Stereotypes In Megan Renshaw's Oh My God

When she repeats the same statement that she “can’t be in love” nearly a hundred pages later, she reaffirms this struggle (Smith, 356). However, a few lines later, she admits “Oh My God. I am in love with a fourteen-year-old boy” (Smith, 356). The shock in her tone, the shock in her revelation, the shock in her acceptance all resonate to prove one other thing: she is defying the standards put into place by her peers. By admitting this, and more so by dating Ryan Dean, she is directly opposing the stereotypical idea that adolescents are peer-oriented. She is succumbing to her true desires, her desire to love someone younger than her, and even she recognizes that this is out of the ordinary. Annie already seems to be defying many other expectations

Megan Renshaw is noted to also be one of the brightest girls in the class, however, she was “the kind of girl who only wanted a Chas Becker trophy mate because all the other girls at Pine Mountain wanted him” (Smith, 141). In other words, her attachment to her boyfriend was not sincere, she did it only so her peers would look up to her. She was willing to risk her own happiness for the sake of the people surrounding her, but fairly quickly in the novel, she decides to go against her peers. She does so by pursuing her desire to date Ryan Dean, and, interestingly, she is the one who approaches him. Ryan Dean himself is taken aback by the fact that “ Megan Renshaw, in all her smoking five-out-of-five-habanero hotness, was going to kiss… Ryan Dean Never-Been-Kissed-by-Anyone-Who-Wasn’t-Alive-When-Sputnik-Got-Launched West” (Smith, 135). Ryan’s extensive description of the two indicates that it is not common for people on two different levels to make out. Megan takes this a step further when she breaks up with Chas simply because she “is in love with...Ryan Dean” (Smith, 386). In other words, she abandons her image, her presence in front of her peers, in an attempt to seek her own desires. Most of her peers disapprove of this behavior. Even Joey scolds Ryan Dean, admitting that it is “unfair to treat a guy like that, even if it’s Chas” (Smith, 143), and although Ryan Dean eventually resists his urges, Megan continues to disregard the