Reopening Stephen Chbosky’s novel, I am hit with early teen nostalgia of a time where I first discovered The Smiths and The Rocky Horror Picture Show in order to relate to the angsty antics of the protagonist of The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Charlie.
My favourite quotes are highlighted in green and those most famous lines, “we accept the love we think we deserve” and “in that moment I swear we were infinite” are decorated with doodles of hearts. It’s cringe worthy really, but in a way, I feel as though The Perks of Being a Wallflower really shaped who I am and what I wanted to become.
Patrick tells Charlie he is a wallflower in the penultimate page of the first part: “you see things. You keep quiet about them. And you understand.” As a thirteen or fourteen year old girl dealing with my own emotions and identity challenges, I wanted to relate to Charlie. I clung onto this label, put it in my pocket and carried it with me everywhere. If I felt left out or misunderstood, I put it down to being a wallflower. Reality is, being a wallflower, at times, did not feel like something to romanticise. By definition, it is someone who is awkward, shy, or excluded and what is fun about that? So what are the perks of observing and understanding everyone else when you are the one missing out on all that is good?
To answer my own question, Charlie finally finds a group of friends that mean something because he is a wallflower, but within the middle and end of the book, he is just as integrated in the group and activities as anyone else. The irony is, as soon as he is labelled a wallflower and aware of it, the label can’t really be applied anymore. Charlie goes to homecoming, he drives through tunnels with friends, and he romanticizes the weather as soon as he realises he is falling in love. Why are teens sold the story that if they aren’t self aware or involved in the action, they aren’t enough? Perhaps Chbosky wanted the opposite effect, but when I was fourteen, I was convinced I could only be cool if I had older friends, partied and went to watch people I knew perform in plays.
Or take Alaska in Looking for Alaska by John Green as another example. Her rebellious nature, habit of smoking, seductivity, and fulfilled desire to change her name to an American state was the person I wanted to be. In reality, I was scared of rebellion and not really being that good at poetry. I concluded that I was no Alaska and I was no wallflower so I felt like a failure when it came to adolescence.
It is hard to pin-point exactly what would make a teen novel realistic. In The Perks of Being a Wallflower you do get themes of love, homosexuality, fitting in, family deaths, and mental health problems. Maybe at thirteen and fourteen these issues did feel relatable, but looking back, I believe the glorification of these issues in fiction is what is unsettling. I can’t help but feel teen novels do need a large trigger warning. I mean, a massive theme in Looking for Alaska is suicide (don’t worry, I won’t spoil the story), but I definitely wasn’t emotionally stable enough for that plot twist. How we transition teens from childhood fantasy to (fictionalised but very real) trauma in literature, I am not too sure. I just wonder if the identification I found really caused me comfort, or if the emotional intensity of such novels only heightened and worsened my own feelings of anxiety, self doubt, or fear.
We do have to give John Green some credit where it is due though. The scene in The Fault in Our Stars where Augustus and Hazel struggle with a condom is actually one of the very few representations of safe sex I have come across in a novel.
But what does all this prove, if anything? Thirteen year old Amy was sold a future fantasy of adolescence that entailed parties, mental health, sex, travelling, rebellion in school, and sneaking out of the house. But it is merely a fantasy. In many cases, this is what being a teen may mean and actually looks like but my reality included enjoying school, failing my drivers test, and yes, I have struggled with mental health but that journey didn’t feel like it could be remade into a film. Rather than spending loads of time outdoors and meeting people, I have lived through a global pandemic and spent endless hours scrolling through TikTok aimlessly. Point being, being a teenager does not have to be all rock ’n’ roll before being rewarded with a happy ending as soon as you become an adult.
I am turning twenty this year and my heart races at the thought that I haven’t done ‘enough’ as a teen just because I have played by the rules my whole life. But the truth is, we are all at different places mentally and physically and there is no ‘right’ way to be a teenager. I always hear my mum and dad say that their teen years were their best years and I fear I won’t have stories to tell. But just because my stories don’t match up to Charlie’s or Alaska’s, that doesn’t mean they are not good stories.
Are there really perks to being a wallflower? Yes, I suppose there are. Through the exclusion, you learn to observe and analyse. You learn to romanticise your life despite your circumstances but also learn to be self-aware of your position in terms of where you are and who you are with for this rollercoaster life. Teenage fantasy has taught me that there will be barriers and challenges (because the real world really can be scary) that you cannot glorify or romanticise in the way that a fictioneer perhaps can. But being a wallflower also means you can accept the reality that collides with your internalised fiction, and that shouldn’t damage our worth. The stories you read as a child or teenager were nothing but fantasy fiction while you are a real person in control of constructing your own real narrative.