Women’s social issues have been treated in programs geared towards teens for ages. Remember when DJ Tanner went on a crash diet so she could look good in a bathing suit, and then passed out on a stairclimber?

On Saved by the Bell, Elizabeth Berkley gained pre-Showgirls notoriety, for the famous Jessie Spano Caffeine Pill Breakdown (I’m so excited! I’m so scared!). Of course, Full House and SBTB were heart-warming sitcoms, where everyone learns their lesson in the end, and move away from their self-destructive behavior, never to mention anorexia, bullimia, or drug abuse ever again.

The breakout Canadian teen sensation, Degrassi, which airs in the US on The N network, covers a variety of teen issues, without the cavity-inducing sugary sweetness of the stuff we grew up on. Among the kids who dabble in drugs, alcohol, eating disorders, and bi-polar disorder, Degrassi introduced the world to Ellie Nash, who is a cutter.

I’m too old for Degrassi, but I don’t care. I’m pretty much obsessed with it. The best part about the show is that it doesn’t sweep the issues under the rug at the end of each 22-minute episode. And because the writers have the balls to “Go There.” I mean, come on: we all know the caffeine-pill incident was a stand-in for a harder drug, like speed or something, but hard drugs don’t exist at Bayside High.

I remember when the cutting craze swept my middle school. I have no idea who started it, or why it caught on, but at my school, cutting was the iPhone of the late 90’s. Read More »

I’m always a step behind on the latest phone trend. By the time I got a rotary phone in my bedroom, everyone was already onto their cellphones, and by the time I made the jump to cellphones, everyone was already trading up for a flip phone. So it came as no surprise to me that when I finally got a camera phone, the iPhone had come out and BlackBerrys became more ubiquitous than see-through-white-dresses in the summertime.

But it wasn’t until this past summer living in New York City that I truly felt uncomfortable using my cell phone in public. The phone that I had once bragged about because it fit into my clutch was now making me feel as if I was using Zack Morris’s mega phone. People stared at me when I texted and expressed shock and awe that I still used only 9 keys to construct a sentence.

The look I got when I flipped my phone open the other day was the look I gave to my grandmother when she attempted to use her scanner to send an e-mail.

I can’t deny the jealousy. I admit that having the internet on your phone is insanely useful; whenever I’ve gotten lost somewhere, its a friend’s BlackBerry that got me home (not my phone’s tip calculator). And, sure, I’ve gotten frustrated when my T9 brutalized a word so badly that my text ended a friendship. I’ve eyed those keyboards and mouses and wished that my phone, too, could serve as a hand-held laptop. Read More »