To Georgia Nicolson and All The Normie Girls of YA
Before YA was overtaken by vampires and dystopias, Louise Rennison's heroine navigated typical adolescence
BooksEntertainment
Graphic: Elena Scotti (Photos: Getty Images, Shutterstock)
I was roughly 10 years old when I bought On the Bright Side, I Am Now the Girlfriend of A Sex God by British author Louise Rennison, the sequel to her cult-classic debut, Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging. (The word “thong” had only recently entered my lexicon, courtesy of one-hit-wonder Sisqo.) It was eye-catching on a beige bookshelf in a Los Angeles Borders, with a bright magenta cover featuring an illustration of a girl in a tartan mini skirt, knee socks, and platform loafers, knees crossed in a flirtatious stance as she stands across from a man in blue jeans and boots. It might as well have been a pin-up, and the fact that the word “sex” scrawled across the cover in massive yellow lettering did little to quench the feeling that holding this young adult novel was a privilege, an honor. My hands were still callused by playground monkey bars, my nails bitten—I was probably wearing Limited Too—but I never felt more grown than I did at that moment.
My parents were never overprotective, but I was still scared to show them the book’s title. Still, I carried it around the school just to show off. Of course, people asked if they could borrow it; who was I to give up that kind of schoolyard clout? In Sex God, the very dramatic protagonist Georgia Nicolson revels over her crush from the first book becoming her boyfriend, but soon discovers that nabbing the guy doesn’t always mean smooth sailing. Georgia oscillated wildly between haplessness and joyousness, not unlike a cheap mood ring from Claire’s. But she sold the drama well, and even when she was overreacting you couldn’t help but be on her side.
Georgia was one of the last normie girls of my YA years—the average teen girl whose day-to-day oscillated between joy, despair, and abject boredom, peppered with boy drama and friendship squabbles throughout. She wasn’t that much different than Mia Thermopolis of The Princess Diaries series, which came out around the same time in 2000. Despite finding out she is the princess of a fictional European country, Mia seemed to spend as much time griping about her flat chest and big feet as her reluctant ascent to the throne. But by the mid to late 2000s, normie girls seemed decidedly out of fashion, pushed out by YA protagonists like Bella Swan and Katniss Everdeen, who were embroiled in fantastical and dystopian realities far removed from anxiety spirals over schoolyard crushes. As Rennison was publishing installments in the series, the YA genre was increasingly saturated by stories about girls who were sad and rich, girls who wanted to fuck (or, worse, become) vampires, or girls who were fighting for their lives in dystopia. Georgia, on the other hand, was aggressively normal. She wasn’t a huge fan of school, she wasn’t a queen bee, and while readers can assume she was pretty enough, there’s never any indication that she’s anything to call home about. This is a girl who, within the first several pages of the first book, accidentally shaves off her eyebrow.
But Georgia’s adventures were real page-turners, without all the werewolves and tyrannical governments. Because sometimes you just wanted to read another girl’s diary about cute boys and clueless parents.
Georgia was one of the last normie girls of my YA years—the average teen girl whose day-to-day oscillated between joy, despair, and abject boredom, peppered with boy drama and friendship squabbles throughout
The premise of Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging, published in 1999, was simple: Georgia Nicolson is a 14-year-old girl living in England who undergoes the trials and tribulations of coming-of-age. The story is told via Georgia’s diary entries, where she recounts conversations with her goofy group of friends and complains about her family, the woes of school and its resident mean girls, the antics of her insane pet cat Angus, and—most importantly—boys. Georgia was like my cooler, British older sister, introducing me into the world of teendom through tales of high school tedium, gigs, and “Snogging scales”: “(1) holding hands; (2) arm around; (3) good-night kiss; (4) kiss lasting over three minutes without a breath; (5) open mouth kissing; (6) tongues; (7) upper body fondling—outdoors; (8) upper body fondling—indoors (in bed); (9) below waist activity; and (10) the full monty.”
She even offered a handy glossary of Briticisism and Georgiaisms at the end of every book in the series. Boyzone was “Irish boy band, all very good-looking in a bland way”; a prat is “a gormless oik. You make a prat of yourself by mistakenly putting both legs down one knicker leg or by playing air guitar at pop concerts.” Georgia was an easy narrator to relate to. Take, for example, her brazen approach to hair removal. “Found the tweezers eventually,” Georgia writes at 2:00 p.m. on August 27. “Why Mum would think I wouldn’t find them in Dad’s tie drawer I really don’t know.” This is followed by an update at 2:30 p.m., declaring, “I can’t bear this. I’ve only taken about five hairs out and my eyes are swollen to twice their normal size.”
You can imagine what follows:
4:05 p.m.
[Dad’s razor is] sharper than I thought. It’s taken off a lot of hair just on one stroke. I’ll have to even up the other one.
4:16 p.m.
Bugger it. It looks all right, I think, but I look very surprised in one eye. I’ll have to even up the other one now.
Georgia’s mother runs into her shortly after and nearly drops her toddler in shock, yelling, “What in the name of God have you done to yourself, you stupid girl?” By 10 p.m. that night, Georgia writes, “Maybe they’ll grow back overnight. How long does it take for eyebrows to grow?” The next evening, Georgia notes that her 3-year-old sister is the “only nice person” about the whole eyebrow ordeal: “She was stroking where my eyebrows used to be and then she went off and brought me a lump of cheese,” Georgia writes. “Great. I have become ratwoman.”