White House Teen

In response to “Everyone Should Get This Message Loud and Clear: Leave Chelsea Alone,” by Courtenay J. Semel, Campus Correspondence, May 9:

Whether spending one’s adolescence in the White House is an opportunity or an onus is pure speculation from Courtenay Semel, me or anybody else. Only Chelsea Clinton can deem the drawbacks as nominal or costly. However, I disagree with Semel’s belief that Chelsea will suffer the loss of youth because she will not have had the typical experience. It is the valuing of the common over the uncommon in fear of being different that I contest.

Semel’s concern is that by being the President’s daughter Chelsea will not have a “normal” adolescence. By normal, said Semel, Chelsea cannot “hang out at the mall” or populate the club scene. What about Chelsea’s future with boyfriends? (I wonder if these would be concerns if Chelsea was a boy.) Is all Chelsea going to do is stay home and read books? This is why Semel pities the President’s daughter, claiming, “That’s no way for a teen-ager to live.”

What Semel thinks is stifling Chelsea is really stifling Semel, and that is normalcy. If you are “normal,” you don’t stand out, and it is Semel’s fear of being different that leads to her high esteem for normalcy. It is Chelsea’s “different” situation with which Semel sympathizes.

The author of the article is 13, and I am not deriding her essay. When I was 13, I never had anything published. (I’m 20.) I write this letter because I want to illuminate the erroneous rationale that Chelsea is missing out on her youth because her situation does not permit her to live the “normal” life of a teen. To be normal is not a privilege; it’s not a gift and it’s not a luxury.

RUBY A. DAVIS

Pico Rivera