622662a3d56cc405d3e0c346a?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/50b1ad2e498f523425ee0a8cc5180a210646db1622662a3d56cc405d3e0c346a?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"admin"},"sameAs":["http:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com"],"url":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?author=1"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=75"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/74"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=75"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=75"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=75"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}