Molly Knefel is a journalist, writer, and co-host of a daily political podcast called Radio Dispatch. She also teaches after-school at an elementary school and a middle school in the Bronx.
Previously by Molly Knefel: Growing Up Gender Nonconforming Every girl at sports camp, it seemed to me, was there for cheerleading. As a second-grader (well, summer-before-third-grader), I harbored a Daria-like disdain for the cheerleaders, fueled by their much greater hatred of me. We stayed in college dorms, two rooms with two girls each, adjoined by a bathroom. I got placed with three girls who were already best friends. In my memory, they all look alike…
In the town where I grew up, you couldn't go shopping without running into someone you knew. It was the icing atop the self-conscious cake of adolescence, to constantly anticipate stepping out of the dressing room to show your mom some jeans and into the surprise judgmental gaze of a classmate. It meant burying tampons under the other Target items you and your mom were buying, hoping that the attractive theater boy ringing you up…
