Belly’s Growth: A Reflection on the Messiness of Change Throughout College

By Isabella Magalhaes, Staff Writer Edited by Maya Merante

I was fifteen, soon to turn sixteen, when The Summer I Turned Pretty came out. I felt all the “end of the world” clichés most teenagers feel. I was uncertain of who I was, infatuated with the idea of love, and hating myself all at once. When I watched the first episode and saw how much Belly reminded me of myself—her love for small comforts like volleyball and the beach, her years of being overlooked—it felt like fate. The messiness in her personal life, her longing for “that one person,” and her bubbly attitude helped me feel seen at a time I felt invisible.

Over the years, the show became deeply ingrained in my life. Belly mirrored my own feelings and hardships. Watching her find herself in the final season felt like the perfect goodbye. I’ve also been figuring out who I am this past year. Her decision to go to Paris and pushing herself toward independence while still being vulnerable about missing home resonated with me as a first-year student at Syracuse. Since arriving, I’ve attended numerous watch parties for new episodes and debated the show’s chronicles with friends. Almost everyone thinks Belly is a horrific character. They point to her selfishness, bad decisions, or accuse her of “breaking up a family.” But I’m firmly on the other side—a Belly apologist, if you will. I have a soft spot for her, even when she’s made terrible choices; she always acted with her whole heart. So it begs the question: Is Belly truly an immoral character, or does she represent the chaos, messiness, and growth of young adulthood in a more dramatized, Amazon Prime way?

The summer before I went to college felt both old and new. Graduating from high school, driving away with my hands raised out of the car sunroof—it was surreal. I counted everything as my last before I left: swimming at Walden Pond, hanging out with friends, staying out late, and adventuring in Boston after hours. Even though I knew I’d return for breaks, it still felt like everything would change. Cousins, for Belly, was a magical place filled with childhood memories, laughter, and love. For me, Boston holds the same allure in summer: beaches, sunsets in the Commons, the humid, sweet air, and the suburbs blooming with white flowers. Boston is how I measure my life—everything memorable tied back to summer.  

When I was younger, my mother took me and my brother everywhere in the city—museums, parks, every body of water—even in the sweltering heat, it wasn’t enough to stop our day trips. It all felt infinite, as if time was a concept and adulthood a myth. Both Belly’s youth and mine were measured in sunlight and longing. Before college, there’s a moment when you realize what you’re leaving behind. By the end of season one, Belly faces this. She knows her summers will never be the same. She chooses Conrad but loses Jeremiah, and though she loves Susannah, she can’t prevent her sickness. Belly had to accept, whether she liked it or not, that either way, she would lose someone she loved, changing her world at Cousins forever. I felt that same loss leaving Boston—my city, my family, my house, my friends. I knew when I came back that I would be someone who has changed; someone who no longer has the privilege of living in a world where my parents will always protect me. My loss wasn’t the loss of a person, but rather the loss of the belief in the world’s inherent goodness, a perspective you can only hold during adolescence, and which disappears once you experience how harsh reality can be. Summer is now a powerful yet bitter reminder of that. Wrapped in burning sand, melting ice cream, and laughter is the acknowledgment that for both Belly and me, everything changed at once.\

By the second season, Belly undergoes a noticeable shift. She’s no longer the big-eyed yearner we know her to be. She’s closed off, depressed, and uncertain again—not about boys this time, but rather her future and her role within it. After losing Susannah, the boys, and stability with her family, she feels unanchored. She loses her captaincy in volleyball, fails her classes, and spirals. In life, there will always be seasons of despair, when failure feels like the standard and success is impossible. For me, that was junior year of high school. I was overwhelmed, struggling to balance schoolwork, clubs, and friendships. Every attempt to fix things seemed to make them worse.

Like Belly, I made mistakes in my worst moments, but they were honest ones. She leaned on Jeremiah after Susannah’s death; I flailed through responsibilities. Neither of us could do better with what we had at the time. That’s the nature of growth: awkward periods where we feel stuck. If we can be gentle with ourselves in those times, we can extend the same grace to others—even to Belly.

Season three shows Belly’s transformation in Paris. She sheds the old version of herself and becomes Isabel, building an identity outside of Cousins. She works two jobs, shares an apartment with three roommates, practices French, bartends clumsily in typical Belly fashion—truly independent for the first time. From her blunt bob to her casual smoking, Belly has experimented with her freedom, having become someone entirely new. In the final episode, after her birthday party with Conrad, she admits the truth behind her move to Paris, “I think I was kinda hiding out. At first, it was really hard and really lonely…I guess I kind of did think that I deserved that.” Belly acknowledges her guilt over Jeremiah and Conrad, but she doesn’t let it paralyze her. Instead, she pushes forward.

Belly isn’t perfect, but that’s the point. She’s a complicated young woman navigating grief, love, and desire. She wants to make season-one-Belly proud, just as I want to make my sixteen-year-old self proud. Being at Syracuse, away from my family and the safety of home, has forced me to rely solely on myself. This has sparked growth, but also mistakes. My experience reflects the societal norm that young women, like Belly, are constantly held to harsher standards than men—we’re not allowed to make mistakes without facing judgment and criticism. Yet Belly shows us that even when everything falls apart, whether it be relationships, dreams, or stability, we can come back stronger.

Instead of retreating home to Philadelphia, Belly went to Paris. She grew, she changed, she evolved—as have I. Throughout the years, both Belly and I have yearned for simplicity and security, only to crash and burn, and later use those lessons to grow. Belly isn’t a warning of who not to be, but an example of what young women can experience and the mistakes we can make, yet still come out stronger on the other side. Growth is messy; it isn’t a linear path. It involves accepting our losses, embracing the awkward, and striving to improve. Both mine and Belly’s lives prove just that. 

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