There’s a scene from The Virgin Suicides—the movie, now not the guide, with all due respect to Jeffrey Eugenides—that I deem about a lot, probably too noteworthy. In it, teenage depressive Cecilia Lisbon attempts suicide and is rushed to the hospital, the place a smartly-meaning doctor asks her what she’s doing there, telling her she’s “now not even used enough to understand how bad life will get.” Cecilia fixes him with a glance, haughty even from her hospital mattress, and replies: “Obviously, Physician, you’ve never been a 13-year-used girl.”
I first read The Virgin Suicides as a 13-year-used myself, and whereas my privileged Contemporary York City upbringing was nothing like Cecilia’s oppressively strict, suburban one, I tranquil connected with her pain. Not handiest the alarm of actually being a teenage girl, nonetheless also the tranquil embarrassment of being advised that there was nothing noteworthy or outlandish in your struggling; nothing that hadn’t happened before or that wasn’t doubtless to happen again whereas you’d left center faculty. It was that same year that I chanced on myself spending extra and extra time on the computer after my eighth-grade friend community ditched me (ah, female adolescence), and eventually, one Tumblr rabbit gap or another introduced me to Jezebel.
As an awkward, lonely, mouthy eighth-grader, I was certain that I had stumbled across a little corner of heaven. Who cared if my chums didn’t like me anymore, or if my other classmates had zero curiosity in my passions (a.ok.a. rewatching all of Buffy on a loop and dissecting Susan J. Douglas’s 1994 guide Where the Girls are: Rising Up Female with the Mass Media), or if even my teachers idea I was peculiar? Here, at last, have been the of us that’d also read Douglas and wanted to speak about the Tara/Willow relationship, the of us that railed against the sexist idiocy of yogurt commercials, the of us that couldn’t wrap their heads around all the ways—large and small—that ladies have been made unwelcome or unsafe in a man’s world.
None of these items have been regarded as frigid or even acceptable to care about at faculty, nonetheless the legendary Jezebel comments section launched me to a entire world of intellectual debate for the duration of which my chief weakness—being 13 years used—was easy to vague with some fleshy-discover SAT words and an avatar of Edina Monsoon from Absolutely Fabulous. I was ardent enough in my beliefs to actually obtain some responses, and when I checked my laptop between classes I was heartened to glance an outpouring of messages; some declaring the flaws in my arguments (fair enough, given that I was secretly a literal child), nonetheless many agreeing with me, or offering encouragement about whatever remnant of institutional sexism I was exercised about, or gently offering perspectives I hadn’t regarded as. I was tranquil friendless at faculty, nonetheless on-line, I was starting to be somebody—or at least I felt like I was. On Jezebel, feminism wasn’t some outmoded holdover from my mother’s generation; it was raw and vital and individual-friendly and pressing, and I wanted to read every article, remark on the total lot, work there the 2d I was used enough, and never, ever let another douchebag classmate or sexist P.E. teacher chip away at the arrogance that handiest really entered my life when I began to use time on the plot.
Jezebel is 16 years used now, having survived fairly a few sales and restructurings and the enter of far too many white men in matches with out a clue as to effectively bustle probably the most lustrous ladies’s-media plot on the on-line, nonetheless its time was always coming. Certainly, on Thursday, November 8, Jezebel’s remaining 23 editorial staffers have been unceremoniously laid off after its parent company, G/O media, failed to search out a purchaser. I can’t count the series of contemporary and former Jezebel writers whose expertly expressed opinions have broadened my ideas and changed my life, from Moe Tkacik to Ashley Reese to Kylie Cheung. Each unique incarnation of Jezebel has reach with its contain parade of takes, hot and chilly and the total lot in between, nonetheless its writers—its staff—have always been the heart and soul of the operation, and my contain heart breaks to understand that they’ll now be forced to navigate the treacherous waters of the freelance digital-media economy.
Taking a glance back, I can glance that it was the staff and commenters of Jezebel who encouraged me to search out my speak as a feminist, a author, and a human being; it was through Jezebel that I learned to educate myself, to clearly elaborate my opinions, and to earn an Web combat (now not that hard, TBH, as lengthy as you have endless hours to devote to the undertaking). I realize it’s now not 2008 anymore—thank God, because I really didn’t ever choose apply bronzer—and I do know that in 2023, there are unique places on-line for young, peculiar, lonely feminists like the one I was in eighth grade to convene and focus on the total lot from abortion care to snagging Olivia Rodrigo tickets. Composed, I’m sad that there shall be no future generations of center-faculty misfits (or adults, for that matter) finding each other and themselves on the Jezebel remark boards. They—and the plot’s staffers—deserved so noteworthy better.