In her debut graphic novel, Honor Girl, Maggie Thrash recounts one of the most formative summers of her teenage life.
Courtesy of Candlewick Press
When Maggie Thrash was 15 years old, she did what most 15-year-olds do: She fell in love — or like, or lust, or whatever teenage girls do. But the thing that separated Thrash from her peers was the person who she had a crush on: an older camp counselor at a conservative camp in Georgia — who happened to be another girl.
After 15 years went by, Thrash decided her story had stayed in the dark corners of her mind and heart for too long, and so now she wants to share the coming of age story that shaped her life in the form of her debut graphic novel, Honor Girl.
BuzzFeed had the chance to speak with the author about her experience at this conservative camp and all of the complexities of growing up as a teenage girl. Here's what she had to say:
HONOR GIRL. Copyright © 2015 by Maggie Thrash. Reproduced by permission of the publisher, Candlewick Press, Somerville, MA
BuzzFeed: Why did you choose to focus on this particular story from your youth?
Maggie Thrash: When I look back on my youth, this moment, this time, this summer stands out as this really crucial moment where I was flooded with new, intense, and perilous feelings and basically everyone has that moment where you experience these feelings you've never had before and afterwards you can never go back, it basically transforms you into a different person and you're probably doomed to be miserable forever. Desire just dooms us all.
At the beginning of your story, you describe the criteria for becoming your camp's Honor Girl and write, "It was just the one who seemed, in an unmistakable way, to represent the best of us." What do you think teenage girls interpret as being "the best of us?"
MT: I think for girls, we're raised to think "the best of us" means the nicest, and of course nice is often conflated with being pretty, too. Being nice, being pretty, and not really offending anyone with aggressive weirdness is "the best of "us;" being someone who is for all tastes and just a stereotypical nice girl. That's what I grew up assuming was the ideal female.
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