Rick Riordan's Reviews > Girl Mans Up

Girl Mans Up
M-E Girard

YA contemporary fiction, own voices queer rep.

Pen (don’t call her Penelope) Oliveira lives in a small Ontario town with her Old-World Portuguese parents and her big brother Johnny. As she heads into her junior year at St. Peter’s Catholic School, she’s got a lot more on her mind than just grades.

Pen has always just wanted to be the kind of girl that she is – not a girly girl, not a guy, but a girl who likes girls, and who presents as what is sometimes called ‘butch,’ though this isn’t a term Pen herself uses. She prefers her hair short. She likes to wear her brother’s old clothes. She’s used to being mistaken for a boy and has learned to put up with crap from her less understanding peers (read: most of them).

She hangs out with Colby, who has never made a big deal out of her sexuality and treats her with a measure of acceptance, but their relationship begins to fray as Colby continues to use Pen as his ‘scout’ for girls that he likes – making Pen vouch for him and lead those girls to Colby so he can use them and discard them. When Pen gets to know Olivia, one of Colby’s exes, and finds out just how badly Colby messed her up, Pen starts to question her loyalty to her old friend, no matter how much they like hanging out and playing video games together.

Also complicating things: Pen’s crush on her super-hot classmate Blake, who is just coming out of a relationship with a guy in her rock band, but who seems to be into the idea of dating Pen. This could be Pen’s first real romance, but can she figured out how to make it work? Her parents don’t understand her. They want her to be a ‘nice girl’ who wears dresses and finds a good husband. Big brother Johnny is Pen’s constant defender and supporter, but he’s just gotten into a fight with Mom and Dad and gotten kicked out of the house, leaving Pen alone. Colby is getting more and more demanding about Pen’s loyalty, warning her not to get too involved with Blake, and definitely not to listen to Olivia telling stories about him.

Girl Mans Up follows Pen through her junior year as she struggles to figure out how she can be who she wants to be, date who she wants to date, and be her own best advocate with her friends and family. This ‘slice of life’ novel is one of the most honest and open stories I’ve ever read. Pen pulls no punches (literally or figuratively) as she tries to navigate her life. She is upfront with herself and with the readers about how she feels and about not having all the answers. It’s impossible not to like her. She is both tough and tender, uncertain and self-aware. A lot of young readers will relate to her struggles.

Some of my favorite quotes, to give you a sample of her voice:

Thinking about her choices, and her friend Olivia’s:

“It's okay to feel bad about how things went down, but it's not okay to drown in guilt and regret every day for having made decisions other people don't agree with. At some point, we all have to man up and decide to do what we have to do, despite the people around us who try to get in the way.”

Thinking about how she wants to be with Blake:

“I think maybe she could be my girlfriend. I don't want to be her girlfriend, though. But there's this part of me that totally knows I could be her boyfriend. I don't want her to think of me as a boy, or a boy substitute, though. I want to be a boyfriend who is a girl. I have no idea how to explain that stuff to anyone, let alone a girl I like. I just wish it was already all understood.”

How it feels to be the only queer kid at a party:

“There have to be at least thirty strangers in this house; it would be nice if one
or two of them were queer in some way. I’d take a super-flaming gay dude even. Just
someone else to stand out a little with me. And if there was another queer person
here, then I could kind of assume the rest of these people aren’t jerks. But it’s
just me. It’s always just me.”

Looking at herself in the mirror:

“People should just be allowed to look in the mirror and see all kinds of possibilities.
Everyone should be able to feel nice when they look in the mirror. They should at
least be able to see themselves reflected in there, even if they look all weird.

In the mirror, I see myself standing there and I think I’m all right. I think there’s
no other way I could look, or should look.”

Penelope knows exactly who is she. Her journey of “manning up” is about learning how to be who she is in the world, to choose the right friends who have the right kind of loyalty, to be in love and deal with the flack she will get for it, to stand up to her family firmly and clearly when she needs to.

I felt privileged to share Pen’s journey, and I especially appreciated her revelations about the nature of family. Not all of us get happily-ever-after reconciliations with our parents. Not all families are the ones we’re born into. This is a much-needed addition to YA literature, full of candor and humanity, and will make a lot of readers feel like they are not alone.

I found this book thanks to the website http://queerbooksforteens.com.