For young people, pride and shame often coexist. These are the years when we begin to understand who we are, but also how much other people’s gaze can hurt or make us feel accepted. At school, on social media, in sports, friendships or family life, many teenagers often clash with what is considered "normal" and what, instead, risks being mocked, excluded or kept hidden.
Pride can then become a space of freedom and recognition: the possibility of feeling seen without having to change ourselves to please others. But growing up also means grappling with the need to belong, to be accepted, and not to feel “too much” or “out of place”. And so pride can become something complicated: sometimes it turns into a mask, a need for approval, or a constant performance. At other times, it risks becoming confined to rigid labels or ways of asserting oneself that exclude others.
In this issue, we want to tell stories, ask questions and open up new ways of thinking about pride as a personal emotion, a collective experience and a political space.