What was Connie meant to represent in the story?

I think that Connie can be seen as representing much in
the story.  On one hand, Connie can come to represent the modern adolescent.  She is
concerned with things that occupy the mindset of most adolescents.  She is concerned
with her looks, boys, how she appears to others, and seeking to establish her own
identity away from her homelife.  Like many adolescents, she has to come to terms with
reality and mature past these desires into issues that are more substantive.  Indeed, in
this she is different in the great extent by which she experiences this.  I think that
Connie can be seen as a representation of the modern woman.  Oates might be constructing
Connie in being a modern woman, one who possesses freedom and choice.  Yet, in this
self- assured vision, threats that were not previously seen have to be accounted for,
something that was not an issue before.  The presence of the Arnold Friends, the type of
people who seek to control and manipulate others into dangerous or even deadly
situations is something that feminism never quite accounted for.  In Oates' work, Connie
might be that individual for whom liberation takes place on different levels such as
personal, social, and psychological.