girl must negotiate those opposing forces.
For boys, it is entirely different.
Chapter 2
BOY CRAZY
Kelsey was always jealous of boys. In grade school she wanted to be Batman or Spider-Man during recess, but she had to be Batgirl or the girl being saved. She developed early, with breasts in the fourth grade. Both boys and girls teased her regularly. They called her “Chesty” instead of Kelsey, and most who used to be her friends turned on her because they didn’t want to be associated with her. She cried often, which didn’t help, and she begged her mother to move to a different school district.
In fifth grade, she began to develop crushes on boys. They were all boys she knew she could never have, but still, she made up elaborate fantasies of them pulling her aside and telling her they secretly loved her. She imagined them kissing her, how their lips might feel on hers. And she imagined them offering to take her away from her life, to live just the two of them on an island where it didn’t matter if kids went to school.
And in sixth grade, when one of the cashiers at the Burger King down the street from her house suggested she meet him in the bathroom, she did so willingly, feeling that finally someone might want her. He lifted her shirt and kneaded her breasts, and then he told her to jerk him off. He didn’t kiss her once. He didn’t even ask her name, but he wore a name tag: Greg. She said she will never forget his name. He was her first sexual experience, her first understanding that boys could do something for her, something no one else could. Even though Greg never asked her into the bathroom again, even though she felt rejected and confused by what had happened, the experience set her on a search she is still stuck inside—a search for boys’ attention. She has since given blow jobs in stairwells at school, had sex in boys’ parents’ cars parked in driveways. She has had anal sex with a friend’s nineteen-year-old brother. None of them has tried to have a relationship with her. None has fallen in love with her. None of her fantasies about what boys can do for her—save her, release her, love her—has come true. But at sixteen she can’t seem to stop. At sixteen, boys still have the only solution Kelsey can see to her feelings of being undesirable.
Kelsey’s story is painstakingly familiar. I too spent much of my life believing a boy could save me from my pain. I too felt irrepressibly drawn to boys. I too couldn’t help myself. There was something about them. Sometimes, still, I can feel it: boy crazy. Other girls feel the same way. Here are some quotes about their own stories from some of the girls I interviewed:
Yes, what is it about them? This is the question that drives this chapter. My sense is that whatever “it” is, the groundwork begins young.
Lately, my three-year-old son has been playing make-believe. He wraps a cape around his small shoulders and builds a castle out of his oversized blocks and imagines stories for himself. In all the stories, there is someone he has to save, and in every scenario, I’ve noticed, that someone is a female. I have no idea where he has learned this narrative. I try steadfastly, albeit unsuccessfully, as his mother to prune out any books or television shows or movies that involve such a relationship between boys and girls. I work hard to speak of boys and girls as equals. But the narrative of a girl needing a boy to save her, and a boy coming along to do just that, is so insipid in our culture that it slipped into his very young consciousness without my knowing.
In truth, it is easy to see how it happened. In even the most innocuous movies—beginning with the ones meant for children—if a boy looks at a girl, if he finds her attractive in any way, it becomes clear quite quickly that he is in fact in love with her. Not only is he in love with her; he has eyes for no one else. And if he loved her as a child, when they grow up, they will be reunited, usually in some way that involves him rescuing her, and he will
And that is just the media. Beneath that is the very real cultural truth that boys simply have more freedoms in our culture. Boys can take up physical space. Whereas girls must rein in their desires, sexual and otherwise, boys can allow their legs to fall open when they sit; they can yell out the car window at girls walking along the sidewalk; and when they chase girls for sex, they are acting like “typical” boys. For these reasons, boys become appealing to girls on yet another level. Heterosexual girls are drawn to boys physically and emotionally, but they’re also attracted to the self-determination and lack of restrictions that boys are allowed in our culture. Studies show, in fact, that girls who adopt the “feminine” role—sociability, empathy, and greater passivity—do not feel as good about themselves as girls who take on more “masculine” traits, such as independence, aggression, and assertiveness.{28}
So it makes sense that girls might find ways to latch on to boys. Boys have something we want: real freedom. Since there has been no way for girls to harness this freedom, they have learned—sort of smartly, I’d say—to harness boys, the owners of that freedom, instead. And this is where the “bad boy” comes in. We all know who the bad boys are. They are charming, generally unconcerned with us, disinterested in any sort of commitment. They are sexy as only things that we can’t truly have are sexy. And they are dangerous. Girls are taught early on to stay away from these boys, the ones who will give them freewheeling experiences, including—perhaps most especially—sexual desire.
Jackie lives in Los Angeles, where it’s very easy to find what Hollywood considers attractive men. The first time Jackie and I spoke, she asked, “Did you find that you always had to have extremely good-looking men?” She described the kinds of men she always sleeps with. They are B-list actors and models she meets in clubs. I had heard of at least half the men she named or had seen them on television or in an advertisement. She told me she has a crush on a well-known performer. My first reaction was to say that many people fantasize about celebrities, but she and this man had actually exchanged smiles and stares on numerous occasions in L.A. nightclubs. As our conversation continued, I began to understand that this was Jackie’s normal experience of men: Jackie was only pursuing men who were out of her league. When she expressed heartache that one of the guys hadn’t called her again after sex, it seemed obvious to me that it wasn’t because he thought she was unappealing or unlovable in any way, which is what she thought. In my mind, these men were unlikely to date “normal” people. They would have sex with noncelebrities, sure, but they weren’t going to have lasting relationships with them.
Jackie is an intensely smart woman, so I was fascinated by her inability to see the way she continually set herself up to feel bad about herself. It struck me that Jackie liked them “unavailable.” She liked the thrill of scoring someone so unattainable. It was part of the high. At the same time, though she wasn’t aware of it then, she chose unavailable men so when they left she could falsely reestablish her understanding of herself again and again: she isn’t good enough. She isn’t lovable.
Also, Jackie’s B-list celebrities give her an opportunity to express her sexuality in ways that wouldn’t matter as much with mere “mortals,” as she jokingly calls the rest of the men in the world. If the celebrity boys want her, then she can latch on to their desirability. She ups her status as a sexual person with such bad boys.
For a girl, sex is dangerous. It is a motorcycle ride; it is rushing carelessly along a highway, heading somewhere, hair wild in the wind. On that motorcycle is the man who takes her on the ride, her arms wrapped around a firm, protective chest. That kind of wild, carefree sex is everything a girl can’t have, unless she is willing to become a slut. Unless she wants to become potentially unmarriageable, unworthy of respect. Sex
