Girls and Sex 话题类型

Two steps forward, one back

－For girls, growing up is a perilous危险的journey

Apr 2nd 2016 |The Economist

文章中提到的两本书

The uses of enchantment魅力American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers. By Nancy Jo Sales.Knopf; 416 pages; $26.95 and £20.

Girls & Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape. By Peggy Orenstein.Harper; 320 pages; $26.99.

P1 用社会现象引入话题

For tips小建议on taking a selfie自拍, talk to teenage girls. Many know that your “good”side is the one without your parting刘海分界线, and that it is slimming显瘦的to pose with a hand on hip and legs “bevelled倾斜”(one straight, the other bent). Not quite pleased with the results? Simply download下载one of many “selfie surgery手术apps”to edit blemishes小瑕疵, whiten teeth and shrink缩小noses.

P2 现象背后的问题

Adolescents have always been keenly aware of 敏锐意识到how they are seen by their peers. But social media amplify放大this self-consciousness自我意识. Now that nearly three-quarters of American teens have access to有途径使用a smartphone, many of them while away＝sit around消磨时间their days broadcasting分享their thoughts, photos and lapses in judgment判断失误for immediate praise or scorn嘲讽from hundreds of “friends”. Being a teenager was never easy, but this is the first time your charm, looks or popularity have been so readily quantifiable可计量的, and your mistakes so easy for others to see. Just how this technological revolution affects young people—and particularly young women—is the subject主题of two fascinating new American books.

P3 开始介绍书

For many girls, the constant不断seeking寻求of “likes点赞”and attention on social media can “feel like being a contestant选手in a never-ending beauty pageant选美比赛”, writes Nancy Jo Sales in “American Girls”, a thoroughly研究彻底researched if sprawling内容多book. In this image-saturated饱和environment, comments on girls’photos tend to focus disproportionately比例失调的集中在on looks, bullying is common and anxieties about female rivals are rife普遍存在的. In interviews, girls complain of how hard it is to appear “hot”but not “slutty低俗的”, sexually confident but not “thirsty”(ie, desperate). That young women oftenaspire to想要be titillating使人心痒的should not be surprising given that the most successful female celebrities often present themselves as eye-candy养眼的（trophy wife花瓶老婆）for the male gaze注视. “Everybody wants to take a selfie as good as the Kardashians’,”says Maggie, a 13-year-old.

Such self-objectification自我物化comes at a cost. A review of studies from 12 industrialised工业化的countries found that adolescent girls around the world are increasingly depressed and anxious about their weight and appearance. For Peggy Orenstein, an American journalist, these are symptoms of a larger and more pernicious有害的problem: “the pressure on young women to reduce their worth to their bodies and to see those bodies as a collection of parts that exist for others’pleasure”. In “Girls & Sex”, a wise and sharply argued look at how girls are navigating找到位置“the complicated new landscape领域，现状”of sex and sexuality, Ms Orenstein notes that unlike past feminists, who often protested against theirsexual objectification,many of today’s young women claim to find it empowering有力量的. “There are few times that I feel more confident about my body than when I wear a crop top短平口上衣and my boobs are showing and my legs are showing,”says Holly, a college student. “I never feel more liberated自由的.”This hardly seems like progress, particularly when only certain bodies, those that are sexy to men, are allowed to be a source of pride. (Even Meghan Trainor’s body-positive anthem歌曲，国歌, “All About That Bass”, celebrates fuller bodies because “boys, they like a little more booty to hold at night.”) Yet both authors argue that girls are embracing their own sexualisation in part because they are living in a culture that prioritises women being “hot”. Just listen to Donald Trump, America’s Republican presidential front-runner, try to find a female news presenter wearing a dress with sleeves.

P5 

Both books also blame the “ever-broadening influence of porn色情”. The Internet has made pornography more widely available than ever before. Few view it as realistic, but many consult it as a guide—which makes sense in a country where parents rarely talk candidly开诚布公地about sex with their children, especially their daughters, and few schools fill the gap. Educators commonly advocate abstinence禁欲and only 13 states require that sex education even be medically accurate.

The problem is that much of this pornography is not only explicit清晰漏骨的but also violent, which can influence expectations. A study of Canadian teenagers found a correlation线性关系between consuming pornography and believing it is okay to hold a girl down for forced sex. Pornography also tends to present women’s sexuality as something that exists primarily for the benefit of men. Ms Orenstein notes that most of the young women she interviewed had removed all of their pubic hair since they were about 14 in order to cater to the fickle浮躁的, porn-bred tastes of young men. They also tended to prioritize their partners’physical pleasure over their own.

For anyone raising a daughter, these books do not make for easy reading. Expect plenty of stories about binge狂欢的drinking, random hookups勾搭, oral sex and misjudged sexting用手机发送色情照片. Intellectually理想的讲, many young women believe they can achieve whatever they set their minds to, but most still struggle to obey a sexual double-standard that gives them little room between being chided责备as “sluts”or “prudes大惊小怪的人”. As one teenage girl tells Ms Orenstein, “Usually the opposite of a negative is a positive, but in this case it’s two negatives. So what are you supposed to do?”