Deanna Templeton. Image from What She Said (MACK, 2021). Courtesy the artist and MACK. — Deanna Templeton. Image from What She Said (MACK, 2021).
Courtesy the artist and MACK.

Being a teenage girl is the worst (or at least it certainly felt that way to me.) Teens want to be accepted but run the risk of becoming conformist. They don’t want to be treated like children but aren’t yet equipped to be adults. Teenage life is many things, frustrating, emotional, confusing, liberating, maddening. To be a teen girl can drive you to be a rebel, and many embraces that identity.

Deanna Templeton’s book What She Said documents female youth, in both broadly public and intimately private places, in the United States, Russia, Australia, and Europe. The title itself is a reference to “What She Said” a song, by English Rock band The Smiths, about an adolescent girl struggling with depression. It is an appropriate reference; Templeton chronicles not only these girls, but also includes photographs, diary entries, and posters advertising rock bands—The Ramones, Motörhead, and Agent Orange to name a few—whose concerts she attended in her own adolescence.

Pages from Templeton’s diary accompany the photographs of the girls, giving it a storybook quality shot through with autobiography. The diary entries provide an intimate look into the mind of the author as she navigated emotionally turbulent years as an older teen and young adult in the 1980s.

What She Said tells a universal story of self-discovery at a time when kids are each beginning to carve out an identity for themselves. Her story has become their story. In the photos are rebels of various youth subcultures: punks, skater girls, goths, scene kids, and metalheads who look off into the distance, casually acknowledge the viewer, or defiantly stare into the camera, taking pride in who they are.

Templeton illustrates the universality of the intense emotional highs and lows of teenage girlhood while celebrating each girl’s individuality. The portraits of these young rebels can make you nostalgic for those bittersweet years of unsteady transition into adulthood. The girls form one whole community, united in teen angst and longing for the freedom to be who they are.

What She Said is a memoir and a love letter to all of the young rebels, punks, and outcasts who are soldiering their way through the excruciating years of teenage-hood. If there is one thing every young kid wants to know, it is that they are not alone in the world and, as outlandish as it may sound, there is someone who sees them and understands them.