Coming-of-age: My Girl edition

     My Girl (1991) takes us on a journey in the ever-changing life of eleven-year-old Vada Sultenfuss. Her mother died when she was born and her father runs a funeral home, giving her a strange and obsessive relationship with death. Her father often neglects Vada, and her feelings of isolation from her father only increase when he finds love with a cosmetologist, Shelly. Her best friend, Thomas J, the only one who truly understands her, dies, leaving her to deal with her struggles alone. My Girl is a heart wrenching account of both the beauty and pain of growing up, exemplified through Vada’s story of loss and growth.

Throughout the movie, we see Vada experience lots of traditional events that symbolize her aging. She has her first kiss with Thomas J, and for the first time in the movie, her aloof attitude towards what boys think about her starts to change. She gains a heightened awareness of what boys think of her and her desire to be pretty in their eyes comes through. She has Shelly do her makeup for the first time and discusses her insecurities with the boys in her class not being interested in her. However, out of all the boys in her class, there is one in particular that she pines over – her teacher, Mr. Bixler. She constantly vies for his attention by stealing money to join his summer creative writing class, biking by his house to talk to talk to him, and bragging that she’s finished her summer reading before her classmates. She fully plans on marrying him in the future and confides this in Thomas J. We can see clear signs of Vada’s coming-of-age through this strong, sudden, interest in boys which is a common point in any coming-of-age story.

Arguably the biggest theme in My Girl is Vada’s growth through the reconciliation of Thomas J and her mother’s deaths. Many times in the movie, we see scenes that show Vada’s fear and lack of understanding of death. We are never sure why she feels this way, but we learn later her father has never discussed the topic with her despite being surrounded by the dead. Vada takes on the cause of death of each client her father has as her own in an attempt to lessen her fears, but to no avail. There is no clear turning point where her feelings about death turn from confused and negative towards more accepting, but Thomas J’s death certainly played a large role. Not much of her grieving process is shown but there is a shift in her attitude from the beginning to the end. She transitions from isolating herself in her room to casually talking with Thomas J’s mother about his death and has even made a new friend. Vada and her father have their first real conversation about her mother since her passing and it’s clear that she has a new understanding of the topic. We’ve seen her grow from a naïve idea of death to a mature grasp that is the cornerstone of her coming-of-age experience.