An army of teenage girls write their own, uncensored stories

RED REVOLUTION The book (right), and its mascot (left)

Teenage girls are typically portrayed in one of two ways: either as the catty social-climbing Heatherettes of Mean Girls, or the wild hellions of 13, who, at the first surge of hormones, terrorize their parents with pierced tongues, Manic Panic dye, and Girls Gone Wild antics. The effects? Swarms of misunderstood adolescents and legions of anxious parents leashed to lawyer and rehab hotlines. (The situation's no better with Showgirls alum Elizabeth Berkeley and Atoosa "Alpha Kitty" Rubenstein acting as the grande dames of teen self-esteem, propagating their particular brand of powder-puff feminism on a cotton candy–coated website near you.)

Enter Red, a new collection of essays compiled by former Seventeen and New York editor Amy Goldwasser and written by 58 teenage authors that provides a raw new look at modern adolescent girls. The book's essays, written by ladies ages 13 to 19, cover a well-known spectrum of teen trauma—from perfectionism to family issues to an unabashed confession of an unhealthy obsession with Johnny Depp. But the tone is thankfully uncensored, and with Red, there's not a patronizing dash of pink or a heart-dotted i in sight.

Radar caught up with Goldwasser to talk about the budding teen media industrial complex, the challenges of launching an anthology with a set of unknown writers, and, of course, what it's like to dive back into the world of adolescent angst.

SCREEN GIRLS The pink-swathed plastics of Mean Girls. Not found in Red

Radar: How did the project begin?
I'd been working with the Lower East Side Girls Club and was always impressed with their writing. One of the things I tried to do at multiple places was to create a teen-written column, including at Seventeen and New York magazine.

It just didn't take?
No, for various reasons. But both times I was blown away by the submissions I received in a matter of days.

How tough is it to get a publisher to back an anthology written entirely by young, unknown girls?
It's both easier and harder. I mean, what I've found is that if I can get people reading, they're really drawn in. You know, especially women are so sympathetic.

The media seems obsessed with the lives of teens, but I don't know of any books or TV shows that are entirely generated by the girls themselves.
In general, working on the book really confirmed my suspicions that there are a lot of women in their 30s or 40s assigning to women writers in their 30s and 40s and trying to capture teenage girls. It's become ludicrous. I mean, it's like if there were a young African American magazine put out by all middle-age white people. I'm not sure why that's acceptable with teens.

How did you select which essays would make the cut? Were you trying to cover certain issues?
No, I wasn't trying. I was really, really committed to letting them decide what the issues were. Sadly, I could have done a whole book on body issues.

That's the most common subject?
Yeah, by far the most. I don't know what the percentage would be, but it was pretty sad.

Did you find that surprising?
What surprised me was how much it's proliferated and how things like cutting have become commonplace. When I was in high school there were probably one or two girls who cut, and maybe people knew about them. But today, these girls can identify what kind of knife their friend is using to cut themselves. That really worried me.

13 GOING ON 30 The lovable hellions of 13

A lot of the essays, including the one on cutting, deal with extremely intense situations—suicide, deaths in the family, eating disorders.
I think every writer's impulse, especially if you're young, is to write about the great tragedy in your life—like an eating disorder or someone dying. That's why I thought it was really important to include funny ones and hopeful ones, too. And, you know, I got a lot fewer of those.

One of those quirky essays is about a girl's obsession with Johnny Depp. It's a fun read because as you get older, I think you lose your capacity for that kind of crazy intense devotion.
Or you don't admit it! I like the obsessive ones because they know they don't know this person and they know it's ridiculous, but they can't help themselves. And they're still really holding up hope.

Sounds like you established some really personal relationships with these girls. How much editing did they get?
It depends on how you look at editing. I never wrote a word in that book outside of my introduction. The editing was just relentlessly asking them questions. There was a lot of back and forth, with me asking, "Well, why do you like him?" "Oh, he's cool. I like him." And then I'd prod, "Okay, well, why is he cool?" "Because I like him." A lot of those essays are cut and pasted from 30 e-mails. But they wrote everything. That's always my goal as an editor. I don't want to mess with an author's voice or their words. I just want to ask a lot of questions. All in all, I treated them like adult writers. And I actually loved working with them so much more than adult writers.

Really? Why's that?
Adult writers, they know how to please. And these girls, they really don't care what I think of them. They don't need my approval and if they disagreed with something they would tell me and I loved that. You know, if I asked: why don't you talk more about this? They'd tell me: because it's bullshit and beside the point. I would love it if an adult writer said that to me.

You mention in your intro that due to MySpace or blogging, these girls are even more in tune to words and language than generations of teens before.
Well, they're really not afraid of writing. I think blogging has taken away that fear. I thought I would get a lot of prewritten essays like, "Here's my college essay from last year." But they wrote fresh. Also, Most of those essays you read were probably written in an hour. These girls don't labor things.

The Red the Book MySpace page is pretty active. How do you think the social networking boom has affected the girls?
I really am in support of those sites. They even the stakes. You can be articulate and charming and write well and have a lot of friends online. It's not about what you look like, you know, there's a whole different value system.

Some of the essays are unflinching critiques of parents. Did that cause any hard feelings?
You know, it played out differently in every situation. Some of the ones that are the most damning of a parent, the parents have been the most supportive. Those are amazing parents to me.

What about some of the girls? After pouring out their soul, have there been any regrets or second-guessing?
Well, one problem with teen girls is their personal writing expires in a matter of days. A 16-year-old will not stand proud to what she wrote when she was 14. She'll think, I was a stupid child. So there were many stages of second-guessing.

The book was more psychological responsibility than I ever had in mind. Because they were too willing to say everything. And I had to keep emphasizing that this isn't a hidden blog. This is going in a book with your full name on it. This isn't the place to confess that you slept with your best friend's boyfriend. They were pretty reckless. I think it's a slightly frightening consequence of having no fear of writing. They don't sense the kind of immortality of publishing something in a book.

Are you hoping that parents read this and get an idea of what's going on in their lives of their kids?
Absolutely. Therapists that work with teenagers responded well to it. I love it when dads like the book, and when men like the book in general.

How do men generally respond?
If I have to overgeneralize, the men like the more dramatic essays. They're more tolerant of the high drama, maybe because they've lived it a little less. Generally, the men like the cutting essay. I think it's more mysterious to them.

After spending the past year putting this all together, what's your prognosis for teen girls?
I'm still really hopeful. They're really so confident. It's almost made me sadder for grown-ups because I feel like we've all gotten that beaten out of us. Especially professionally, with writing and editing. Everyone knows what's expected, and how to please their editor-in-chief and how to write a lead that looks like this magazine, and these girls are so ... they're really incredibly original. They're also very aware of branding themselves. When I told them that it was going to be a holiday book, the girls were like, we need to step up our marketing efforts!