Meg Wolitzer: Why are teenage girls drawn to books about mental instability?
When I was a teenager I was drawn to books about girls with serious emotional problems, like Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, and maybe that’s because girls are always made out to be more vulnerable than boys. Can drama on the inside be a compelling substitute for freedom on the outside, and have reading habits changed since?

OK.  I find this article kind of baffling.

When I was 16, I read the Bell Jar as a story about the effects of trying to squeeze yourself into a mold of femininity that didn’t fit.  Like a Catcher in the Rye or Dead Poet’s Society for girls.  I felt like i was under an immense amount of pressure to both do well in school and to figure out how to be happy and popular.  And I rebelled by performing a very nerdy kind of craziness – with torn up jeans and clothes I’d dyed black, doing theater tech and laughing hysterically in math class because I was so exhausted.  And sex was baffling – boys my own age were actively repulsed by me (two boys ended up in a slap fight at graduation over not standing next to me) but older men thought I was mighty fine.  And The Bell Jar, Girl Interrupted and The Yellow Wallpaper all said, it’s not your fault you feel crazy.

How is Meg Wolitzer not seeing that?