As portrayed on television, teenage girls - from the cocktail-swilling sophisticates of Gossip Girl to the divas-in-training of Glee - often seem older than their years.
What happened to coming-of-age stories such as My So-called Life and Freaks and Geeks that captured teens in the awkward limbo between child and adult?
MTV steps into that gap with the aptly named Awkward, the sometimes painfully funny story of 15-year-old Jenna Hamilton, who is struggling to get through high school (and attract the attention of a special boy) without dying of embarrassment.
Here's the setup: Jenna, played by Ashley Rickards, thought of herself as invisible, especially after an intimate encounter with jock Matty (Beau Mirchoff) at camp.
"Nobody can know that I like you," he told her afterwards.
Then Jenna got an anonymous letter telling her, "You could disappear and no-one would notice." Sometimes, she wrote in her blog, "being a teenager makes you want to die".
The ensuing chain of events, including a fall, a hospital stay and a ridiculous shoulder cast, managed to get Jenna noticed for the first time, because everyone thought she attempted suicide.
As a result, she has resolved to stop fading into the background and, instead of "Invisible Girl", she has christened herself "That Girl".
Jenna was born from "my awkward, embarrassing experiences as a teenager", creator Lauren Iungerich acknowledges. "I wrote this show to my 15-year-old self."
She doesn't think she has reinvented the wheel with this show.
"I've just tried to write something that's truly honest," she said.
Rickards, best known as Sam on One Tree Hill in the 2008-09 season, fell for Awkward because "the writing was so unique and so realistic, none of these characters can be stereotyped".
Matty, the boy Jenna loves, "is much more than just the jock", she says. (There's another boy, too: Jake, played by Brett Davern, who would be perfect if he didn't already have a cheerleader girlfriend.)"My mum is much more than just the mum. All of them have incredible depth."
Characters will continue to surprise in the course of the season, Rickards says.
"We are going to see Matty go to lengths that we didn't think he could go to, good or bad," she said. "[Jenna will] go to lengths that test the boundaries of friendship, of relationships."
Like other characters, mean-girl Sadie (played by Nikki DeLoach) isn't the typical TV mean girl, and the facade surrounding her plus-size popularity dissolves in a future episode.
Even the boys are portrayed with rare nuance.
But the heart of Awkward is Jenna, and the message is her message.
"The empowerment of this show is that she finds and defines herself for herself," Iungerich said.
Potential viewers shouldn't assume Awkward is sappy sweet or squeaky clean. Remember, this is MTV.
Comedy, romance, depth of character development and potential scandal: no wonder Awkward is an early hit. And no wonder Iungerich, whose slim writing credits include 10 Things I Hate About You, is so popular at MTV that the show has been picked up for a second season.
• Awkward screens at 9.30pm on Mondays on MTV. It is repeated on Fridays at 5pm, Sundays at 8.30pm and Wednesdays at 8pm.
