I AM MY FATHER'S DAUGHTER

I look in the mirror. Gazing back at me, I see my mom's forehead, my dad's smile.  The color of my eyes--along with my sisters'--are plucked from generations of baby blues.

As a teen, like a lot of us, the mirror was often a place of self criticism. I avoided it, and when I had to look at myself, most times were a passing glance to get a ponytail without bumps before a sports match or to get the right amount of makeup on before acting in a school play. Most of all, it was definitely not a place to think about where I came from and how many ancestors worth of DNA were put into how I look.

Whenever anyone said I looked just like my mom or dad, I would cringe. "I am my own person!' I wanted to scream. I see my yearbook photos now and think about just how much I looked like my grandmother's teen portraits, even though I am wearing flannel shirts and jean skirts in mine and she dawned buttoned up cardigans and long skirts.

Last month, my dad and his wife were visiting me up in the Big Apple. On East 23rd Street and Park Avenue, he and I posed for a photo with our matching coffee cups that his wife shot with my iphone. A random lady walked by and said loudly to herself, "Damn. That girl looks just like her daddy." It was one of the nicest things a stranger has ever said to me.

What if, instead of picking ourselves apart, we wondered.... How many people in my family also had my nose? What relative grew up with natural red hair too? What great-great-great-great grandparents were as tall/short as I am? Then, maybe just maybe, the things we hate in the mirror could transform into the things we learn to love about ourselves.

I am currently getting that iphone photo of my dad and I framed to sit next to the picture of him holding me as a baby in the hospital. It will stand amongst photos of generations of people who are MY people--they are part of everything that comprises me. When I feel adrift with my family (including my dad) living thousands of miles away, I will got to the picture and think, "I am my daddy's girl, just like he was my grandmother's boy and she was my great-grandmother's girl. Always."

NOTES FROM A TEEN PLAYWRIGHT

Sofia in NYC

Sofia Johnson, 17, is the youngest playwright represented at the New York International Fringe Festival this year with a production of her work, 22 Stories. We asked Sofia to write a guest entry for Girls in the Hall about both the plot of 22 Stories and her experience writing it. 

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I started writing 22 Stories when I was a sophomore in high school. I was also going through somewhat of an identity crisis. Like any student, I was beginning to branch out in terms of friends and opportunities, and I found myself in situations that I never though I would be in. I loved it, but there was a sharp divide between this new life and the life I was used to. In terms of 22 Stories, I didn't know if I was Nicole, the bookish perfectionist, or her twin, Natasha, the emotional non-conformist. So I split myself into two personalities and constantly jumped between them. Writing 22 Stories helped keep both personalities intact for the better portion of that year.

The security of a group is a key component in a girl's life. For her, it means shelter from isolation, support, and a sense of belonging and purpose. This rings especially true for teenagers, when girls have hormones and all other things to deal with.

Obviously, girls are composed of many elements and put together by many different experiences. We are multi-faceted, layered, and complex in a way that makes us all gloriously unique. Yet groups are often based on similarities. As a result, girls often play up some of their many distinctive qualities, while ignoring or hiding others.

This is not only true to girls only in tight cliques, however. Sometimes a simple identity can hold the same place in a girl's heart as a group. By claiming to be one thing, a girl feels more comfortable with who she is. Nicole likes her glasses because "they made everyone know who [she is]." She focuses on her schoolwork to the extent she does in order to distance herself from Natasha as much as possible.

Even when we try to construct our individual identities, we still neglect other aspects of ourselves. Natasha (and her friends) voice a negative opinion of modern establishments and their success criteria, but Natasha still cries when she does poorly on a state test. As much as her sister epitomizes everything she detests, Natasha is still crushed at her Nicole's apparent indifference to her struggles.

This is never a good thing. Even though we might not all jump off a roof a la Natasha, we are still affected when we ignore part of who we are, as Nicole discovers throughout the play. The only way she can get rid of the itchy feeling in her brain and make peace with herself is when she gets in touch with her inner Natasha.

I like to entertain the idea that I am part Nicole and part Natasha. On one hand, I am fiercely ambitious and a bit of a perfectionist. On the other hand, I cannot stand all these rules and regulations we set up for ourselves, and how we can cheat each other out of living. For most of my life, I've had to choose between the two personalities. Through writing this play, they became unified.

We are all strong and every bit of us deserves celebration. But that can only happen when your inner Nicole and Natasha come to terms with one another, and join together. 


-Sofia Johnson

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If you are interested in hearing more about 22 Stories (which plays August 12-28) and Sofia, check out her blog by clicking here.