Girls on the Verge: Debutante Dips, Drive-Bys, and Other Initiations Book

Girls today face a bewildering array of choices when it comes to want kind of women they want to be.In Girls on the Verge, 27-year-old Vendela Vida goes to whatever lengths necessary to investigate a wide variety of both traditional and contemporary rituals girls use to fashion their own identities.From sneaking in the back entrance of a debutante ball in Houston, to watching young brides tie the knot in drive-through wedding chapels in Las Vegas, from observing quinceaneras in Miami posing for their 'sweet fifteen' photographs while wearing tiaras (and sometimes even bikinis) to participating in a witches' Halloween gathering in Salem, Vida interviews, imitates, scrutinizes, and socializes with young women who are making a lifetime commitment to a group of other young women, a gang, or a boy-all before they're even 21 years old.Some of these initiations are sanctioned, and even organized, by their parents, others are done in spite of-or perhaps because of-their parents' objections.With humor, insight, and illuminating detail, Vendela Vida penetrates the experience of a young woman coming of age today in a post-feminist, post-nuclear-family, post-'you're a woman when you get your first period or lose your virginity' culture. Girls on the Verge explores girls' struggle to forge an identity and secure a sense of belonging through various rituals-rituals that they create or embrace without even necessarily understanding the comforts they seek or the repercussions of their often all-too-adult choices.AUTHORBIO: Vendela Vida graduated from Middlebury Collge and received her MFA at Columbia.Her work has appeared in Vogue, Jane, and other publications.She lives in Brooklyn. This is her first book.Read More