Why I Love The Jersey Shore

Maybe I'm a little late on the blogging about the Jersey Shore phenomenon, but sometimes it takes me a while to let things really sink in. I loved the JS from the first episode--the perfect mix of drama and flashy MTV edits, all with accents I recognize.

It took a few episodes for me to realize that the girls on the show--who at first I declared as corny--were all so familiar to me. I know, and knew, girls just like Snooki, Sammie, and JWoww, something I rarely find on reality shows. They all remind me of my friends from my all-girls high school, strong yet vulnerable. Certain kinds of girls are bred at all-girls schools, and beyond all the stereotypes, I'd like to think we're a bunch of tough cookies in a world where there aren't enough tough females. When JWoww punched that dude in the bar for calling Snooki fat, I thought, "I know some friends who would do that." Her simple explanation as to why--"you don't talk to my friend like that"--made me smile. I've had friends break bottles over people's faces for being "grimey." And while I don't advocate violence, shit, sometimes people really deserve it.

I'm sure I romanticize my teenage years more than I need to and know that I wasn't nearly as bad or as cool as I wanted to be. But I can say, with certainty, that at 15 and 16 I had some of the baddest friends around. Girls who would have taken a punch in a bar on a Saturday night and still made it to school Monday morning to talk about it over breakfast. When I watch the Jersey Shore--though raised on a different shore, miles away yet not so apart--I feel a special kinship to them that I never thought I would.