sexuality : teen/young adult: page 3: sites articles books........ .Talent Development Resources -..home page...site map

 

What is it like in this culture to be a male, and not feel combative, and yet feel required to look like you are, in order to be 'one of the boys.'... what do you do these days if you don't feel sexually precocious, and you want to wait for some reason, whatever it is? All these things are shaping influences that have to do with how heavy a weight our adolescence is... we decide we're not going to be with our parents forever, and we've got to make it with this group, and then we have to get accepted to make it with them. And that starts something. from interview with Kenneth W. Christian, Ph.D.  - psychologist and author of book "Your Own Worst Enemy: Breaking the Habit of Adult Underachievement"  site: Maximum Potential Project photo: Seth (Adam Brody), Marissa (Mischa Barton) and Ryan (Benjamin McKenzie) in "The O.C."

 

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Emma Watson - on kissing her co-stars [in "Harry Potter.."]:  Oh my God, no, no chance, no chance.  That's not in my contract!    [imdb.com bio]

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Actresses Mary-Kate (R)  and Ashley Olsen -  photo Albert Ferreira / Reuters

The movie "New York Minute".. is the real test for Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen as potential movie stars. ...  The girls, nearly identical, are genuinely smart and perky on-screen. They embody a pair of livelier Keane paintings with disturbing sex appeal.  They are on the cusp of 18, but look far younger. Indeed, though nobody wants to say it out loud, the sisters have been marketed as little Lolitas since hitting puberty. And their cozy embraces during photo shoots have spawned many a creepy adult male fantasy.  Handlers and parents may express "shock" over this, but everybody knows it's been part of the Olsen p.r. thrust for several years. This is a fact, aside from the appeal to their core audience of still-pretty-innocent children. Liz Smith column, nypost.com May 6, 2004

painting by  Margaret Keane :  "On The Threshold"  keane-eyes.com

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....... .. .. Brigitte [Emily Perkins].  Ging, what's going on? Something's wrong, like more than you being just female. Can you say something please? Ginger [Katharine Isabelle].  I can't have a hairy chest, B, that's f**ked. Brigitte.  Bitten on a full moon, now you're hairy.  Ginger.  Well, thank you for taking my total f**king nightmare so seriously... Ginger Snaps (2000) [dvd] By (re)-articulating and modifying horror conventions, Ginger Snaps depicts the experiences of young women coming to terms with their sexuality.  In many respects Ginger Snaps contributes to dominant discourses of reproduction, however the film also demands feminist scrutiny.  Ginger Snaps merits a reading through psychoanalytic theories - specifically through Barbara Creed's analysis of transgressive femininity in the horror genre.  Creed's [book] The Monstrous Feminine considers how representations of body horror are connected to Kristeva's theory of abjection.

.. .. Kristeva's psychoanalytic account of feminine sexuality in turn lends force to a reading of Ginger Snaps that incorporates feminist critiques of reproduction narratives.  Emily Martin, for instance, contends that scientific accounts of reproduction reinscribe normative femininities by associating passivity with menstruation and activity with spermatogenesis.  Ginger Snaps incorporates both the discursive frameworks of menstruation in medical texts and the pervasive ideologies of normative "femininity" that are in operation in contemporary society. from article "Something's Wrong, Like More Than  You Being Female": Transgressive Sexuality  and Discourses of Reproduction in Ginger Snaps -  by Bianca Nielsen [thirdspace] photos of Katharine Isabelle, left, from ginger-snaps.com photo at right: Emily Perkins with Isabelle as Ginger more on Ginger Snaps and the sequel, including quotes by Emily Perkins on page: the shadow self

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We don't usually look to comic strips for insight into teen sexuality, but every parent in America should eavesdrop on the 12-year-old Barry and her friend as they talk over their early experiments while sewing reversible tote bags in home ec. There are few more lucid accounts of the aftermath of sexual abuse than Barry's. "When your inner life is a place you have to stay out of," she tells us, "having an identity is impossible. Remembering not to remember fractures you."  from review [by Lev Grossman, Time mag., 9.2.02] of book One Hundred Demons by Lynda Barry  image by Lynda Barry from cover of her illustrated novel about a teen girl: Cruddy

 

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"Perhaps the deepest damage that sexual abuse can do to a child is to shake her trust
in her own instincts, so that s/he becomes a stranger and an outcast to her own body"

As R.D.Laing pointed out, this kind of divorce of the body and the self is developed at
the time of abuse as a necessary defence, but in adulthood, "the self wishes
to be wedded to and embedded in the body, yet is constantly afraid to lodge in the body
for fear of there being subject to attacks and dangers which it cannot escape."

from article:  Cognitive Accommodations to Childhood Sexual Abuse
 

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[Why is sex or sexual self-esteem so important for this generation rather than issues of economic and social equality? Why has so-called lipstick or girlie feminism emerged?] What people don't understand is that talking about sex and sexual self-esteem is talking about equality.  When I meet with high school students and they want to discuss sex, I realize we are talking about equality. It's just a different path to the same goal. In our book, we put emphasis on the "Do-Mes," the lipstick feminists, because that's been our culture.  I think we've seen women in our generation -- Bust magazine is a great example of this -- who say, adamantly, "I'm going to be female, and being female is just as valuable as being male."

.. .. I don't think these women are saying, "I'm going to be female, going to be objectified, going to wear sexy clothes and so on and be part of the backlash against feminism." I think they're saying, "I'm going to do all these things because I want to embrace my femininity." Amy Richards - from article: A Manifesto for Third Wave  Feminism - by Tamara Straus: alternet.org Amy Richards [left] and Jennifer Baumgardner are co-authors of book: Manifesta : Young Women, Feminism, and the Future

*related page:**self-esteem / self concept
 

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There were times when I detested this awful image of a slutty bimbo. Some retarded machos who can't tell a TV comedy from reality tried to pick me up in a mean way many times. It was as if I was a naive stupid teenie who sleeps with every guy in real life. ...  Today I'm proud of the fact that I can play the 'Kelly' part in such a convincing way. And aside from those guys I can live with that image very well. Christina Applegate   Gong (magazine, Germany) August 19, 1994

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The Fast & The Furious star Michelle Rodriguez is turning down sexy roles - because she hates being an object of lust. The tough-talking Latino movie star is urging movie makers to stop sending her scripts which feature her in the shower or having sex - because she has no intention of showing off her shapely body.  She says, "I had a couple of offers to do some hot scenes in the shower with some guy, and to make it real hot and sexy. The next thing you know, I'd be the next J.LO or something! I want success the hard way.  "I don't want people thinking of me sexually. I don't want people to be like, 'God, she's hot looking. Look at her in that shirt with her t**s showing.'"imdb.com Celebrity News 3/15/02

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In a way it's selfish, but it would be the worst thing I could do for my career. If I take my clothes off for a magazine, it's like saying, 'Oh well, if I can't act at least I can look good on the cover.' And I don't want to be that person. Estella Warren - about choosing not to do modeling assignments such as a "provocative" cover for Maxim magazine to promote "Planet of the Apes" [Talk mag., Aug.2001]

 

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<< I've been approached by people who think I'm older. Maybe because of the makeup, the way I dress, and, generally, the way I look makes me kind of uncomfortable, because I might look older than I actually am, but underneath it all, I'm only thirteen. It's kind of scary. It's a hard feeling to not know where you fit in yet. - Hannah, age 13 ~ ~ Sheena, 15, tries on clothes in a department store dressing room >>*** ....from Girl Culture by Lauren Greenfield

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Piper Perabo and Jessica Pare, stars of director Lea Pool's female coming-of-age story Lost and Delirious... play teenaged students at an Ontario [Canada] girls college who are madly in love with one another... their passion is demonstrated in a rather explicit love scene..  "Love scenes can't help but be similar because they're so similar in their technicality and choreography," Perabo said.. "And the fact that it's with another woman didn't really factor into the equation for me." Pare agreed.. "I think it would have been dishonest to portray this particular relationship (without the love scene). Sex is important, and sexuality is important, and it's part of our culture." ... "It's a really romantic movie," Perabo said, "so if you watch a lot of reality-based things right now, they're dramatic but not necessarily romantic. So in a way maybe you start to believe that things can't be both." Pare added: "I think something a lot of people go through in their adolescence is this intensity and purity and this discovery of your emotions. I think it's so too bad that people just write that off as hormones."***[Edmonton Sun, July 27, 2001]

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.. .. Deborah Tolman.. started her project with the aim to uncover how these girls talked about their sexual desires, because she thought that this component of their experience was missing from contemporary discussions of the sexual behavior of young people.

However, as her research progressed, she realized that young women nearly always found barriers to their experiences of desire.  Tolman argues that their stories show "how a patriarchal society tries to keep girls and women at bay by forcing, or attempting to force, a wedge between their psyches and their bodies and how girls deal with these forces". Our society gives these girls "a choice between their sexual feelings and their safety", making it very difficult for them to acknowledge their own desires or enjoy themselves as sexual agents. from review by Christian Perring, Ph.D. - on book review site  Metapsychology  mentalhelp.net/books Dilemmas of Desire: Teenage Girls Talk about Sexuality by Deborah L. Tolman

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Sexual play and acts of aggression are common for girls, according to Sharon Lamb, a psychology professor at St. Michael's College, but they are conducted in secrecy and often burden the participants with lifelong guilt. Based on interviews with 122 women and girls from a fairly wide range of socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds (29 were African-American and 22 Latina), this accessible and engaging study reveals that most girls experience sexual and aggressive feelings that fall outside cultural notions of the "good girl."  Lamb examines different ways girls express their ambivalence about their sexuality and aggressiveness: keeping their play and their anger secret from adults, sexually torturing their Barbie dolls and pretending to be victims or "playing dead" so that they can experience sensual pleasure without being full participants.  She draws a clear line between sexual play and coercion, but at the same time finds examples of behavior that could be considered coercive by adults but was experienced by the girls as positive and pleasurable. [Publishers Weekly review]

.. .. The Secret Lives of Girls: What Good Girls Really Do-- Sex Play, Aggression, and  Their Guilt - by Sharon Lamb

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Are you ever scared that you're being used as a sex symbol? Brooke Shields: No, not really. I know people might think that I am, but just a few opinions aren't really going to hurt me that much. People can think what they want to think, but I know what's true. ... I [posed nude] two or three years ago, but I wouldn't do it anymore. You know, there's a gap between the time of nine or ten and when you're thirteen. Now I'm starting to get more conscious of myself. ...    Are you nervous because your friends might see you in "Pretty Baby"? They know that I'm not really like that. People always say, "Aren't you afraid that you'll be like that movie?" That's so ridiculous because it's a movie. It's not real life and if they are my real friends, then they'll understand.[Rolling Stone, April 6, 1978]    ~ ~ Brooke seems to have kept her perspective over the Pretty Baby [1978] uproar. "It's only a role," she explains. "I'm not going to grow up and be a prostitute. If I were in a Walt Disney movie people would never ask me if the part would affect my life. That's so dumb."  [People 5/29/1978]  /  photo from The Brooke Book by Brooke Shields

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The grand old house that is the setting for much of the film ["Pretty Baby"] is filled with dark wood balustrades, lace-covered mantels, plush velvet furniture, and magical dappled light. The movie is steamy and introverted.  Most visually startling of all is the beauty of child star Shields. Her face is that of movie siren from the 1950s - the 22-year-old Elizabeth Taylor. Whereas Taylor had sexual naivete, huge breasts, and an hourglass shape, Shields has a straight.. prepubescent body and a stagy sexuality.  She also plays the games of child - a charming, strong-willed child. [Director Louis] Malle tries to create a new kind of innocent - born in a brothel and growing up there, without hangups or fears, in the bosom of a family of loving if fallen women. But no amount of care and sensitivity - and Malle is extremely cautious - can quell the disturbing questions that the plot raises. By depicting the mating of an adult male with a powerless female child, Malle tells a story as old as patriarchy... That the happy, carefree Violet [Shields] does not appear to be scarred by this relationship makes Malle's use of a familiar male fantasy even trickier. ... For activist Robin Morgan, "Pretty Baby" is propaganda for patriarchal values. Susan Braudy.....[Ms. magazine / On the Arts 1978]

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...related books:

Emily White. Fast Girls: Teenage Tribes and the Myth of the Slut

Rose Weitz.  The Politics of Women's Bodies: Sexuality, Appearance, and Behavior

 

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Naomi Wolf.. believes that "shame, silence and secrecy" linger around female sexuality. In order to destroy this aura, she says, women need to discuss and write about their sexual  histories openly. They also need to initiate their daughters into a sense of joyful womanhood. Her own adolescence was full of confusing signals. ... At 15, being fitted for a diaphragm was "easier than getting your learner's permit to drive a car." But new sexual freedoms came with a twofold message to girls: "You can do anything... and you can get called a slut for it."  She believes that this double standard persists in today's culture... a society that encourages girls to embrace sexuality before they're emotionally ready and then damns them for doing so.   [Jewish Bulletin of Northern California, July 11, 1997 ] ***book:**Promiscuities : The Secret Struggle for Womanhood by Naomi Wolf

 
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Britney Spears, 1999

Carol Gilligan and Lyn Mikel Brown, in their classic Meeting at the Crossroads, eloquently described the way in which girls go from being distinct personalities at ten to amorphous, uncertain creatures at thirteen. An analogous process, I am convinced, takes place in relation to girls' loss of the "voice" of their own desire. The culture that surrounds girls signals to them that they must, sexually, forget themselves. They must become passive in relation to the energy of desire, or detached from owning it, even in the face of its increasingly active pressure. This situation -- the mystification that intervenes between girlhood and womanhood -- reminds me of a scene in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass. Alice finds herself wandering in a beautiful, dark forest. She is joined by a young deer, which accompanies her in perfect amiability. The two share the journey with a sense of deep familiarity. But when they emerge from the wood, the fawn recognizes its companion for what she is: "I'm a Fawn ... You're a human child!" The creature bounds away in alarm, leaving young Alice alone. Something like this happens to us at the threshold of adolescence. "What are you?" the girl asks of her own desire -- once her companion, now wary of the light. And: "What am I?" The girl must now pass into the unforgiving glare of social reality in which human and beast -- consciousness and appetite -- confront each other in a state of estrangement before the relearning begins. The girl's consciousness and the animal aspect of her nature must assume nam**es that insist they are separate beings ("And, dear me! you're a human child!") -- rather than names that allow them to remain parts of each other. The girl, denatured, becomes a mystery to herself. *ffrom book:**Promiscuities : The Secret Struggle for Womanhood by Naomi Wolf more books: Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll, John Tenniel (Illustrator) Meeting at the Crossroads : Women's Psychology and Girl's Development by Carol Gilligan, Lyn Mikel Brown. [Book News review:] "During the course of five years, the authors interviewed 100 girls, listening on several defined levels to gain understanding of what happens as identity develops during adolescence.

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*Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex  by Judith Levine, Joycelyn M. Elders

"In America today, it is nearly impossible to publish a book that says children and teenagers can have sexual pleasure and be safe too," writes journalist Levine (My Enemy, My Love). Levine has somehow pulled that off. Western European countries assume that "sexual expression is a healthy and happy part of growing up"; thus Levine argues that sex is not necessarily bad for minors, and that puritanical attitudes often backfire. According to her, as the age of sexual initiation drops in America, the age of consent is rising.

She observes that most so-called pedophiles are attracted to teenagers rather than kids an important subtlety recently aired in the media. (Still, her call for common sense on pedophilia is marred by an inadequate acknowledgment of the extent of online child porn, as documented in Philip Jenkins's recent Beyond Tolerance.)

She notes the disturbing trend toward pathologizing young children's eroticized play and criticizes mainstream America for letting the Christian right steer sex education toward an emphasis on abstinence. Compounding that, she says, the right wing has expunged abortion discussions. A Ms. and Nerve.com contributor, Levine argues, contra Mary Pipher (Reviving Ophelia), that love may ruin teenage girls more than sex. At one point, Levine cogently contends that the term "normal" is "subjective and protean"; she prefers "normative," which means "what most people do." It's a good start to confronting some vital questions.  [from Publishers Weekly review]
 

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*sites :
 

The Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention (G-CAPP)
".. was founded in 1995. G-CAPP’s work is based on the belief that all children are entitled to a safe and healthy adolescence characterized by hope, respect and the opportunity for a productive future free of early pregnancy and parenthood."

The National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy
"Teen pregnancy has serious consequences for the teen mother, the child, and to society in general. ... The United States has the highest rate of teen pregnancy in the fully industrialized world."

Teen Sexuality in a Culture of Confusion - A Documentary Study
 
 

*article:**
 

Sex and the Highly Gifted Adolescent by Annette Revel Sheely
"Many parents find it difficult to acknowledge their adolescent's emerging sexuality. Yet they are the very people
who can be most influential in guiding their teen towards a positive adult sexuality.

Sexing Up Little Sister - by Jess Barron and Allyson Krieger
"A telling example of Little Sister Syndrome can be found on "Party of Five." Is it just us, or do you get the heebie-jeebies now that Claudia (played by Lacey Chabert) - is considering becoming sexually active with her boyfriend Cody? When "Po5" first aired in 1994, Claudia was an innocent 11-year-old. Now, suddenly, she's evolved into a teenage vixen."
 
 

 
***books:
 

Body Outlaws : Young Women Write About Body Image and Identity by Ophira Edut

Dilemmas of Desire: Teenage Girls Talk about Sexuality by Deborah L. Tolman

Fast Girls: Teenage Tribes and the Myth of the Slut by Emily White

Feminism and Sexuality  by Stevi Jackson, Sue Scott

Girl Culture by Lauren Greenfield

Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex  by Judith Levine, Joycelyn M. Elders

The Politics of Women's Bodies: Sexuality, Appearance, and Behavior by Rose Weitz

Promiscuities : The Secret Struggle for Womanhood by Naomi Wolf

The Secret Lives of Girls: What Good Girls Really Do--Sex Play, Aggression, and Their Guilt - by Sharon Lamb

Slut! : Growing Up Female With a Bad Reputation  by Leora Tanenbaum

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