I Enjoyed Being a Kid*
People assume that I have a female sibling and the Sisters Keene are based on my own experiences. I don’t. They weren’t. But I’m grateful and humbled readers think so; creating believable characters is the writer’s job, in any genre.
PreTeena isn’t based on my own children, either. For one thing, I have a son and a daughter, and their very close relationship bears no resemblance to Teena and Jeri’s. I’ll admit that parents Tess and Hugh are taller, more attractive versions of my husband and myself (well, me, really. My husband is tall and handsome), but that was just to make the whole thing easier (write what you know!) since the strip, at its core, isn’t even about the two sisters.
It’s about childhood and growing up.
Ten-year-old Teena thinks of herself as a kid. Not that she isn’t aware she’s a girl; she simply doesn’t experience or consider sex-based expectations, constraints, drawbacks (Teena would abhor the embracing of victimhood that is the scourge of today’s world). Everything is open to her, all things (within reason) are possible. I felt exactly that way throughout my childhood.
Jeri, who is 14, is acutely aware of her status as a pretty, blonde, teenaged girl – and the power that comes with it. I felt that, too, at her age, and used it with a ferocity I wouldn’t have imagined of the Fifth Grade me. Being fourteen might have made her a bride in, say, the 11th Century (life spans being what they were), but in the Western world of the 21stCentury, Jeri is a child - a fourteen-year-old who still won’t throw away her Barbie, no matter how many eyes scan her developing figure.
So, no. This strip wasn’t inspired by a sibling relationship. As you get to know these characters, toggle between what you were like when you were ten and when you were 14. That’s what I did when I created PreTeena.
*Lifted from Rodger’s and Hammerstein’s “I Enjoy Being a Girl” from “The Flower Drum Song”, the very first song I learned by heart, when I was about three.