In the months since Greta Gerwig’s Little Women was released, I have seen the film five times. Each time I watch it, I leave the theater a blubbering mess, waxing poetic about Gerwig’s genius. The biggest gut-punch, for me, lies in a single scene: Jo March begging her older sister Meg not to marry, sobbing into her lap as she laments, “I can’t believe childhood is over.”

Every piece of media that has ever made it to my favorites list has always been thematically the same— following a typical coming-of-age story. From Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower to Lorde’s “Ribs” and, more recently, Gerwig’s Lady Bird and Little Women, no narratives affect me as deeply as those which deal with the fleeting notion of adolescence.

And I am not alone in this feeling. Sophomore journalism major Tiffany Carbon says, “I do tend to gravitate towards coming of age stories way more than other stories, because it feels really comforting to see a character at a similar stage of life as me going through a lot of the things I experience.”

On the surface, it is easy to explain why this theme is so widely loved: the transition from childhood to adulthood is a universally formative experience. Coming of age stories remain compelling because everyone, no matter where they are on their journey of self-discovery, can relate to them. This is why lyrics like “This dream isn't feeling sweet / We're reeling through the midnight streets / And I've never felt more alone / It feels so scary, getting old” resonate so deeply with us.

While this might explain the universal relatability of coming of age stories, I think there is something to be said about the way that teenagers—particularly teenage girls—seem to cling to and romanticize this period of their lives. What is it about these films and these songs that touch us so deeply that we feel as though we cannot possibly exist as anything other than teenage girls?

For me, it all boils down to a single, undeniable truth: I loved being a teenager. In all its turbulent glory, teenhood was the period of my life - and that of many other girls - where I felt I was the most genuine version of me I could be. Every choice I made felt simultaneously life-shattering and fleeting. As girls, we glow in the space we take up in the world. As women, we are forced to dim our own light.

The second that society slots you into the “woman” category, the part of you that was free to err on the path to becoming the most authentic version of you ceases to exist. There are intrinsic expectations that come with womanhood that inhibit growth in a way that we do not experience as teenagers. When we become women, we are expected to contain ourselves— to conceal the emotions that made us who we were as girls. Where girls see some leeway in expressing strong emotions, grown women are considered lesser and weak when they do the same.

We see this problem portrayed in Gerwig’s Little Women, in the conversation that happens between Jo and Marmee, where Marmee painfully confesses to her daughter: “I am angry nearly every day of my life.” This scene, coupled with the end of the film, helps thread a subtext that the explosive potential of the March sisters will not be realized. That is, womanhood necessarily kills a part of every girl, just as it thwarted Marmee’s expression of anger.

Two alternate endings suggest two possible answers to the question of how to continue living when adolescence is over. In the version where Jo is married, the whole family (minus Beth) is together, each sister pursuing her dream with Amy teaching painting and Meg teaching acting. This ending feels like Jo’s gift to herself as a writer: it’s the best of all possible worlds, the closest she can get to a complete return to adolescence. In the ending where Jo writes Little Women, however, we see what feels like a more practical ending, where she remains true to her own passions and dreams, but feels hopelessly alone. Neither ending feels fair, because, in both versions, a part of her is lost forever.

This unsatisfying resolution feels like a nod to the unavoidable notion that the teen iterations of the March sisters are dead forever. In this interpretation, Marmee can be read as the dimmed, adult version of a once explosively passionate girl. Contemporary media often portrays this problem as a teenage fear of turning into our parents. But for me, it’s much more than that. It’s the daunting realization that every adult woman was once a teenage girl, burning with the same passions that I feel were once the best parts of me. To see that they no longer glow the same way is to realize, heart-achingly, that becoming a woman means letting that flame burn out and losing that version of ourselves forever.

It Feels So Scary Getting Old