On losing it in YA

Oh, virginity. It is difficult to talk about the concept of girlhood without addressing notions of virginity – what it is, how it is constructed, and what it means. An interesting problem in investigating girlhood, could be defined as what is girlhood? At what point are you no longer “girl”?  And in answering this question the threshold of “virginity” may culturally enter the conversation.  Certainly this notion of girl or woman shifts culturally; there is no clear passage, no clear moment. And since gender is a construct girlhood or womanhood is a constantly shifting notion.

Virginity exists as a threshold marker.  A crossing over. Except what does being a virgin even mean? What first time are we marking? What sexual act?  What does cultural notions of virginity mean if you are gay? Or trans? What does ‘sex’ mean?  Famously Bill Clinton defined sex for a nation“I did not have sex with that woman”while he was practicing political speak with a nation (Congress? Party?) intent on challenging his presidency through scandal (and we still must deal with this!) But it has been over 20 years ago, and we have widened our understandings of sex (for now I leave behind our current POTUS and the lack of impact his bragging about sexual assault did for his ability to get elected – how far we haven’t come!).  Do we see virginity differently than the “everything but” justifications we saw emerge after the famous parsing of the word sex?

The narrow definition of virginity (penis / vagina penetration)  constructed by adults reflects a historically patriarchal honoring of a girl’s virginity as her only value.  (Blech).  The emphasis on abstinence-only sex education as a governmental policy is one example of how the importance of virginity is culturally emphasized. Particularly when it emphasizes how losing one’s virginity can liken you to trash (it is f’ing horrifying what girls are told!).

In young adult literature the loss of virginity is most frequently portrayed as an event that has significant consequences and therefore should be deeply considered. This holds with the status quo approach to virginity.  For instance, Sarah Dessen addresses the loss of virginity in Someone Like You (1998) in a way that is a familiar. Halley spends a good portion of the novel engaged in a relationship where she feels pressured to have sexual intercourse.

Macon kept sliding his hand under my waistband, pushing father than he had before, and I kept pushing him back. …His voice was low and rumbly and right in my ear, his finger stroking the back of my neck. It all felt so good, and I would feel myself forgetting, slipping, and losing myself in it, until all of the sudden –

‘No’ I said, grabbing his hand as he tried to unsnap my jeans (Dessen 1998:180-181).

Halley is a stereotypical good girl “trying to zealously guard” (1998: 181) against intercourse while enjoying kissing and touching. Like many young adult novels the focus is less on the activities that might be considered sexual and more on the getting to the act of intercourse. Halley is thoughtful about her actions, dwelling on the question of should she, or shouldn’t she. She admits “It all felt good, real good, and this what people did: all people, except me” (Dessen 1998: 209). She wants to be loved before engaging in sexual intercourse making the choice to have sex one she finds acceptable. Her best friend reminds her that “it is not right” (Dessen 1998: 222) to have sex with someone who hasn’t said I love you. Dessen represents the loss of virginity as a milestone.

(It should also be noted that her friend Scarlett, as a secondary character represents the danger of sex, as she is pregnant after having sex once with a now dead boyfriend).

Another title, Giving up the V is entirely is also about losing one’s virginity in the traditional sense. Spencer, the main character, has a romantic vision of sexual intercourse. She spends most of the novel examining the question “Was I being unrealistic to assume it would be romantic and wonderful with the guy I loved?” (Robar 2016: 44) and determining what love means to her. Whereas Alyssa, a secondary character, sees losing her virginity as a way to be perceived as more desirable, and less young. She explains to her friend “I need guys to start seeing me as a woman, a sexual being” (Robar 2016: 100). Sexual intercourse is presented as a transition from girl to woman. Alyssa is pragmatic about sex, something she wants “to get out of the way” (Robar 2016: 28).

Virginity and girls experiences with it can be represented off the page as well. As something that has already happened, and perhaps not a big deal. Isla, in Isla and the Happily Ever After (Perkins 2014) has also previously lost her virginity she says “when you grow up half-French, it is not like sex is this big taboo” (2014, 95). This is actually a conversation she has with a new boyfriend, and there is a sex-positive scene between the two that is one of the better scenes I read in thinking about sex in YA.

All of the examples above are representative of heterosexual, cisgender relationships. And it is worth examining how virginity is addressed in queer literature – a post for another day. (But I recommend The Miseducation of Cameron Post).

 

Sex in YA often happens off the page, and when it does, it courts controversy (Looking for Alaska for example). So the messy, glorious, awkward, silly, nature of losing one’s virginity and how that is defined is not always explored. (Although there are some glorious exceptions). However the recent non-fiction collection of stories The V Word does delve into the loss of virginity in all of those ways and more. It examines what it means to lose ones virginity – if one is gay, straight, bi, trans. It examines the pressure to not be a virgin. The loss of it when drunk. Or when you don’t like your body. Or you have your period. It isn’t sexy, but it is true. In one story the author rights “People built up virginity to be such a special, powerful thing” (p. 60) sounding much like Halley, even in the “never wanted some man to have that much power over me” reflecting in her ultimate decision. Another writes “I could be one of those girls or I could be a child” (p.118) echoing Alyssa. In The V Word sex doesn’t happen off the page, it is sloppy and salty, and hot (literally not figuratively – in fact it is not sexy at all in the way we might think), and funny, and wet, and sticky, and prickly, and smooth, and so on as bodies are explored. There are first times that are not penetration but exploration with fingers and tongues between girls, between girls and boys, and between less binary genders. It challenges the narrative of virginity and girlhood present in so many (but yes I know, not all)  YA novels.

 

Difficult Girls: Sharp Edges

I have been wanting to return to “bad girls”. I think examining how we construct girlhood means we have to examine the difficult girls of YA, the protagonists who challenge us. Courtney Summers writes in Here We Are on The Likability Rule:

A female character must be likable above all else, lest she sacrifice the ideal

Summers is the right author to write about this challenge. Over and over her girls are unlikable. In her essay she writes about Romy in All the Rage, but Regina in Some Girls Are stands out to me. While she is clearly a victim of the alpha/mean girl she once was one of those, and she is sharp edges and brick walls. A reluctance to let people in, a willingness to use those she can.

Summers expands on and problematizes the silencing of girls, in this case through erasing difficult girls, through only presenting likable girls in our fiction. In the ways that girls have to wield power through nice-ness, and the limits of that power, or how they wield power through acceptance of patriarchal power structures gaining their power through their boyfriends: something Summer addresses in Some Girls Are: Regina says of Anna: “she doesn’t like being single for any lengthy periods of time” (p. 88). If we only read/write likable girls then girls  inherit a message of likability, a message of being nice that is inherently silencing, or risk being painted as needing to be the mean girl to obtain social power – which is damaging in and of itself as Anna learns.

One of the ways we silence and erase young women is through incarceration. And our stories surrounding incarceration, or lack thereof. Media narratives highlighting the rise of female violence leads one to believe that more young women are being incarcerated because of a growing trend of violence. However the Sentencing Project reports:

• As with all youth confinement, girls are confined considerably less frequently than 20 years ago. At the peak year, 2001, 15,104 girls were confined in residential placement settings. By 2013, this figure had been cut in half (7,727).

Still when we talk about girls, this element is so often overlooked, misunderstood, or otherwise constructed through adult lens that ignore actual data. For instance, the rise in incarceration is less about violence and more related to status crimes such as running away.

• Girls represent a high proportion of those who are confined for low-level crimes such as status offenses and technical violations, behaviors that would not be considered illegal if committed by an adult (such as skipping school or running away).

 

It is also targeted more to girls of color, and low income youth, despite our obsession with suburban mean girls.

In The Walls Around Us the narrator Amber gives voice to incarcerated girls.

Sure, some of us knew we didn’t deserve this reprieve. Not one of us was truly innocent, not when we were made to stand in the light, our bits and cavities and cavity fillings exposed. When we faced this truth inside ourselves, it somehow felt more ugly than the day we witnessed the judge say “guilty” and the courtroom cheer. (p. 6)

Amber is the watcher, the one who has designated herself as the one to remember and in giving voice to their stories she starts from a position that the girls are guilty, maybe not of their crimes but of being a girl at the least:

Maybe, long ago, we used to be good. Maybe all little girls are good in the beginning. There might even be pictures of us from those early days, when we wore braids and colorful barrettes, and played in sandboxes and on swing sets, if we knew days so easy or wore such barrettes. . . . But something happened to us between then and now. Something threw sand in our eyes, ground it in, and we couldn’t get it out. We still can’t. (p 155)

As narrator Amber alludes to a truth seen in the statistics of girls incarcerated when she says, “if we knew days so easy”.   These are lives we pathologize in media – bad girls from poor homes, girls that people say “never stood a chance”.

The girls of Aurora Hills are not easy; they are sharp edges and bad choices.

In C-wing, Mack had used the opportunity to daydream. She imagined her life in rewind: starting with not hiding that stash in her school locker and not elbowing the vice principal in the face, which got her expelled and then locked up, to rewinding all the way back in time, back five years, six years, seven, eight, nine years, to the first mistake she believed set her fate in motion. She was eight, little beaded braids and squeaky new sneakers, walking right past that pink bike on the sidewalk and not swiping it for her own. (p. 136)

However ultimately The Walls Around Us is about justice, and justice for one who is innocent and locked away while the truly guilty is living her life. Violet, a free girl,  is also a difficult girl, also sharp edges and bad choices.

Keep that good girl mask on and on one will be able to see past it to the bad, unstable girl inside. At least they never did with me. (p. 70)

Violet is jealous, mean, angry.

Because why did everything come so easily for her [Ori] but was such an effort for me? (p.108)

It is precisely this jealousy, suppressed and hidden in pale pinks of her ballerina costume that leads Violet to commit both murder, and more importantly to this story, betrayal. It is the betrayal, the lie that is ultimately the injustice in this story. She does not have space for her anger, it bursts out of her and then she must protect herself – be the good girl, in the pretty clothes and perfect mask. (Except the other girls are afraid of her, so that mask is only for the outside world, beyond the girls).

While there is certainly an interpretation that paints Violet as a sociopath, a damaged girl in some way not responsible for the inevitable violence; a girl incapable of forming relationships. There is something that needs to be interrogated about the jealousy she cannot name, the aching need she has for feminine perfection represented in ballet. The emphasis on the damaged feet works as a metaphor for the ugly kernel of Violet’s need for perfect femininity.

The girls – both incarcerated and free – in The Walls Around Us are complex, not easily likable. And yet I come back to Amber’s observation:

But something happened to us between then and now. Something threw sand in our eyes, ground it in, and we couldn’t get it out. We still can’t.

Isn’t there something that happens to all girls as they move beyond their beaded braids? An anger that rises, a jealousy suppressed, an aching need ignored that oozes out creating sharp edges that we smooth with smiles and kind words, mantras to be kind? Shouldn’t we represent these girls? Give them voice? Encourage the sharp edges that guide us and keep us safe?

Becoming: Teen Girls and Feminism

There is a meme that went around recently:

 

 

Like most memes it over simplifies a fairly complex issue but it resonated with me because of the reference to Teen Vogue and its 2016/2017 political coverage which apparently surprised a lot of people. Who knew teen girls might be interested in politics? Well, honestly folks have you been paying attention?

For all our talk about intersectionality we don’t necessarily do a good job of considering the intersection of age and feminist issues. Historically feminism viewed girls as “becoming” – girls were becoming women, becoming feminists. They weren’t feminist yet. Catherine Driscoll wrote in 2002:

Feminist practices (including feminist theory) are still dominated by adult models of subjectivity presumed to be the endpoint of the naturalized process of developing individual identity that relegates a vast range of not only people but roles, behaviors and practices to its immature past.

There is a lot to unpack in there – a problem with developmentalism, a concern with the individual rather than the collective, and an assumption of immaturity – all could be addressed in regard to girlhood and feminism but ultimately the concern can all be pulled into the umbrella of the narrative of becoming: becoming woman, becoming feminist. As if there is an end point you reach at a certain age. (I still consider myself becoming, I have no illusions that my identity as feminist is fully evolved and I am hardly a teenager).

I think feminism as a whole is more embracing than it used to be of the concept of a young feminist due to some excellent work around girlhood, and allies of young people striving to center youth voice. BUT. It is still a work in progress.

Young people are one of the more surveilled, controlled classes within our American society. They spend their days in institutions designed by adults, interacting with information adults have deemed important. In those institutions they are told where to sit, when to move, what to wear. In some instances they walk through metal detectors to access the building. They have police officers or security people assigned to the building (a relatively small geographic space). At the end of the day some of them leave to more adult structured activities – sports, music lessons, etc. Others who find themselves with free time may visit community centers – Boys and Girls Clubs, YMCAs, libraries, and other public community buildings – where yes, they are still surveilled by adults acting as supervisors at worst, and mentors at best. Public areas are restricted due to loitering laws (which are put in place to restrict large groups of young adults or homeless adults from gathering). Youth have curfew laws, usually put in place due to a perceived threat but spun as safety. In other words the experience of young women is impacted by their age – and further complicated by gender identity, race, class, sexual identity, mental and physical health, and so on.

Youth activism is becoming more visible, and we can add to that the ways young women enact feminist practices. In the US before Trump this was particularly  prevalent in regard to dress codes, and the push back across the country at ways that dress codes are focused primarily on female bodies, and how they perpetuate the myth that males (young ones in particular) cannot control their own impulses. This is of course just as demeaning to young men as young women.

One of the sad outcomes of the attack on reproductive rights, and the defunding of Planned Parenthood is that in the need to maintain healthcare for women we have stopped focusing on improving sex education (another province of PP by the way) because our maintaining health care rights. Sure we understand that comprehensive, quality sex education reduces teen pregnancy – states with abstinence only, or even abstinence plus have higher teen pregnancy rates. And Planned Parenthood is a (the?) primary sexual health provider for teens so defunding it impacts them (perhaps disproportionally, especially if you include poverty in the analysis). So this is an element where protecting women’s rights protects the rights of teens. And since if we are honest the “abortion as birth control” argument emerges from judgment of teen girls (you know they are thinking about those ‘bad girls’ that dare have sex outside of marriage, even if they have stopped coming out and saying it) that still holds in conversations around Roe v Wade this discussion of reproductive health is imminently important for young women.

But, we need to be advocating again for comprehensive sex education, one that doesn’t devalue women’s choices by calling them used gum if they lose their virginity. In fact one that problematizes virginity and its loss. One that explicitly addresses consent (yes, I know, California). Without acknowledging both the limitations on girl’s rights as youth, and their differing needs based on those limitations can we be a women’s movement? I know our focus has to be on the emerging threats but girl’s are important voices in this focus.

Our girls are as complex and multifaceted as women themselves are. Many of them are feminist and happily claim the label. Perhaps they struggle with the same difficulties of what it means to be a feminist as we do.  How to be an activist and use our voices. What do we do next? How do we embrace diversity in our movement and center silenced voices? Or to return to the above examples on dress code what does it mean to use fashion to feel empowered, while embracing fashion that objectifies women. How to deal with relationships that challenge us. It is easy to say yes means yes, no means no but like most slogans consent is more complex. Our girls (and our boys) struggle with finding voice, giving affirmative consent. If we support women’s health we need to work towards addressing consent with youth. We need to address how to be allies within a movement, to have girls understand and recognize privilege and intersectionality and how that relates to their own rights. To consider ourselves as teachers of feminism is to not be allies to our girls, we need to give space for them to embrace their own experiences and needs and the curtailing of their rights.

They are not becoming. They are.