teens

I know it's Election Day, but Blair masturbated on last night's episode of Gossip Girl!

Kelsey Wallace — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 19:00:56 -0500

I don’t know how many of you sharp feminists out there watch the CW’s Gossip Girl, but those of you who don’t missed out on a rarely televised occurrence last night: female masturbation. Last night’s episode opened with a scene of teen queen Blair Waldorf masturbating to a fantasy of bad boy Chuck Bass performing oral sex on her. When interrupted by her housekeeper, Dorota, Blair said she has to “finish something” before school, and she ducked back under the covers to, well, finish.

Now say what you will about the evils of Gossip Girl (and this Washington Post article says plenty), but I can’t think of another teen show that would portray a young, female, protagonist taking her sexuality into her own hands, so to speak. Sure, Gossip Girl promotes consumerism, unhealthy body images, and just plain teen nastiness, but it is also telling young girls (and boys) that it’s okay to masturbate. I mean come on, Blair is cool and she does it, so why can’t they?

I am racking my brain to think of another teen queen masturbation scene (see how that rhymes so nicely?) on primetime television, but I am at a loss. I can’t imagine a scene like this happening on Gossip Girl’s predecessor, Beverly Hills: 90210. Is this a first for teenage television programming? Is this a good thing, or should masturbation be kept out of the primetime television lineup?

If you ask me, masturbation is healthy, fun, and risk-free, and the more normalized it becomes for teenaged television-watchers, the better. What do you think?

Teen Girls + Boy Love Dolls = Tru (heart) + $ 4Ever

Kyla — Thu, 31 May 2001 00:00:00 -0400

Pop-sensation lifespans have been shrinking since the dawn of pop sensations, but the power of the boy band has proved enduring. These prefab crews of scrubbed, smiling teens busting a synchronized move to manufactured beats have a special place in pop – music history and in the hearts—and notebooks and lockers—of their (mostly female) fans. 

Although the manufactured boy band has become the music-industry juggernaut of the late 1990s and beyond, achieving success and sales numbers usually reserved for more genuine musical talent, it’s by no means a new phenomenon. Record companies have long assembled product—’scuse us, pop stars—targeting specific markets (such as the large and increasingly cash-rich teen-girl demographic) based more on expected sales than artistic vision. (Although artistic vision was not precluded—the Beatles, for instance, famously combined musical genius with a teenybopper allure that led fans to widespread crushes and critics to label bandmembers “the cute one,” “the smart one,” etc., in deference to their appeal to different types of girls.) 

Today’s crop of boy bands has earrings, tattoos, and intricately sculpted facial hair. The boys shimmy and shake in time with each other like male Rockettes or Solid Gold Dancers. They are earnestly goo-goo-eyed and eager to please their teen and preteen female fans, and you could bounce a quarter off their ripped abs. Their songs are crafted by industry professionals; their voices, even at live shows, are churned through a mixer, tricked out with untold effects, and broadcast all plastic and pretty.  

They are the most assiduously marketed—and the most blatantly prefabricated—of all the boy bands who came before. In the past, it was kept at least perfunctorily secret that these groups were assembled via callboards and auditions—these days, they’re created on reality tv. (Making the Band, the ABC show that gave us O-Town, was renewed for a second season; it also inspired a female counterpart, the WB’s Popstars.) Some boy bands of the past replaced members one by one as they grew out of their teens; now, entire bands are the new models—introduced yearly by impresarios like Lou Pearlman, puppetmaster of the Backstreet Boys, ’N Sync, and O-Town—and have far more lenient age restrictions. (The fact that at least a few of the Backstreet “boys” are pushing 30 seems like more of a curiosity than a liability.)  

Feminists with an eye on pop culture have traditionally looked toward arguably positive female role models like Buffy or Madonna as the key to creating a strong self-image in young girls—perhaps overlooking the importance of teen idols and prototypical sex symbols. After all, the conflict between who you want to be and whom you want to please is a universal and classic one for women, and our socialization to be pleasing is powerful. For many girls, the teen idol plays an important role in our psychological development, affecting sexual fantasies and real-life desires. A pop star is often the first person for whom we feel recognizable lust; his often-androgynous beauty and significant removal from our lives allows us, as young teenage girls, tremendous freedom in the realm of fantasy—more so than the cute guy in bio ever will. And the current roster of boy bands sells the fantasy more calculatedly than any of their precursors.  

In contrast to their hot-pantsed female counterparts Britney and Christina, the sexuality these boys are selling is adolescent, not adult. This was no more apparent than when several members of ’N Sync joined Steven Tyler of Aerosmith onstage at the Super Bowl xxxv halftime show. Performing “Walk This Way,” the admittedly past-his-peak Tyler humped the microphone, wagged his tongue, and looked like he wanted to fuck all the girls in the audience and never call them again; the ’N Sync–ers, with their sidelong sheepish grins, were more like, “Gosh, honey, can you believe I’m doing this?” Their sweet, soft image doesn’t impose anything other than the purest visions of good-boyfriendhood on their teen audience—a tactic that’s historically been the m.o. of manufactured male love dolls from the Monkees to the New Kids, in keeping with cultural views of budding female sexuality.  

And it’s this sexuality that keeps the boy bands in business. As American pop culture embraces and attacks the desires of girls (often simultaneously), one constant is that it’s men who decide what a girl wants. How can these middle-aged Svengalis deliver compelling reflections of burgeoning female lust? Despite the changes that continue to be wrought in the cultural arena of teen sexuality, clearly it’s not just the little girls who understand.  

The Middle Ages Gregorian monks popularize chanting. 

The Renaissance Castrati and traveling troubadors originate the raw elements of the boy-band formula: high-pitched singing, sappy love songs, and goofy outfits. 

1900s Barbershop quartets. 

1931–32 The Mills Brothers, a teenage jazz group originally billed as Four Boys and a Guitar, hit it big with “Tiger Rag” and “Dinah.” The brothers’ career continues well into the 1950s. 

1938 Seminal jazz-vocal foursome the Ink Spots begin recording romantic songs such as “If I Didn’t Care” and set a standard for both doo-wop and tender ballads for years to come. 

1950s The boy-band model—four or more boys with clean-cut looks, dreamy lyrics, and gentle harmonies—is cemented by outfits like the Penguins (“Earth Angel”), Frankie Lyman and the Teenagers (“Why Do Fools Fall in Love?”), and the Five Satins (“In the Still of the Night”), among others. 

1957 The Everly Brothers release “Bye Bye Love,” the first of many hit songs about teen love, lost love, unrequited love, and eternal love that will prove to be lyrical templates for many boy bands to come.  

1958–63 Philadelphia, home of Dick Clark’s American Bandstand, becomes teen-idol ground zero, with three record companies and a host of producers, promoters, and djs making overnight sensations of Fabian, Bobby Rydell, and Frankie Avalon. 

1959 Dion and the Belmonts release the single “A Teenager in Love.” 

1961 The Beach Boys, a quintet of uniformly toothy Californians, invent a sound combining heavenly harmonies with utopian imagery of surf, sun, and girls. 

1962 The Osmonds, five singing brothers from Utah, begin performing barbershop-style melodies at Disneyland. Youngest brother Donny joins the band later, resulting in both a poppier style and almost instant teen-idol status.  

1964 The Beatles appear for the first time on American tv, on The Ed Sullivan Show, followed soon after by the movie A Hard Day’s Night. Hysteria ensues. Meet the Beatles becomes the top-selling album in history. 

1966 The Monkees, a television show about a wacky young rock ’n’ roll band patterned after A Hard Day’s Night, premieres complete with a cute one, a serious one, and not one but two goofy ones. The show runs for two seasons, during which the Monkees garner a rabid following of teen fans—many of whom boo Jimi Hendrix offstage when he is put in the very weird position of opening for a fake band.  

1967 Teenage British-Australian brothers the Bee Gees hit number one in the U.K. with their single “Massachusetts.” Precocious songwriters and musicans through the ’60s, their greatest success will nevertheless come later, as arguably brilliant contributors to the disco oeuvre. 

1968 Bubblegum—the effervescent genre of pop epitomized by the Archies (“Sugar Sugar”), the Ohio Express (“Yummy Yummy Yummy”), and Tommy James and the Shondells (“I Think We’re Alone Now”)—enjoys a brief period in the spotlight. It was neither played by teens nor particularly marketed to them, but it was intrinsically teen music. As critic Lester Bangs wrote in the Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll, “The irony, which everybody missed at the time, was that while rock was trying to be so hip and ‘adult,’ many bubblegum songs had some of the most lubriciously explicit lyrics in the world.” 

1969 Family singing group the Jackson 5 is signed to Motown Records. A string of hits and a much-loved cartoon series soon follow.  

1972 Kiss forms in Queens, New York. Ostensibly a band for adults (see: penis metaphors, tongue waggling), Kiss’s cartoonish presence proves ideal for marketing to kids in their teens and younger—with Kiss lunchboxes, masks, comic books, and cereal-box promotions.  

1975 A symbolic monkey wrench is thrown into the clean-cut works of the boy band when British clothing-boutique owner Malcolm McLaren constructs the Sex Pistols—supposedly in order to expose the empty commercialism that had consumed the purity of rock ’n’ roll. Scottish teenybopper act the Bay City Rollers garner number-one hits in both the U.K. and the U.S. Their youthful, tartan-clad image makes for international fave-rave status, but behind it is a very unpretty picture that in the coming years will include drugs, attempted suicide, vehicular manslaughter, and side careers in pornography. 

1977 Menudo forms in Puerto Rico and goes on to become the first Latin band to achieve global success. Members are required to leave after their 16th birthday (the age limit is later extended to 18); this structure provides a training ground for successful adult careers, most notably Ricky Martin’s. Meanwhile, producer Jacques Morali creates meta–boy band the Village People. Like the Beatles or the Monkees, bands that offered a dream date for each fan, the Village People takes the fantasy even further, serving up a tongue-in-cheek assortment of homosexual icons. 

1983 Teenage fivesome New Edition releases the high-pitched “Candy Girl.” Assembled by producer/songwriter Maurice Starr as a new-style Jackson 5, the group quickly chafes under his creative control and fires him.  

1986 New Kids on the Block, a quintet of blue-collar Bostonians, release a self-titled debut album under the tutelage of former New Edition producer Starr. By 1989, the New Kids and their fusion of pop, rap, and unforgettably bad dancing will be the biggest-selling act in America and a mainstay of teen-fanzine covers. 

1990 Nelson, twin sons of onetime teen idol Ricky Nelson, hit big with their debut album After the Rain. Not a boy band in the typical packaging, Nelson is rather a fusion of the boy-band ethos with the power chords of musical forebears like Winger. Of the duo, critic Gina Arnold writes: “There was a time when I objected to bands like this one imposing the shallow dreams and false values of their golden locks and starry eyes on the defenseless minds of unsophisticated little girls. I thought those girls deserved a better mousetrap, and that it was the responsibility of the rock ’n’ roll community…to provide quality music with content and depth for those little girls to chew on. But now that I’m older, I doubt if that’s true. I think that Nelson understands those girls—that there’s a bond between the two groups, which people like me have no right to deny either faction.” 

1991 British teen soon-to-be-sensation Take That release a debut single, “Do What U Like,” on their own label. The band is unlike many of their teen-band counterparts in that they write their own material and have no apparent Svengali, but they will also eventually commit the unfortunate act of foisting Robbie Williams’s solo career upon the world.  

1994 Irish prefab quintet Boyzone have their first hit, a cover of the Osmonds’ “Love Me for a Reason.” 

1997 Hanson, three blond brothers from Oklahoma, release “MMMBop,” a ridiculously catchy single in the tradition of the Jackson 5. 

1998 After hitting it big in Europe three years earlier, the Backstreet Boys’ U.S. debut is the third-biggest seller of the year.  

1999 The boy band explodes. Backstreet Boys, ’N Sync, Savage Garden, 98°, 5ive, Westlife, Youngstown, BBMak, and on, and on, and on. Taking fauxness to a whole new low, fictional boy band the Meaty Cheesy Boys shills for Jack in the Box by singing love songs to the fast-food chain’s Ultimate Cheeseburger. A company press release asserts, “While the ad is obviously intended to parody the current wave of young, sensitive-yet-hunky boy groups, it’s clearly an effective pitch for a popular product, a chance for us to build our brand with our target 18 – to 34-year-old male customers.” Because those are the people who appreciate boy bands? 

2000 Always quick to exploit a trend, MTV teams up with ABC to produce the reality series Making the Band. The show documents the nationwide talent search and rehearsal process resulting in O-Town.  

2001 The Beatles are named “#1 Boy Band” in the April issue of Tiger Beat, largely on the strength of 1, a compilation of the Fab Four’s 27 number-one hits that, aptly enough, spent eight weeks at number one in the U.S. and hit number one in another 33 countries. In a March 30 USA Today front-page story, Trina Yannicos, a Beatles fanzine publisher, offers one possible explanation for the phenomenon: “A majority of today’s artists seem to be manipulated by their managers, record companies, and corporations. Until today’s pop stars stand up for their creative rights, the record-buying public, who are mainly young people, will continue to long for a musical past that encouraged experimentation and originality.” A visit to Amazon.com reveals that customers who bought 1 also snapped up the Backstreet Boys’ Black and Blue.

Alison Fensterstock prefers John to Paul and Keith to Mick, but she gets confused trying to tell contemporary boy band members apart. She lives ’n’ writes in New Orleans, the City That Care Forgot. Andi Zeisler’s first teen-idol crush was Adam Ant, but it ended badly when she saw a picture of him without makeup. Dianna Huculak was fired from her last researching job.

Bitch Reads #2

Kyla — Fri, 01 Mar 1996 00:00:00 -0500

Defending Pornography
by Nadine Strossen

Ok, I agree with all of Strossen’s major points: that censorship is in general the enemy of feminism; that pornography is impossible to define; that “pornography” can be positive; that no government can be trusted not to use its power against those it is ostensibly supposed to be protecting. Above all, “Far from advancing women’s equality, this strong tendency to equate any sexual expression with gender discrimination undermines women’s equality” (p. 24).

It’s her minor points I have a problem with. She decries student complaints about murals of bare-chested women and posters of nude paintings, claiming their squeamishness is caused by “sex panic.” While she is absolutely right in asserting that the solution to these situations is not censorship, in so doing she creates a category called “art” that is excused from critique—well, Western art has a long misogynist history. Does that make it any better? I don’t think so. She also disingenuously ignores issues of power as they intersect with free speech, taking the old-school liberal view that free speech is absolute and not linked to the accessibility of certain educational and financial resources. And sometimes her statements slide toward the ridiculous: “Sexually explicit materials may well be the only source of sexual information or pleasure for many people who, for a host of reasons, do not have sexual contact with others—shy or inhibited people, people with mental or physical disabilities, people with emotional problems, gay people who are confused about their sexual orientation or are afraid to reveal or express it, people who are quite young or old, geographically isolated people, unattractive people,” (p. 164). Geographically isolated, maybe (although it’s hard to imagine someone quite that alone). I’ll even buy shy. But this list simply serves to reinforce the perception of certain groups as desexualized and/or “abnormal,” a misperception that gays, lesbians, and people with disabilities have been struggling to correct. And I’m sorry—but unattractive people? Whatever.

The book’s biggest flaw is that Strossen oversimplifies her opponents’ arguments to the point of distortion. “This distorted concept of sexual harassment [that sexual speech equals sexual harassment] reflects two false assumptions: first, that all sexually oriented expression is gender discriminatory; and second, that all such expression is harassing,” (p. 119). This is blatantly false, in view of the fact that plenty of men have filed complaints based on the hostile-environment definition of harassment. And this “distorted concept” simply serves to point out that harassment is often in the eye of the beholder and should be treated as such—to my knowledge, no one has suggested that certain words or phrases be barred from usage in any and all cases. Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin come in for the same kind of treatment. Their anti-pornography ordinance—the horrifying anti-feminist and homophobic Canadian results of which Strossen impeccably documents—is misrepresented as a ban on materials that depict the subordination of women, rather than being constitutive of that subordination. This is a distinction that MacKinnon goes out of her way to emphasize: showing a woman in a physically subordinate position is not the same as putting her in a politically subordinate one. I fully admit that this is a fine line, and one that might be particularly hard to find in dirty pictures, but the fact that MacKinnon believes that it’s there automatically makes her more reasonable than Strossen would have readers believe. Strossen is a very smart woman; I have no doubt that she understands the distinction. The fact that she glosses over it in her analysis only serves to weaken her position.

Regardless of its many flaws, however, Defending Pornography is an important feminist book, most notably for its vivid demonstration of the ways in which censorship is bad for feminism of all stripes. Readers will find it impossible to see censorship as a viable solution to the “problem” of pornography; they may even recognize that pornography is not a problem at all. —LJ

Gender Wars
by Brian Fawcett

“For the minority of us humans who are not condemned to scramble for food or superior military weapons, gender relations and sexuality are in a state of destructive and violent confusion.” And so begins Brian Fawcett’s Gender Wars, a stylistic novelty masquerading as a sorely needed commentary on the bruised
sexual psyche of the white male in today’s society. The gimmick is that a work of fiction and a series of short, often clinical monographs on various sexual aspects and practices (e.g. “Head,” “Pheromones,” etc.) exist simultaneously on the pages of this book, the narrative in black ink, the other text in red. Gender Wars becomes interesting through the juxtaposition of these dueling elements, rather than through the base content. The fictional sexual odyssey of Fred Ferris, acknowledged early on as Fawcett’s alter ego, goes on for page after page of hand-wringingly earnest exploits. The problems that develop stem from Fawcett’s reliance on standard male/female emotional stereotypes—women as hysterical, men as rational and detached—to define the carnal morass of Ferris’s life. The parade of Ferris’s consorts reads like a list of case histories from the DSM-IV. There’s the daddy-obsessed rape victim with a thing for God, the rich widow who shoplifts for the thrill of being manhandled by the police, and the manic, dependent Annie whose suicide attempts kick off Ferris’s whole self-relective flashback.

The above quote, taken from the narrative entitled “Mexican Standoff” that functions as the book’s introduction, sums up both the aims and the failures of this type-dense work: it’s an attempt to address so many large issues at one time—politics, social conditioning, psychology—in a pat, tidy fashion while dragging the narrative on endlessly. An added irritant are the sidebars detailing various war crimes in Northern Ireland and Saigon. So, like, Brian, duh, what’s your point? Ironically, these and other self-consciously postmodern, overwrought touches make the book what it is—without them it would just be more morose fiction about how confusing those darned females make life for men like Ferris who think the height of male sensitivity is liking to perform oral sex.

To be fair, Fawcett does provide some interesting observations on human sexuality. The best and most enjoyable writing in his book is contained in the bits that don’t play at being fiction. His “technical” essays combine anatomical and social reality with comfortable humor. From the essay on male erections: “The barnacular erection is an instrument of singular, simple, and fundamentally onanistic pleasure. Women should beware of men who only have this variety of erection. They’re likely to have other personality traits of barnacles. In the end, the woman will be better off with a dildo or a vibrator, because at least then the person on the operating end of it will be capable of caring for them.” Fawcett’s enthusiasm for sex in all its forms, his respect for its power and importance, and his ability to fuse personal experience and biological factoids into object lessons without seeming whiny and self-important are all redeeming features. What would be really great is if Brian were to just chuck the whole po-mo is-it-autobiographical-or-does-he-just-want-us-to-think-that? fiction angle and go ahead and write a sex manual for the single, confused, disaffected individual. —AZ

Talk Dirty To Me
by Sallie Tisdale

There are a lot of good things about Tisdale’s book, not the least of which is that she forthrightly describes and clearly relishes her own feelings of lust for both men and women. When she writes about that, when she describes her forays into porn shops, and when she recounts her conversations with sex workers, Talk Dirty to Me is at its best: one articulate woman’s point of view on the fun and games, the embarrassments, the contradictions of erotic life. But her attempt at an overarching history of human sexuality is boring at best; only half of her comments on gender relations are perceptive—the other half are clichéd. I’m not sorry I read it, but unfortunately, I wouldn’t be sorry if I hadn’t. —LJ

Going All the Way: Teenage Girls’ Tales of Sex, Romance, and Pregnancy
by Sharon Thompson

With 400 interviews conducted over ten years, Going All the Way is promising. I wanted a frank view of desire, descriptions of pleasure in girls’ own words, an orgy of wild, crazy, and unconflicted teen sex. Well, two out of three ain’t bad. Time to get my own expectations in line with reality; of course Thompson’s narrators are plagued with insecurity, guilt, confusion, ignorance, and all the other nasties that come with adolescence—they are, after all, adolescents. And because Thompson offers deft analysis of the socio-cultural underpinnings of these issues and more, I can almost forgive her for the moments—and to be fair, there aren’t all that many of them—when she slips lazily into conventional explanations for her subjects’ behavior. And if the book’s organization sometimes feels imposed from without, if it feels like these interviews have barely scratched the surface of the collective experience of teenage girls, that’s probably because it was, and they have. But what more can you expect from a first attempt at this kind of primary research? Groundbreaking books are never complete or complex enough—they are by definition the start of something. And what a start this is. You’ll be entranced by the voices of these girls; you’ll wish that you’d been there in their living rooms and hangouts, listening to every word they shared with the author. You’ll want to talk back to them, to tell them that they shouldn’t care about that particular asshole guy anyway and to share that you, too, felt that intense and undeniable curiosity about what another person’s body might feel like. —LJ

Unnatural Dykes to Watch Out For
by Alison Bechdel

Bechdel’s sixth Dykes to Watch Out For book is just like her fifth, and fourth, and...you know. Which is to say that it’s
a fabulous and funny continuation of the lives of some racially, ethnically, erotically, and neurotically diverse lesbians. Overt sociopolitical commentary—Mo’s tirades, Jezanna’s concern that “Bunns & Noodle” superstores are stealing her feminist bookstore’s customers with their corporate imperialist tactics like covering the cost of discounts by over-working perfectionist employees and compensating them well below the level of a living wage (oh, excuse me, I was having an employment flashback), and the crew’s trip to Stonewall 25—always keeps a sense of humor and never gets pedantic. As for more covert stuff—just make sure you read the headlines on all the newspapers in the strips. In fact, some of the best touches, like the book titles on display at Madwimmin (Written on the Booty; Sex, Art, American Culture, and Me) go unnoticed unless you look at absolutely everything. If you’ve never read Dykes to Watch Out For, start at the beginning. And if you have, then you’ll be just as excited as I was to read the new one. So when can we watch out for number seven? —LJ

Sassy Responds

Kyla — Fri, 01 Mar 1996 00:00:00 -0500

...
but to other perceptive and right-on readers who are as upset as we are about the changes. And guess what?
The editors are defensive as hell.

Here’s what the readers are saying in their so-called “hate mail”: “I cannot tell you how much your changes SUCK!!” “I feel compelled to express my copious fascination/horror/disgust with your new and ‘improved’ magazine.” “Don’t you think teenage girls have enough of these fake, useless magazines already?” “When you started thinking about the ‘brand-new Sassy,’ what were you on? Some of your articles make me want to yak.” “You have sucked every ounce of what the ‘old’ Sassy stood for out of the magazine.” “Do you actually think you’re doing a good job? You are the children of the devil.”

I’ll say this for the new staffers—at least they finally admitted that not everyone’s happy as a clam about the changes. And I too might get a little hinky if I were accused of being a minion of Satan. But they refuse to answer the charges; instead they just toss insults around. In their retort, immaturely titled “Get Over It! Get a Clue! Get a Life!” they pretend that Petersen has done the world a service by “saving [Sassy’s] individual voice within the youth market from extinction,” as if their version of the mag actually is individual and distinctive.

Not only that, but they thoroughly trash the old magazine—“you can only offend your readers, their parents and your advertisersAhh. The key to the real reason for Sassy’s changes—advertisers can’t stand to be associated with feminism, anti-racism, anti-homophobia, or any other socially progressive values. so many times before they call it quits”—and the old writers—“many of the old Sassy staffers...are currently contributing to such groundbreaking, forward-thinking and MAINSTREAM magazines as Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, and Elle.” Well, pardon Kim and Christina for trying to make a living. At least the readers of those magazines know what to expect when they buy them. And the new staffers have conveniently neglected to mention that Margie writes about women’s health for magazines like Ms. Even worse, though, is the way they insult the writers of these letters and everyone else who no longer wants to read Sassy. The letters are not legitimate complaints but “paeans to pissiness,” and their authors are urged to “quit your bitchin’, [and] lighten up.” (I think it’s pretty obvious how we’re going to react to a command to quit bitching.) According to the new editors, the readers who miss the old Sassy are just humorless whiners who don’t get it: “What we relate to are readers whose minds are not just bright, but open; who have a sense of humor and a sense of style.... To those girls who get it, the real funsmartgoofygreat girls, we say: Welcome to Sassy ‘96.” As if the new Sassy is like a subtle joke—and the ones with the problem are the ones who don’t think it’s funny.

Lisa Jervis promises to stop writing about Sassy in every single issue.

Talkshows

Kyla — Fri, 01 Mar 1996 00:00:00 -0500

Talk shows are the scariest thing on the planet today. You think I’m exaggerating, don’t you? Think about it: not only are they the lowest common denominator of American pop culture, but they’re also—because they’re in the form of “real” people talking about their “real” lives—taken to be some measure of truth. A talk show pretends to be a window opened by the host; the audience thinks that it’s seeing a clear, undistorted reality. But the view is anything but real—hosts, guest experts, and audience members all inject their own views of the truth into the words of the panelists, making the shows more like funhouse mirrors than windows. Talk shows are powerful propaganda, often masking a conservative, reactionary, restrictive worldview with an earnest desire to help, or a simple voyeurism. The host is always in control of the discourse, and she can run roughshod over what the guests are saying—by not listening, by twisting words to fit a preconceived notion of panelists’ behavior, by putting words into the panelists’ mouths.

When the topic is young women and sex, this kind of moralizing cultural static gets louder and louder. Take, for example, a Geraldo episode called “Teen Sex for Status: These Girls Are Out of Control,” and Jenny Jones, “My Teen Daughter Is Too Promiscuous.” The shows come pre-packaged with titles and the hosts’ viewpoints; the experts come with agendas; audience members come with their own rigid ideas about acceptable behavior. In the parallel universe that is the talk show, like almost everywhere else, female sexual agency hides in plain sight. It can’t be acknowledged—even when it’s being spoken about and demonstrated. When panelists contradict preconceived notions—when they declare that they like the way sex feels, that they fuck just for the hell of it, when they are honest about their erotic lives—their words are willfully misinterpreted and ignored by an audience that must, for its own comfort, erase the reality of female pleasure. And because of the lack of a culturally understood language of female sexual pleasure, it’s even harder for the panelists to express or defend themselves. The problem is not simply that individual girls get insulted and ignored by these particular episodes of these particular shows, but that huge chunks of our entire culture are built on the repression of female sexuality, and these shows are a symptom and a demonstration of that sad fact—and a mode of perpetuating it.

Pleasure...

Only two panelists even come close to describing sexual pleasure—Liz, on Jenny Jones, and Paradise,All of Geraldo’s panelists go by nicknames. on Geraldo. Liz: “I like the feeling of sex. I like having orgasms.” Paradise: “I do it because I get off on it. And I need to have an orgasm, too.” And later, she gets even more graphic: “there are some things that hands just cannot do, and that’s why I do it.” Their words are gleefully inspiring. “Orgasm” is not a word that we expect to hear out of the mouth of a sixteen-year-old girl—because she’s not supposed to be having any. And audience reactions show how much the general public would like to ignore the fact that many young girls are having orgasms. Often.

Paradise, in all her graphic glory, is ignored. No one on Geraldo addresses or even acknowledges what she has said: that pleasure is a valid motivation for behavior. Over at Jenny Jones, everyone greets this revelation with outright disbelief. Liz—by far the most outspoken of Jenny Jones’s panelists—has said very clearly that she has sex purely for the physical pleasure it brings, but Jenny still asks, “What other reason do you have for doing all this sexual activity? Is it—you really just enjoy the sex? Is there something else...” Liz cuts her off: “I enjoy sex.” Jenny has to keep pushing, because she’s not getting the answer that she needs and expects: “...you’re getting—what else are you getting out of it? Is there something else in it for you?” Liz flatly replies, “I just like the feeling of sex.” Jenny has no choice but to change the subject. She hasn’t managed to achieve a classic talk show moment, one where the guest, after some prodding, admits whatever it is that the host and the audience wants her to and the show can claim some twisted sort of victory. Jenny hides her failure by quickly moving on, never acknowledging that Liz has, in fact, answered the question, and her answer is the pure and simple physicality of sex.

Other panelists, because they don’t use the language of pleasure and desire that Liz and Paradise do, leave themselves even more open to this kind of manipulation. Fuck-DeliciousBecause of the unacceptable-to-the-censors nature of this woman’s nickname, they couldn’t say it, and I’m making an educated guess as to what it actually is. Geraldo was reduced to calling her “F-elicious,” which sounds oddly and unfortunately like some new brand of bubble gum. comments, “I have fun when I’m out.” Fun is her code word for pleasure; going out means having sex. A woman in the Geraldo audience asks the youngest panelist, “Did you join the group [the panelists call themselves “the Precious Players”] because you want to be down with the homies or are you just joining it because you enjoy it?” (Excuse me, just because you enjoy it?) Desire answers, “I enjoy it.” Geraldo: “Well, tell us more about that. What do you enjoy about it?”This is a surprising question, because it indicates that he actually wants to know. But it’s clear from his next question—“Do you ever worry about your future?”—that he’s just trying to provoke the same sort of talk show moment that Jenny tried to get from Liz. Her response, “I enjoy—I like partying with them,” says nothing. She quite literally has no words. And when Jenny asks Sarah, “What did you enjoy about it?”—“it” meaning sex, of course—Sarah answers, “Everything about it.” Clearly, this is open to interpretation, but in light of some of Sarah’s other comments,Sarah said earlier in the show that she has sex “basically, [for] the same reason Liz does. I like it.” She can’t find her own words to describe her pleasure, but she recognizes Liz’s words as powerful, and she is claiming that power for herself. I think it’s fair to interpret “everything” to mean everything about the way it feels, physically, to have sex. But that’s not an interpretation that the host, the studio audience, and most of the at-home viewers can make.

Here’s the problem: “Fun,” “partying,” and “stuff” make up the girls’ vocabulary because they don’t know any other words for what they’re feeling. And since they can’t use strong words, their weak ones can be misinterpreted and ignored. But there’s something else going on, too: Network censors mimic cultural silencing, literally preventing certain words from being spoken. The choices are vague euphemism—to do “it” or to “be with” a partner—clinical correctness—“intercourse”—or a mouthed obscenity and a high-pitched bleep. Danielle, who describes her activities as “just a whole bunch of stuff,” might have wanted to get a little more specific, but if she had she almost certainly would have been bleeped. Geraldo had almost as much bleeping as actual speech. If someone could just say, “Sexual pleasure is an important and valid motivation for behavior on the part of adolescent girls,” “Fucking is a natural and positive thing,” or “It feels good when someone touches my clitoris,” maybe people would pay attention. Then again, maybe not.

...Or Anything But

When pleasure is denied, there’s no motivation for the panelists’ behavior. So hosts, experts, and audience members make some up. How convenient. Geraldo says at least five times that his guests are having sex for status—even though there are only two mentions of it by one panelist. He also comments that one of his panelists slept with her teacher to boost her GPA. Of course that’s not true; it’s just the easiest explanation. Paradise tries to set him straight. “No, I didn’t do it to get a better grade...but he was all there. He was just fine. And I wanted to hook up. So I got with him.” Jenny says, “Tina says she’s at her wit’s end trying to control her promiscuous daughter who says she doesn’t care what her mother thinks, she’s going to sleep with boys because she likes the attention.” The girl in question contradicts this analysis, but no one acknowledges her. Also on Jenny Jones, “Sheila [Carla’s aunt] says Carla believes sex is a way for her to keep guys.” Yes, that’s what Sheila says, but does anyone ask Carla? Hmm...a pattern.

Let’s see, for motivations for sex there’s status, there’s grades, and, and—lack of self-esteem. Yeah, yeah, that’s right. “For them to get into the situation that they’re in, they must not have had good self-esteem,” says a Geraldo audience member. Jenny’s expert says, referring to how many partners the panelists have had, “It’s not shocking if you have no self worth.... Obviously, all five of these young women don’t feel good about who they are.” This is such a common cliché about female sexual activity that it’s not surprising how often it’s expressed. But it’s still dismaying, because there is no evidence to support the low self-esteem theory—in fact, there’s plenty of evidence against it. Geraldo’s panelists are especially vehement. Candy Girl says, “I feel good about myself.... I have self-esteem, you know.... I don’t let people put me down. I feel good about myself.” Paradise asserts, “I don’t regret anything I’ve ever done.” Candy Girl again: “We value ourselves.... We ain’t ashamed, you know what I mean?” But audience members, hosts, and experts don’t know what she means; they can’t accept that a teenage girl might like herself and also choose to fuck. Furthermore, a possibility that no one ever entertains is that the theory is backwards: girls don’t have sex because they feel bad, but sometimes they’re made to feel bad because they’ve been having sex.

The other stupid, wrong-as-it-is-ubiquitous thing that gets said about girls (and women) is that whenever they have sex, they really want love. Belma Johnson, one of Geraldo’s “experts” who thinks that because he hosts some cable show about teenagers he knows what’s inside their heads, says, “It’s not about sex,...it’s not about fun. It’s about looking for love. It’s about looking for respect.” None of the panelists have said a damn thing to support his ridiculous statement. Jenny does the same thing: “I don’t think it’s about orgasms. I think it’s about fulfilling something that’s missing, thinking it’s love...” Her comment closes a show where no one has said as much as one word about being in love with the boys she fucks or wanting the boys to be in love with her. Both Jenny and Belma are projecting their own expectations onto the panelists. It doesn’t matter what the girls say; those watching can only see what they choose to.

Belma takes his denial even further and says that the panelists are lying: “I can guarantee you it’s mostly talk.... This is not what teenagers are about. I don’t even think it’s what they’re about.” His condescending arrogance is bad enough to make you want to slap him silly—but his unfounded accusation is truly appalling. I wanted to heave a brick through my tv screen as I watched this idiot suggest that these girls were making it all up, that they weren’t speaking from a powerful lived experience.

Punishment

False consequences are the next round of ammunition in the repressive arsenal. Oh, no, you’ll have a reputation. Geraldo: “What do the kids in your high school say about your reputation?” Jenny: “What’s this doing to your reputation? You do get called names?” A mother to her daughter: “Fifteen [men you’ve slept with]? You know what that is? That’s a slut.” I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. “Reputation” is a misogynist social construction that functions (often extremely efficiently) to stifle female sexuality. The good news is that these girls aren’t buying into it. Liz: “Yeah, I get called slut, tramp, but who cares? I don’t.”

Another perceived problem, linked to the threat of reputation, is the possibility of “being used.” Again, these girls don’t care. They recognize that you can only be used if you’re not getting what you want. Tina [mother]: “Don’t you think this guy is only using you girls?” Sarah: “Who cares? We’re using him for the same thing.” An extension of “used” is used up, as in this Jenny Jones audience member’s comment, “When you get [to be] twenty-five, ain’t no man going to want you, because you’re going to be tired...” Jenny herself: “What if you are twenty, twenty-one years old, and you meet the man of your dreams, and this is the guy you want to spend the rest of your life with, and he won’t accept you because of how many men you’ve been with?” The whole concept of being “tired” and “used up” is just a repackaged, modernized version of a-woman’s-greatest-asset-is-her-virginity-which-is-a-precious-gift-that-she-gives-
to-her-husband-on-their-wedding-night. The notion that if a man can’t deal with a woman’s past then he’s not worth her time, or that spending the rest of her life with one man (or any man) might not be something every woman wants is outside the realm of possibility for the audience.

The most dire consequence the panelists are threatened with is so revealing of covert cultural attitudes that it’s sickly comical; it’d be funny if it wasn’t so depressing. According to a male member of Jenny’s audience, “Some of the people who you think you’re down with, they’re going to pull you off to the side one day, they ain’t going to tell nobody, and you know what? You’ll be one of those people that be somewhere chopped up in half, hid in another state, you know?” Translation: Female sexuality is dangerous; men can’t be held responsible for their violent actions when confronted with it; it’s all the woman’s fault for making herself available to be chopped up in the first place.

So What’s Really Going On Here?

Behind the fear of sexuality is a fear of female agency and power. No one can stand the thought of girls and women doing what they want to do with their own bodies. What alarms talk show powers that be most is agency—Liz: “I’m going to do what I want to do when I want to do it”; Candy Girl: “I want to [it was censored, but she must have said ‘fuck’]”—and agency can only be seen as a thwarting of control. On Geraldo, the grave statement that, “these girls are out of control,” is intoned over and over; on Jenny Jones, it’s “sexually active teens out of control.” But the problem isn’t really that the girls are out of control, because they’re not. What they have done is escape parental and societal controls to institute a control of their own.

These shows are a mobius strip of circular logic: a graphic demonstration of the various ways that our culture erases female sexuality, and how in turn those erasures function to keep women in their place. It’s impossible to completely separate cause from effect—the only point that emerges with any clarity is that it all works together. Cultural fear of female pleasure and agency stifles both those feelings in women and the language they have available to describe it. Without that language it can’t be shared with others, and the cultural fear and erasure is perpetuated.

As viewers, we must constantly remind ourselves that the discourse of talk shows is always controlled by hosts and producers. That they frame the entire debate—from the out-of-context quotes taken from pre-show interviews, to the leading questions, to the final edit—is inherent in the format. A certain amount of conflict is good for them—it provides a frisson, a spectacle. But, as in any propaganda, nothing can be allowed to present a real challenge to the hegemony of the conventional.

As audience members say, “Girl, you need help... you got a serious problem.” Yes, the panelists do have a problem—the problem of being willfully misunderstood and judged, the problem of having their experience denied and erased. Yes, they need help. They need help to make themselves understood, to develop a full language of female sexual pleasure and agency. But they’re never going to get it from a talk show.

Lisa Jervis only watches this crap so she can write about it.

Are You Ready for the Sex, Girls?

Kyla — Mon, 01 Jan 1996 00:00:00 -0500

Kids has been hailed as a film that breaks the teen-movie mold and shows a long-hidden side of young life. But, while it may be more graphic and harsh than other movies, it basically covers the same ground: voracious young male sexuality. The only innovative element of the movie—an honest portrayal of female sexual pleasure—is conflicted at best. Two opposing dynamics of sexuality are illustrated, one by Telly and his virgin conquests, the other by the scene—perhaps one of the best in modern screenwriting—where a group of girls talk raunchily and gleefully about their sexual experiences. Since it addressed the girls’ pleasure from their own point of view, that scene gave me hope that the movie might actually affirm female sexuality. Unfortunately, it was the only glimmer of female subjectivity in the place. The rest of the movie was all about boys convincing girls to get fucked. Not that I think there’s anything wrong with that per se; what’s disturbing is the stereotypical choreography of Telly’s moves.

Telly’s two seductions are mirror images of each other—the two girls say the same things in the same whiney, needy voice: “Do you care about me?” they ask, needing an emotional hook to make sex all right. That Telly says the same lines to both of them is unimportant; it’s just his m.o. But the repetition of the female dialogue is not so simple. While blending the two characters into one, it implies that all girls and women have sex for the same reason: a desire to secure love, not the physical desire that motivates boys like Telly.

This view of female sexuality as based in emotional need is strongly contradicted by Ruby, Susan, Diane, Linda, and Jenny talking about sex. They know that they don’t need love to get physical, and they sure as hell recognize the pleasure that’s in it for them. They have no trouble at all verbalizing it; their words ring absolutely true:

Ruby: He was, like, sucking my tits. He was fucking fingering me. But that shit was nice and hard. (She pounds a fist into her palm.) I was like ripping his hair out. And we kissed like so hard that our lips were busted. And that shit was so good. It was crazy. He was like ripping my hair. It was like, oh yeah (She moves her hips.), work it.
Susan: You know why I decided to go out with Alex?
Jenny: Why?
Susan (laughing): He has the best fucking fingers I’ve ever had. (She makes an illustative gesture.) I was like, yes! I’m going out with him.

The exuberance that permeates this scene is a powerful alternative to the passivity and whininess of Telly’s conquests. These girls don’t need to be assured that they are cared about in order to have sex:

Diane: I like sex and I like fucking.
Ruby: Hell, yeah. I love, I love sex.
Susan: It’s like the best thing.
Ruby: No, I don’t love sex.
Jenny: Foreplay, foreplay.
Ruby: No, I don’t love sex. I like hard-core pound fucking.
Susan: Yep.
Linda: Yep. That’s the best way. It’s that boom boom boom.

A comparison of this scene with the ones in which Telly woos the young objects of his carnal affections poses the question: which of these two radically different views of female sexuality does the film position itself to support? Can it support both at once? Can the viewer choose for herself? For himself?

The film shows a clear recognition of the difference between male perception of what girls want and the reality: while the girls talk about how gross giving head can be, their discussion is cut with shots of the guys saying how much girls love to suck dick. Obviously, the audience is being clued on to the fact that these guys often don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about; viewers can then be encouraged to take all male statements and actions with a grain of salt. By making visible the fallacy of uninformed and steretypical thinking, the film undercuts traditional notions of female sexuality. Furthermore, maleness and masculine sexuality—as represented by Telly and Casper—is problematic. The audience is shown graphically that Telly is a lying, disease-spreading jerk, and Casper’s a drunken rapist.

This may interfere with both audience identification and filmic alignment, but it remains clear that the movie comes from a male viewpoint. Telly’s voice literally opens and closes the film; we see the world through his eyes throughout. We may get a few glimpses of life from Jenny’s point of view, but there’s no doubt about it—Kids is Telly’s story. So where does that leave us? While it’s great to see and hear girls speaking frankly and joyously about their own physical experiences of sex—that’s all too rare in mainstream media—that one great scene is sandwiched between images of girls whining about being cared for and guys treating them like shit. The parallel seductions serve to show the audience that male sexuality is predatory and female sexuality is passive and victim-based. Female viewers can listen to Ruby, Susan, Linda, Jenny, and Diane, but they’ll still leave the theater with the other girls’ whiney plea for emotion ringing in their ears. —lj.

Bait and Switch Sassy

Kyla — Mon, 01 Jan 1996 00:00:00 -0500

Back in March a horrible thing happened. After a few months of checking the newsstands for my beloved Sassy, wondering what the hell was up and why I couldn’t find it anywhere, suddenly there it was—mutilated almost beyond recognition. Peterson Publishing (they also own Guns & Ammo) bought Sassy, replaced the entire staff, and gutted the editorial philosophy—and the new staff is trying to pretend that it’s the same magazine it always was. But instead of a publication for young women that admits that its readers have sex, that some of them have sex with other girls, that not everyone is white and that racism is a reality and needs to change, we now have one that is chock full of pernicious, regressive advice and the message that feminism is bad, no one is ready for sex, and boys are only good for one thing: taking you to dinner and a movie. It’s the same shit that’s in YM and Teen and all the others, but here it’s worse because they’ve kept the feminist rhetoric. The language holds out the promise of being girl-friendly, and then the content hits you over the head with misogyny. Let’s take a look, shall we?

Who are you and what have you done with my favorite magazine?

When discussing sex (May, p 31-32) the new Sassy hauls out all the old stereotypes. While the piece pretends to help readers make informed decisions about sexual behavior, the subtext is that girls and women must be careful of boys and men—they always want something we don’t want to give them, and unleashing the beast of male sexuality is potentially dangerous. Lust is alluded to sen-sationalistically—“you’re sweating profusely, your heart’s doing a brisk staccato and half your clothes are on the floor”—but the pleasure that lust can bring isn’t acknowledged. Instead, it’s camouflaged with paternalistic advice and dire warnings.

When the question is “how do you know when it’s time?”, the answer is always “not yet.” The article makes the reader feel scared of her own urges and tells her to quash them. The only difference between this and a simple “good girls don’t” statement is an admission that girls do, in fact, feel desire. But the problem is that desire (and lust) are not considered reason enough to be sexual. “Watch out for those crazy-for-you-gotta-have-you-now hormones,” warns the author. Over and over again, female sexual feelings are invalidated. The author trots out an adolescent psychiatrist to put the weight of authority and expertise behind all this sexist crap. She says you shouldn’t have sex at the beginning of a relationship “because you still may be experiencing that initial lust,” and, “otherwise, it’s easy to get off track and only think about sex.” Hello? What’s wrong with thinking about sex? Is lust always a terrible thing?

As if it’s not enough to paint young female sexuality as deviant, it also must be tied inextricably with emotion. Oh, but only for girls, of course. “A lot of girls get sexually involved [because] they think having sex is the only way they can be loved.” We are also told that “most girls get emotionally attached after they’ve had sex with a guy. Guys usually do not. Most girls think of sex as a very intimate experience.” If this is even true, it’s because girls are told repeatedly by articles like this one that that’s the way it is—and they feel abnormal and freakish if they don’t agree.

Now here’s a sentiment I can actually get behind: “It’s pretty unrealistic to think love is the reason he wants to rip off your clothes.” But, of course, emotionally-motivated girl-initiated clothes-ripping is also rare, and we like it that way. The folks at the new Sassy could never admit that.

I’m getting upset.

Simple flirting is also fraught with danger. “Men think about sex all the time—some studies show as much as six times an hour. So any given time you’re flirting with one of them, there’s always a chance he’s wondering what you look like without your clothes on,” (April, p. 27-28). Oh, no, horror of horrors. The reader is supposed to think (ok, the article doesn’t actually say this), “Eek, I had no idea that he might be thinking that. And I, prim and pure as I am, would never think about imagining sex acts while flirting.” As if.

Readers are told that they’ll be punished if they don’t listen—nasty things will happen. Cautionary tales abound; we are told in no uncertain terms that the consequences of ignoring all their restrictive and infantilizing advice are bad, bad, bad. Alessandra ends up with a ruined friendship because “she never intended for [her flirting] to go further” than gifts and poems; the flirtee made a pass. Oops. Not a good situation, obviously. But the possibility that Alessandra might have wanted something other than a cute smile from the guy is never even considered. Neither is the possibility that she might be smart enough and mature enough to turn the flirtee down and to know that if the friendship is ruined by it, then he’s not a friend anyway. Then there’s Susanna. She flirted with a professor, but stopped once she heard rumors that they were sleeping together. The moral of this story: she “was never able to shake the reputation.” Never mind that “reputation” is a misogynist social construction designed to reign in women and their sexuality—I guess it’s working.

If you don’t stop I’m going to scream.

Ok, next topic—“Is Feminism the New ‘F Word’?” (August p. 41-43). Five young women are interviewed on their opinions of feminism. Ignorant and anti-feminist comments are highlighted; favorable views are buried. The article sets these girls up to bash a certain (mostly innacurate) conception of a feminism: it’s not relevant to their real lives, it’s no longer necessary, it’s full of thought police. The author does nothing to disabuse these young women of their steretypes— hell, maybe she herself doesn’t know any better. Seems to me like an editor decided that she wanted to run an article saying that feminism doesn’t speak to young women today, and then she sent a writer out to get the quotes.

A sampling: Ariel, the one staunch non-feminist, says, “I’m not a flaming feminist,” and thinks that feminism’s goals have already been achieved. “Everything is open to women,” and “feminists are sort of out of hand...and do more harm than good.” To top it all off, “Rape and date rape are two different things.” Others are more ambivalent. Kristen says that feminism is “about equal rights in the workplace, so it’s not relevant to my life yet,” and “I go to an all-girls school so I never see sexism there.” And while she thinks that “definitely, no means no...sometimes girls just tease the guy, and I don’t think that’s right. The way they dress and talk and act—they know the way they’re acting will make the guy expect things to go further.” There’s no acknowledgement of the irony here: young women spouting uninformed, misogynist opinions like these while simultaneously asserting that the playing field is fully equal.

Thankfully, some of the interviewees have more nuanced views. Aline rightly criticizes racism within the feminist movement; she also wishes feminism would “redefine television imagery [and] the concept that beauty is everything. I think that’s damaging, especially to younger women.” I agree with her, but I also know that there are feminists writing about these very issues. Unfortunately, there’s no critical examination of where these young women have gotten their ideas about feminism, and no suggestion that what they want from it may actually be out there. From reading this article, you’d think that feminism is an outdated, unnecessary concept that no young women believe in.

Caitlin, the only self-identified feminist in the bunch, has her words twisted around. When she says, “Sexism is the systematic oppression of women because they are women,” the author “call[s] her on bias and [she] amends her statement.” Um, excuse me—what bias would that be? She talks about her involvement with the Lesbian Avengers, but the only pullquote in the entire article—in 18-point type—reads, “Caitlin is wary of the feminist PC thought police and wishes abortion weren’t such a litmus test.” Just as the anti-feminist words of the other women are highlighted, Caitlin’s pro-feminist views are downplayed and even manipulated. She is the only interviewee with whom the author admits a disagreement.

Unwittingly, Aline sums up what’s deeply wrong with the whole article: “Part of the problem is the way feminism is perceived by the majority and the media. That [feminists] are screaming, bra-burning women who hate men. That can turn a lot of people off.” Yes it can; it seems to have turned all of these young women off. The old Sassy would have challenged their misconceptions at every turn, lamented the fact that girls feel cut off from feminism, tried to widen their views. I miss the old Sassy.

AAAAAAARRRRGGGGHHHH!!!!!

When the new Sassy tackles the topic of platonic opposite-sex relationships (October, p 48-50), it reads like baby Cosmo. The message? Having guys as friends helps you get boyfriends. “It can help you understand how guys think, and that can be an asset in your more intimate relationships,” and (as if any friendship doesn’t introduce you to another point of view), “being friends with guys makes you privy to the male point of view.” Of course, in the end, the article suggests that these guy friends might someday become your boyfriend. Oh, well—so much for platonic.

Aside from abandoning the stated premise of the article for the male-female-relationships-are-about-only-one-thing mentality, the author adds insult to injury with her unquestioning stance on perceptions of gender. “The way you’re perceived by the world at large when you go out with a guy friend is often different.” We hear from Risa, “When I go [to a concert] with a girl, we get these looks like we’re groupies of something. But when a guy is my plus-one, it’s like, we’re cool.” This should be an opportunity to comment on how shitty it feels to be treated like a groupie just because you’re female, and on how it really sucks that we need to have a guy with us to feel like we belong. But no—it’s just another reason to want to hang out with a guy, and the rank sexism of it all goes completely unchallenged.

The sidebar, written by a guy about his female friendships, is also brimming with annoying stereotypes: girls always smell good even when they’re sweaty; girls can teach you how to dress well; “trying to figure out what a girl wants or means” is more difficult than higher math. Most infuriating, though, is the assertion that “Hanging out with women makes you more attractive to other women. I don’t know why this phenomenon occurs. Maybe it’s the competitive thing in women, or maybe it’s just some sort of pack mentality kicking in.” So female friends, pleasant aroma not withstanding, are just a tool to get dates, and women are competitive animals who run in packs? Yeah, whatever.

Don’t forget to breathe.

It’s not like there’s nothing good in any of these articles. Let’s see, we are cautioned against flirting with our bosses, doctors, and psychiatrists. We’re reminded that if a guy really likes us, he’ll wait, and that it’s good to tell our guy what’s on our mind. There are even a few references to safe sex (although the actual word “condom” never appears). “It’s all about taking care of yourself and having self-respect,” says an expert. Good advice, right? But all of this make-your-own-decision rhetoric is empty; the message—presented not as opinion, but as immutable fact—is clear: you don’t have as many sexual urges as men and it’s dangerous to indulge them because they can only get you fired, embarrassed, branded a slut, or desperately in love with some guy who only wanted to get into your pants. It’s these very articles that serve to naturalize and thus perpetuate the stereotypes they buy into; they’re both a brainwashing tool and a self-fulfilling prophesy. And to think that the mag actually says, “Thanks to the strides made by feminism...the most un-PC guy in creation is enlightened as to equality between the sexes,” (October, p. 48). Unfortunately, Sassy’s notion of equality is extremely limited. In a nutshell, “no matter how close you are, you are still man and woman,” (October, p. 49). That just about sums up the new Sassy: stereotypical gender differences persist unquestioned and unanalyzed, and, in the end, reinforced. -lj.