Christina De Witte - The Ultimate Survival Guide to Being a Girl: On Love, Body Image, School, and Making It Through Life

Disclaimer: this is not the ultimate survival guide to being a girl.

N ow, before you head back to the store and slam this book on the counter, yelling something like, I didnt order this! Give me my money back! first hear me out.

Im not here to tell you how to live your lifeas a girl, as a teenager, or as a human being. Im here to talk about my experiences as a teenage girl and to share some of the stuff that I went through when I was around your age.

Now, I literally just got out of puberty myself or did I? Is it ever really over? Who knows? But heres the point Im trying to make: my memories from back in the day are still fresh. As Im writing this, Im twenty years old. To some of you, twenty might seem ancient; to others, Im practically an embryo. Im good with both.

A couple years ago, I started drawing Chrostin as a getaway from the real world. Chrostin is essentially a funnier, more extroverted version of the real me. Recently, I collected my teen-girl experiences and bundled them into this book. And The Ultimate Survival Guide to Being a Girl is an answer to all the puberty guides I used to read as a teenager. The trouble with those helpful books I was given by well-meaning adults was that they only talked about the physical changes you go through as an adolescent, like growing pubic hair and battling acne.

I discovered firsthand that theres a lot more to puberty than just the physical stuff. Being a teenage girl can be harsh. You will be judged all the timeat school, at work, out in public. Youll think that you have a best friend, but then shell stab you in the back. Perhaps youll be bullied, just like many other teens. Youll be sad, happy, and angry all at the same time. Why? You dont know, and that makes you even more confused.

I wanted to create a book that also talks about the other stuff teens deal withlike mental health and diversitybecause those are the things you dont learn about at school. Look, I dont have it all figured out. Im still growing up myself. In all likelihood, Ill have to consult this book, too, from time to time, especially when Im having a meltdown. Ill read it just to remind myself that its okay to have bad daysthat its normal to get confused by the things that happen around you every day.

So, how does this book work?

You can read it on the toilet, on the train, in the waiting room at the doctors office, during your lunch break, at your grandmas house, in your bed before you go to sleepyou get the point. This book can be read anytime, anyplace. Ive divided it into ten chapters. Well start really close to ourselves, by exploring our minds and bodies, before working our way outward to look at how we deal with others and with society in general. You choose where you start: whether you want to read it front to back or back to front, or check out all the comics and drawings first. Theres no chronological order, so you can put it down and pick it back up whenever you feel like it.

Are you ready for a journey into womanhood?

E verything we do, think, or feel starts in our heads. Thats why this book begins by exploring the very center of who we are: our brain and all the mental stuff we deal with as teenagers.

WHERE YOU DRAW THE LINE ON BEING HONEST

Im sorry to break it to you, but we all lie. And hey, as long as youre not hiding a dead body in your backyard, theres not necessarily anything wrong with that. We also change our minds a lot. That doesnt make us liars; rather, it makes us human beings. But when it comes to honesty, do we really need to tell everybody everything? Do other people really need to know the unembellished truth always?

Flash back to when I was thirteen: I went shopping for clothes with the person I believed to be my best friend at the time. After browsing the racks for a while, we made our way to the fitting rooms to try on our items. We were, like I said, thirteen. But my friend was more grown-up than I was, and by that I mean she already had a D-cup bra at age eleven. It didnt make her life easy; I can tell you that.

To make a long story short, she was trying on an incredibly hideous (and I mean, truly cringeworthy) top and then *insert dramatic music* she asked for my opinion: did it look good on her?

It didnt.

I freaked out, because Id never told her a single lie in the many years wed been friends. And now I had the following options in which to answer my best friend:

1. Be honest and tell her the top didnt look good on her. This may have hurt her feelings, but at least shed make the right decision and ditch the ugly top. Best friends dont let each other run around in unflattering attire, right? Right?!

2. Tell her I didnt necessarily dislike it, but that I prefer a different top shed tried on before. With this response, I avoided having to make a negative comment about this shirt by saying something positive and nice about a different shirt. See what I did there? I didnt have to be a mean bitch to my friend and I still saved her the embarrassment of being seen in public wearing that atrocity of a top. Win-win!

3. Wait and gauge her reactionsee how she felt about the top herself. Before she got the chance to ask me, Id jump in and ask her: Well, what do you think? If I was lucky, shed tell me she hated it as much as I do. If not, Id improvise.

4. Immediately tell her she looked beautiful in everything she tried on. I wanted my friend to feel good about herself, and if I had to tell a lie for that, it was for a good cause.

Theres no right or wrong answer here. The truth is that we are often nicer to other people than we are to ourselves. At least, we like to think we are. Sometimes its okay to hold your tongue or even tell a little white lie to avoid hurting peoples feelings.