Many would argue that one of the most necessary human needs is the desire to be accepted by others. A loving family is one of the best ways to feel accepted, but when people come from broken homes, the only way to obtain this human need of belonging is to join gangs or hate groups. However, this desire is amplified during the adolescent years of a person’s life, when social status and relationships are seemingly the most important things. As a result, many teenagers seek to conform to mainstream societal norms order to feel accepted and wanted by other people. In the 1980’s, punk rock was the culture among American teenagers. In A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan, freckles symbolize how punk rock culture stems from physical and emotional insecurities in both Rhea and Jocelyn’s lives.

At one point, Rhea hears Lou’s perspective on the freckles, “But the freckles, I go, and my throat gets that ache. The freckles are the best part, Lou says. Some guy is going to go apeshit for those freckles” (Egan 57). Rhea is so desperate to be accepted for, in her eyes, a major physical flaw that she listens to Lou, who is a creepy, married man with children. It’s ironic because she then proceeds to say, “He (Lou) goes, The world is full of shitheads, Rhea. Don’t listen to them – listen to me. And I know that Lou is one of those shitheads. But I listen” (Egan 57). Rhea’s willingness to listen and believe Lou’s compliments proves how desperate she was to feel accepted in any way possible. Later in the novel, it is discovered that Lou lied to Rhea, “Rhea puts her arms around me (Jocelyn). Even after all the years, she doesn’t hesitate. Her skin hangs loose – freckled skin ages prematurely, Lou told me once, and Rhea is all freckles. ‘Our friend Rhea,’ he said, ‘she’s doomed.”’(Egan 87).
It becomes apparent that Rhea is extremely self conscience of her freckles when she exclaims, “Thank God I’ll be able to remove them, when I’m old enough and can pay for it myself. Until that time I have my dog collar and green rinse, because how can anyone call me “the girl with freckles” when my hair is green?” (Egan 43). Rhea hates her natural physical appearance so much that it fuels her desire to conform and be punk, which is a great camouflage to disguise her childish freckles. However, she admits to realizing that, “One thing I’ve noticed: no punk rockers have freckles. They don’t exist” (Egan 46). She knows that she is not truly punk, but uses the punk rock look of colored hair and funky clothes as a mask to hide her insecurities. Her easy adoption of the punk rock culture and her willingness to listen to Lou emphasizes how Rhea’s physical insecurities caused her to conform in order to feel accepted.
Jocelyn’s insecurities are more emotional than physical. Her emotional instability causes her to adopt the punk rock look, specifically, “..chopped black hair that looks permanently wet, and twelve ear piercings that I gave her with a pointed earring, not using ice. She has a beautiful half-Chinese face,” (Egan 43). Jocelyn uses punk rock as a mask to hide behind, which allows her to experiment with drugs and to be mistreated by Lou. Jocelyn’s realization comes at the end of the novel, when her and Rhea visit Lou on his deathbed, “So this is it – what cost me all that time. A man who turned out to be old, a house that turned out to be empty. I can’t help it, I start to cry” (Egan 87). While Rhea seemed to outgrow her physical insecurities, Jocelyn did fully recover emotionally until she realized her wrongdoings in messing around with Lou as a teenager. There is a melancholy tone of Jocelyn’s narration at Lou’s deathbed,
“I’m forty-three and so is Rhea, married with three children in Seattle. I’m back at my mother’s again, trying to finish my B.A. at UCLA Extension after some long, confusing detours. ‘Your desultory twenties,’ my mother calls my lost time, trying to make it sound reasonable and fun, but it started before I was twenty and lasted much longer. I’m praying it’s over. Some mornings, the sun looks wrong outside my window” (Egan 86).
Rhea has a stable life as a mother and wife, while Jocelyn still lives with her mother and struggles to obtain a college degree. When the punk rock fad slipped away with time, and the insecurities remained, Rhea was able to move on while Jocelyn continued to struggle until age forty-three. Both women are now the same age, but handled their insecurities much differently as time went on.

Overall, Rhea and Jocelyn emphasize that adopting punk rock culture was a way to cope with their physical and emotional insecurities. Rhea’s freckles may represent youth, but protect her in the end when she is emotionally stable later in life. Jocelyn takes a different path, and when her punk rock mask slips away, she is a broken drug addict struggling to find her purpose in life. Both friends were once linked by a fad that supported the surrendering of oneself to heavy music, head banging, and colored hair. It could be inferred that Egan believes that physical insecurities are easier to overcome than emotional insecurities, which is apparent through the different lives of Rhea and Jocelyn. Lou is a character that provides extra information as to how desperate the two girls really are to feel accepted. However, the freckle insecurity for Rhea is a fad similar to how punk rock was. For Jocelyn, the repercussions of her emotional insecurities would last her far longer.