13 Going on 30

On Jenna's thirteenth birthday she realizes she is not as cool as she wants to be. She wants to be liked by the coolest kids in school. But when she realizes they don't really want to be her friend, but only use her to do their homework, she wishes to be thirty, flirty and thriving. To her surprise, the next day she wakes up as a thirty year old woman! As Jenna adjusts to her new age and life, she realizes life isn't all about what she wanted it to be when she was thirteen. Fame, popularity and success are not important if you don't have relationships with the people you love. Jenna is able to come to her roots and realize what is important in life when she reconciles with her middle school best friend, Matt. As a thirty year old, Jenna realizes Matt is the one for her, even if he was a bit nerdy in middle school. Jenna is then granted one more wish, to turn back time and end up with Matt!

Jenna: Jenna truly lives up to the stereotypical average middle school girl. She wants to be liked, popular, cute and in with the "in crowd" no matter the cost. She is smart, gets good grades and does the cool kids homework so they will like her. Jenna does whatever it takes to fit in and be liked. She goes against who she is, and even turns her back on her best friend in order to impress people that don't really care about her. The exaggeration in Jenna's character is that she actually gets her wish to be a different age and she gets to just fast forward through seventeen years of her life. That's not the case for middle school students. They don't get to just wish their middle school years away. They have to live through their early adolescent years and decide who they will become without a do-over like Jenna got.

Matt: Matt is the typical nice, chubby, nerdy kid you find in many middle schools. He has not yet finished going through puberty and the girls don't like him like they like the football quarterback. He has one or two great friends, but isn't the kid that everyone wants to be friends with. The cool kids tease Matt and use him as a laughing stock to make themselves feel better about many things. Despite their teasing, Matt stays true to his who he is and does his best to stay out of their way and tries to blend in with the crowd at school and not call attention to himself. The reason I think his character is exaggerated a bit is because it seems like he isn't affected by the way the cool kids tease him. I don't think a true middle school student wouldn't be wounded or hurt by the things the cool kids say and do to him. It's not so easy for kids to maintain "true to themselves" when they are being teased and made fun of in middle school.

Lucy: The "it girl" at school. The most popular girl at school who is also a huge bully and doesn't have any true friendships at school. She is pretty and most girls try to get her to like them. No matte the culture of a school, there will always be kids more popular than others, and Lucy is it in 13 going on 30. She is the girl that all the boys want to date, and all the girls want to be like. Jenna starts dressing and talking like Lucy to get on her good side, and even yet, Lucy doesn't let Jenna in at first. Lucy's character is exaggerated because in real life, chances of a group of girls following their pack leader around the way Lucy's girls do, isn't real. Sure the cool girl might have a group of friends, but in the movie her girls follow her in a v formation and are basically robots that just do whatever she commands them to.



Out of these three characters, I think I relate most to Jenna, although I wasn't exactly like her. I had lots of friends, but I wasn't anywhere near Lucy's level. I wasn't a mean girl. I tried to be friends with everyone, and for the most part that succeeded. But just like Jenna, I had insecurities as a middle school girl that sometimes made me wish I could just grow up already. In middle school, growing up seemed like the perfect solution to getting past the awkward stages in life that were hard sometimes. I had so many friends that often I felt like I didn't have any deep friendships. That was hard at times because I wanted to have best friends like some of the girls did, but it was tough to make best friends when I was friendly with everyone and most people already had their close groups of friends figured out since they went to elementary school together. I moved in 7th grade so I had to start from scratch!