Teenage Girls in Society

Portier describes tradition as a language, an act, or even an historical text handed to us by a family member, the people we interact with on a daily basis and the cultural setting we are a part of. Such tradition, defines who someone is best by dialogue because tradition can give enough illustration of something or give enough room to compare between past and present traditions. (20) Tradition, helps us question and answer the possibilities of human existence and experience through the problems and situations we encounter every day, which life goes on according to what you know as a tradition and influences your everyday life. It acts as an answer to everyday problems or situations that can be answered by past traditions that you become familiar with in time. (17) An example of this tradition would be in the character Amal. Mohamed Nasrullah Abdel-Hakim is a sixteen year old Australian Palestinian-Muslim high school girl who struggles with everyday Teenage issues impacted by Society. Although she is from Australia, these issues are universal. Issues like drinking, smoking, peer pressure and body image are just a few that her friends in the novel, “Does my Head Look big in this, face too. However she stays true to her religion even in the midst of society’s influence especially on teenage girls. In this book she is a Muslim and struggles with the fallacies that come with the idea of the Islamic tradition formed by society. In her efforts to change the minds of those who think of Muslims as being terrorist, she decides to step out on faith and wear a Hijab to school. Amal proudly puts her religion before her outward thoughts and feelings but for many teenage girls grounded on western cultural traditions, which is hard to do, so T...

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.... But Amal is a good example of a teenage girl who was able to surpass societal influences and grow in herself and faith. Something that other teenage girls can learn to do by reading this book. Portier makes interesting points on the minds of humans and how it shapes and individual into who they are which gives us the answers to the great questions we ask in life in what he states, “harbors its own resources for self-criticism and growth.” (22)

Works Cited

Carroll, Robert P., and Stephen Prickett. The Bible authorized King James version. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Print.

Fattah, Randa. Does my head look big in this?. New York: Orchard Books, 20072005. Print.

Pickthall, Marmaduke William. Holy Quran. Delhi: Taj Co., 1983. Print.

Portier, William L.. Tradition and incarnation: foundations of Christian theology. New York: Paulist Press, 1994. Print.