TNP229 What It Feels Like for A Girl with Emelia Symington Fedy

The Numinous Podcast

If you're a 35 - 55 year old woman, you grew up in the very particular cultural landscape of the pre-#MeToo era. You grew up with boy-centered stories like The Outsiders, Stand By Me, Goonies and The Lost Boys, the everyday male violence and misogyny of entertainers like Andrew Dice Clay and Sam Kinison, and hypersexualized movies and music like Porky's and "Me So Horny" – LOTS TO UNPACK THERE. Time to revisit and tell our own stories.

Emelia Symington Fedy's memoir, Skid Dogs, is a brave, bittersweet coming-of-age story about a group of high school girls in the '90s navigating friendship, sex, and parents from the retrospective view of a now 30-something woman supporting her mother's cancer journey.

Content Warning: We're talking about rape culture, sexual assault, and gender-based violence in this episode, the impacts still felt decades on, and the process of sexual healing as middle aged women.

We also get a little explicit with the language so…headphones highly recommended!

This is a raw and riveting coming-of-age story about the wild love of teenage friendships and the casual oppression of 90s rape culture, and to be honest it was so searingly accurate I had to wait a minute and gather myself before I invited @emeliasf to come on the show to discuss it.

Publisher's Weekly describes it this way:

“With plenty of Juicy Fruit, padded bras, and pot smoke, the narrative begins as a nostalgia-tinted reverie before evolving into a devastating portrait of the pre-#MeToo era from someone on the other side of it. The author’s candor and courage will move readers regardless of when or where they came of age.”

Buy Skid Dogs at your favourite local bookseller or the alternative.

Sign up for Emelia's newsletter on her website.

Reach out to a Crisis Line to debrief:

Canadian mental health resources

American mental health resources

International Suicide Hotlines

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