Girls on the Verge

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.Vida, Vendela is the author of 'Girls on the Verge', published 2000 under ISBN 9780312263287 and ISBN 0312263287.