Tina's Mouth Essay Questions

Tina’s Mouth: An Existential Comics Dairy Reflection
In Tina’s Mouth: An Existential Comic Diary, Keshni Kashyap writes about this fifteen-year-old girl (Kashyap. 2011, pg. 9), who is entering high school and is about to encounter many issues that young teenagers often face as being a high schooler. Two challenges that Tina runs into in the comic, is the complexity of being authentic and becoming knowledgeable about herself. These are adversities that many young ladies face going through high school and being exposed to new opportunities.
Complexity of Being Authentic
Tina runs into problems where she has outside influences affecting her self image and she has to remember to stay true to herself. This problematic situation happens a lot

throughout this comic. We begin to see Tina stumble across this difficulty, as Alex and herself become distinct and their friendship began to fade away. Alex begins to change her ways from dressing differently, to adventuring out into her love life (Kashyap. 2011, pgs. 38-39). This makes Tina realizes that maybe she do the same and and invest into more mature things… like her first kiss ( Kashyap. 2011, pg. 28). This is a good example of how society, friends, and media can influence one’s decision.
This is a comparison in young girls in our society today, because it is hard to be authentic when your friends are constantly influencing you to do the same things they are doing.

I connect this problem in Tina’s Mouth with virginity in our society today. In the particular part of the novel Tina is embarrassed that she has never had a kiss, and often this is how girls feel in our society about keeping their virginity until their late teens or early adulthood. We often hear how females are suppose to stay pure until you are married, but why is it that we tear girls down who haven’t had sex or even had their first kiss in high school? I believe this is why many girls lie about being a virgin at an old age, just because girls know that other female friends and guys would make fun of her. Being original and not feeding into what everyone else does, especially in high school, is very difficult because of peer pressure and trying to fit

in.
Urvashi Auntie told Tina that she can not please everyone and that you have to be true to yourself ( Kashyap.

2011, pg. 82 & 84). I believe that this is advice that every girl should take, being that many girls worry about how others perceive them. Even this advice was a very hard concept that I had to grasp in high school. Everyone isn’t going to like you and that everyone isn’t going to want to be your friend, because people change no matter if you like it or not. It’s not much you can do about it.
Becoming Self
Later on in the comic, you start to see Tina stepping out and trying to really define who she is as a person. Tina exemplifies this to the readers when she decides to be in the play (Kashyap. 2011. Pg. 89). This where we start to see Tina come out her shell of being shy and introvert. Even though she never thought that she would see herself being into drama, she actually liked it. We go on to see that Tina is starting to venture and invest into her crush ( Kashyap. 2011, pg 105).
Now we see Tina coming out about her crush, although it didn’t go the way she had planned in the end. She still tried and gave it a chance. This is the start of Tina coming out and discovering who she really is. This is a huge step that a lot of girls in our society takes. Discovering who they really are because people can tell you who you should be, but you have to take the step in making the decision yourself. Will you let other people, society and your past define

you?
Throughout the end of the book we start to see a new Tina, a Tina that takes risk and try new things. This takes courage to step up and begin to be yourself no matter what people will say or think of you. I feel as if this novel would encourage young minority girls who face the same problems of Tina going through high school. These challenges often make or break a female in her life. Becoming knowledgeable of yourself and staying authentic to yourself are two important concepts that stood out to me in this comic book. I believe it’s a lesson that all girls from all over the world can take from this book, because in all environments you are going face these challenges.