{"quotes":[{"text":"Are you there God? It’s me, Margaret. I just told my mother I want a bra. Please help me grow God. You know where.","author":"Judy Blume","tags":["girls","puberty"],"id":2098,"author_id":"Judy+Blume"},{"text":"THIS IS WHAT A MAN LOOKS LIKE. HE DOES NOT HAVE TO BE AESTHETICALLY PLEASING; HE DOES NOT HAVE TO BE MUSCULAR; HE DESERVES NOT TO BE PHOTOSHOPPED. HE IS HUMAN, AND HE HAS BLEMISHES. HERE HE STANDS, VISIBLE. HE SEES YOU ALL, COUNTLESS INVISIBLE OTHERS LIKE HIM. THIS BODY IS ACCEPTABLE — PUBESCENT, AWKWARD, MARRED. YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE INVISIBLE. WE ARE ALL GOOD ENOUGH. THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH OUR BODIES.","author":"Agnostic Zetetic","tags":["awkward","blemish","body","body-shame","equality","feminism","happy","human","image","invisible","lgbt","male","male-beauty","man","masculinity","muscle","photoshop","pride","puberty","reality","shame","trans","transgender","visibility"],"id":26028,"author_id":"Agnostic+Zetetic"},{"text":"In my experience, any class or assembly restricted to girls was going to be in some way degrading, like the one where we'd been convened to receive the information that from now on our bodies would be producing poisons that would need to be discharged on a monthly basis, through an unspecified orifice. The restriction of the typing requirement to girls suggested some sort of connection between our festering genitals and the need to serve in a clerical-type occupation, perhaps as a punishment.","author":"Barbara Ehrenreich","tags":["feminism","puberty"],"id":34204,"author_id":"Barbara+Ehrenreich"},{"text":"Saul had gained his six-foot frame at sixteen, but his muscles didn’t arrive until his early twenties. Between those lost years, he was a gangly, uncoordinated klutz. He was told that he could improve his dancing by watching himself in the mirror. He tried. What he saw was so repulsive that he resolved never to inflict himself on a dance partner.\tThese days, Saul hid those memories behind weight lifting and jogging. His new athletic physique hid his aimless decade as an outsider, an odd and lonely kid--as he remembered it.","author":"Michael Benzehabe","tags":["benzehabe","dance-partner","dancing","lonely","outsider","puberty","sad","unassimilated","weight-lifting"],"id":61937,"author_id":"Michael+Benzehabe"},{"text":"Puberty corrupts - that’s a fact, and it corrupts without consent – that’s the concern.","author":"Mohit Parikh","tags":["adolescence","puberty","puberty-in-boys","spiritual","teenage","young-adult"],"id":109406,"author_id":"Mohit+Parikh"},{"text":"The best things in life make you sweaty.","author":"Edgar Allan Poe","tags":["inspirational","life","love","meaning-of-life","philosophical","puberty","purpose"],"id":114967,"author_id":"Edgar+Allan+Poe"},{"text":"At that age I looked at women with brutal and emotionless judgement. Assessing the slope of their breasts, imagining how they would look in very crude positions.","author":"Emma Cline","tags":["internalized-misogyny","judgement","puberty","women"],"id":118600,"author_id":"Emma+Cline"},{"text":"Almost everyone first realized they were becoming a grown woman when some dude did something nasty to them. ...It was mostly men yelling shit from cars. Are they a patrol sent out to let girls know they've crossed into puberty? If so, it's working.","author":"Tina Fey","tags":["coming-of-age","feminist","puberty"],"id":122957,"author_id":"Tina+Fey"},{"text":"Most insensible, corrupt, cheap, disrespectful young girls run after bad, rude, cocky, nonsensical boys, but a mature, educated, thoughtful, virtuos lady opts for a wise, well breed, experienced, humble, modest gentleman.","author":"Michael Bassey Johnson","tags":["adult","adulthood","background","bad-boys","callow","cockiness","corruption","disrespect","down-to-earth","emptiness","empty","enlightened","enlightenment","experience","gentleman","gentlemen","humility","immaturity","insensitive","insensitivity","ladies","lady","madness","maturity","modesty","option","puberty","puerile","reckless","rude","rudeness","ruthless","sensibility","sensible","teen","teenagers","unconscious","vanity","young","young-people","youth"],"id":147148,"author_id":"Michael+Bassey+Johnson"},{"text":"Just as my body had changed at puberty, now I was developing a sense of guilt, a sense not only of how I appeared to others, but of how I appeared to myself, especially in violating self-imposed prohibitions.","author":"Hanif Kureishi","tags":["conscience","guilt","morality","puberty"],"id":233317,"author_id":"Hanif+Kureishi"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":20,"pages":2,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}