Thirteen or What It's Like To Be A Teenage Girl

Thirteen (2003) starring Nikki Reed and Evan Rachel Wood is a cult classic film that messed me up when I first saw it. Catherine Hardwicke, together with her blue filter, offers an honest and brutal look at what it’s like to be a teenage girl.

Timestamps:
0:00 – How did the movie come to be?
1:52 – Family Chaos
3:24 – Codependent female friendship and adolescent pressures
5:54 – Mothers and Daughters

Music:
1) Where Shall We Dine by Letter Box
2) Marrionette by Letter Box
3) The Woods by Silent Partner

[giancarlojacobs]

This movie did such a beautiful job depicting the turbulence of teen girl life. I tried to watch Euphoria and it just seemed like an overly- glamorized caricature in comparison to Thirteen. I feel like that is largely due to the fact that Thirteen partially written and produced BY a teen girl (who also starred in it). Whereas Euphoria has a 35 year-old dude producing a show that unrealistically depicts the teen experience.

[nerdbites]

Thirteen was criticised for being “unrealistic” but my god, it was an exact depiction of my early teen years. When Tracy’s mum found out she cut herself, that exact same situation happened with me.

[labelledejour]

I love how you pointed all of evie's problems and traumas, because people tend to ignore it and just consider her evil and mean

[sukisukilala]

The ending is so underrated and people diss it but the merry-go-round scene is the cherry on top and it feels so real somehow

[h_nymph]

The part of "You don't know if you want to be like them, date them or kill them" is so real, it happened to me with some friendships as a child, is so intense that you don't really know what you feel, you love them but as a child you don't have the knowledge to know what type of love it is, it seems like is all of them. As a child especially, the feeling of ownership of you friends, like you belog toghether to a different world, and if they leave you, you don't wan't to go on anymore. Codependecy is scary.

[sydneyagnew]

I’m honestly shocked there’s not MORE commentary on this gem of a movie. As a kid growing up in LA, Thirteen hit me like a truck the first time I watched it (around 15) because I WAS a lot like Tracy and was falling into friend groups like Evie’s around that age, though luckily I never got into anything nearly as damaging as Tracy did. But it served as this haunting cautionary tale and I felt so seen knowing these experiences are more universal than I originally realized.

[stuffwithsoph]

This film always hit hard, I knew kids as young as 11 trying to replicate this kinda life (not because they knew or saw the movie) but because it is just a bunch of broken kids trying to be "adult" in the most immature way possible

[Aster_Risk]

I had a toxic friendship like the one in the film from ages 13-20. She was bisexual and I'm straight. She was thin and had sexual experience and I was chubby and had none. Those things definitely played parts in what we both saw the friendship as. There was absolutely love, jealousy, and hatred all rolled into one relationship.

[SoVidushi]

the part about not knowing whether you want to be with your best friend, be your best friend or kill your best friend was soooo accurate. I had a middleschool friendship that was very intense and unstable and I related so hard to this.

[cartiglazer]

i watched this movie last year (2021) when i was 12. my friend group (at the time) and me all thought this movie was goals. we literally changed our selves so badly, we stole (i never did though cause i was scared), vaped, and wore very sexualized outfits. it was soo good and i would literally love this movie with my heart until well, august 2021. my school principal called me up because i had been vaping, and all the other girls in my friendgroup betrayed my trust and told them that they never did and it was all me. i was heartbroken. my parents were so mad at me, grounded me for 2 months and took all my devices. none of them ever talked to me again, this year (most 13 some 14) they have been doing weed and drinking large bottles of alcohol. honestly i am kinda glad i got caught, now that im 13 i would never do any of the stuff they are doing now, and my grades have increased SOO much.

[lovegood]

Thank you for having sympathy towards Evie! She is literally just an abused kid that wanted to be love. Yes she did a lot of fucked up things but at the end she’s a child that has no one to guide her

[saradarv]

Man this film is wildly on point. When I was 14-15, I became friends with a girl who was SUCHHHH a bad influence on me. She was just like Evie, literally just like her— shoplifted, promiscuous, hung out with most terrible people— and can you believe it, she’s the one who SHOWED me this movie. I resisted a lot of her behaviours, was constantly having to give her reality checks, guidance, take care of her when she was drunk, urge her to stop drinking, support her through the nastiest breakups with the most vile boys/men imaginable… but she put me through A LOT. And she gaslit me through 90% of it. I can’t believe it took me almost 15 years to cut this girl out of my life. It was totally codependent, and it was painful, but it was absolutely the best decision I ever made for my life.

[jxcvjti]

as a teen boy with a weird history with sh and eating problems, thirteen was a surprisingly relatable watch and i absolutely love your analysis of the film

[fadeintou]

Honestly I was always jealous of the ending, I wish my mom cared like Mel

[Eve.y]

The movie made me so grateful that at 13 years old my brain was basically nothing more than a vegetable and that guys and clothes didn’t become interesting until I was 16

[SimplyHolisticASMR]

i watched thirteen at the height of my battle with self harm, and seeing someone else experience that kind of pain you have to have to hurt yourself meant a lot to me. i felt seen.

[no.]

This movie made me feel so seen when I younger. There were girls in my class acting this way before I was even 12, much less 13 and they really did seem so cool to my preteen mind. It actually served as a cautionary tale for me because the ending scared me straight a little and my teenage years were thankfully quite boring (minus the constant anxiety). 😅😅

[blue______]

I don't understand how so many people don't know about this movie. I don't even remember how I found it but I've loved it ever since I saw it.
When I was 15 (I'm 20) I went through something similar. I ran out of friends and started hanging out with a group of guys who drank a lot of alcohol and went out partying. I did those things but every now and then. But I did it with them every day. It was a group of boys and girls, we kissed each other.
Until one day something opened my eyes. It was nothing new, but this time it hit me hard. I realized that these guys had no aspirations or dreams. Their parents did not pay attention to them, they did not think about any future, most of them had suicidal thoughts, we missed a lot of school to be drunk or drugged. I realized that these people were not what I wanted to be, so I decided not to talk to them anymore and luckily I did not fall into that black hole again.
It should be clarified that my mother never knew about all this. Once you start managing yourself, it's so easy to lie and manipulate. This movie is very good, very real.

[Uh.umuhhhh]

I was an immature teen girl with unhealthy turbulent intense friendships. It’s the toxic teen female friendships that taught me major life lessons, and taught me to be a better friend when I got older and more mature.
This film is a rare one that really captured it so realistically. Not a lot of films can capture destructive female teen friendships as well as Thirteen. It’s reassuring to see how many people can relate to it also.

[geraldinelafayette]

Your first love is always your best friend at that age!!! And yes the practicing kissing, the affection, it’s codependency all there but it’s not “the romantic love” that you experience a few years later.