Odd Girl Out (21 page)

Too often, the discussion of girls and sexting is occluded by moral judgment, alarm, and fear. I am not unconcerned about what girls like Erin do online, but to frame her behavior as pathetic, hypersexual, or warped prevents us from seeing that sexting is part of what came, unbidden though it was, from the world technology opened to girls.

Nor am I saying that girls sext only in response to external pressure. Girls are sexual beings and agents. They are curious, desiring, and passionate. Though we may be uncomfortable saying it, girls have long explored their sexual identities.
⁴³
They have done it on their own, in relationships and flings, and through creative pursuits. For some girls, including Erin, the expression of desire online in the form of a sext is simply that. It comes not from a need to keep up, or be seen as attractive, but from desire and curiosity.

Insecurity, however, is an undeniably powerful factor in the decision a girl makes to sext. As an advice columnist for
Teen Vogue,
I find the most commonly submitted plea for help goes something like this: "Why don't guys like me? Why do all my friends have boyfriends? Am I weird?"
⁴⁴
Just as girls agonize over whether they are thin or pretty enough, many worry they are not sexy or liked by boys. While girls have long lived in a culture inundated with heterosexual imagery, these messages have grown louder and more destructive.

In 2010 outrage over girls' sexualization was at an all-time high. An online video of seven-year-old girls gyrating in a dance routine set the Internet ablaze. American Apparel clothing ads of college-aged women were deemed pornographic, and seminude photographs of teen starlets Miley Cyrus and Demi Lovato were released. In a landmark 2007 report, the American Psychological Association linked sexualization, or objectifying and defining a person in terms of her sexual value,
⁴⁵
to low self-esteem, depression, and eating disorders in girls. The study's authors attributed sexualization not only to media, but to adults and peers.
⁴⁶

Every day, girls consume messages that prescribe their power and value in sexual terms. Into this pressure cooker steps a girl with her cell phone. Just as technology democratizes gossip, giving anyone with dirt a chance for a fair hearing, sexting gives an overlooked girl a second, virtual chance to validate her sexual worth. This is a risk many girls are more than willing to take. By adolescence, dating or being liked by a high-status guy is a key component of social standing. Girls must maintain their sexual progress to prove themselves not only to boys, but to other girls, too.

I remember this well. In middle school, I was desperate to be asked to dance by the most popular boys. I never was. I was not much interested in hooking up with anyone, but I began doing it because the other girls in my group did. I worried that they would think I wasn't cool. I feared being left out. Would I have responded to the request of a popular boy for a photo? Would that have felt like a version of being asked to dance? If I lived in a world where what happened online was enmeshed with my real life, if the boy's request signaled that I was "liked," and if sending a photo meant I could reciprocate, I sure might have.

Sexting in particular illuminates how deeply technology has become embedded in peer relationships. For many girls, sexting is synonymous with flirting. When the right kind of boy asks for a photograph, girls translate the request as "I like you. I have a crush on you. I am interested." The boy's request is usually not experienced as lewd; when it is, most girls refuse to comply. (When an acquaintance of Erin's asked for a naked photo, she sent him a nude photo of an elderly woman she found on the Internet.)

If sexting plugs into girls' need to feel sexy, it satisfies boys' drive to feel manly. Imagine a "typical" adolescent boy's bedroom: Can you see the posters on the wall? Some of them are of cars and sports celebrities. Some are of scantily clad women. In 2010, Megan Fox was the pinup of choice. These posters do not just satisfy a boy's aesthetic; they affirm and communicate his heterosexuality, and therefore his masculinity. Just as girls face pressure to be hot for boys, boys face equally suffocating messages from media, adults, and peers about being a "player" who can "get" a hot girl to like and hook up with him.

Sexting takes the pinup off the wall and puts it into his phone. With a photograph of the "right" girl, he has new evidence of his successful masculinity. Unlike girls, who are often punished for their sexuality with epithets like "slut," boys get attention and social promotions for their sexual conquests. A sext gives a boy the chance to move up the boy ranks. When a boy asks for a photo from a girl, he may in fact like her. But he may also—or only—want something to show his friends. Once he forwards the message, or (as often happens) a friend grabs the phone and sends the image to himself, a girl's reputation is forever changed.

This is why talking with girls about sexting must focus on gender roles and how they influence behavior. Telling girls sexting, and they, are "bad" is thin gruel when it comes to behavioral change. Moreover, forwarding or sharing a sext must be understood as an aggressive act. In 2010 several state laws included sexting as a form of child pornography. Although this may help in prosecution and prevention, it deflects attention from the impact a sext has on a target's relationships and reputation, and the hostile environment that can result.

To suggest that it is only boys who forward sexual content is, yet again, to patronize girls and position them as targets. Online, girls police each other's sexuality by forwarding sexual images of girls they receive. In the twenty-first century, you call a girl a "slut" by sharing a humiliating image or text. Consider this posting on the Tumblr page of a high-school sophomore girl:

Emmmm, why did somebody forward me a nude pic of some girl I know? SMFH [Shaking my f——king head] SHE'S SO STUPID. SHOULD'VE LISTENED TO THE MTV COMMERCIALS. BUT NOPE, SHE CHOSE TO DEGRADE HERSELF USING TECHNOLOGY. THAT WAS A BAD DECISION ON HER PART. OH WELL. I REALLY DON'T CARE CUS I HATE HER SO ... I'M ABOUT TO FORWARD THIS S——T TO EEEEEVERYBODY.

Clearly, it eludes the writer of this post that she will now degrade the girl who she self-righteously accuses of degrading herself.

Erin remains conflicted about whether her online sexual activity is worth it. The intimacy she achieves online is gossamer, and she knows it. Nor can she find a way to hold on to the confidence she feels in the moment of virtual sexual connection. She struggles with the duality of her life. "I am sort of starting to feel that the only people who will appreciate [my sexuality] are the people I find on-line." She continues, "It's like, God, there must be something really wrong with me in person. I must smell really bad or something."

Erin's sexting in and of itself will be a problem only if she loses control over the images she sends, or relies solely on the Internet to develop her sexual identity and confidence. These "relationships" cannot ultimately fulfill her, and technology cannot be a substitute for relationship. Of her hundreds of friends on Facebook, Erin says, "I can look at a picture. It's like, yes, you're friends with all these people but you're not really friends with them, so I guess that makes you realize you're, like, very alone." Erin is discovering in sexting what she has already figured out about her online friendships: the further down the food chain you go, the less satisfying the connection becomes.

 

the paradox of online authenticity

When I think about girls' lives online, I am occasionally reminded of
The Wizard of Oz,
and the shriveled, fearful man who sat behind the controls of the great and powerful wizard. There are the girls using Facebook to project an image of careless cool; there are Formspring account holders who act indifferent in the face of cruelty; there is Erin, pursuing online trysts she is unable to find in real life; and there are the girls who spew uncharacteristic venom from behind digital screens. If there is now a seamless integration of girls' online and virtual lives, there remains a split between what girls do online and who they are in real life.

The question becomes whether or not we should view girls' on-line behavior as a courageous or creative extension of their personalities, or an unattainable fantasy of who they wish they could be. If a girl can express certain convictions or feelings only online, is she still being "real"? At what cost does this duality come to her integrity?

If girls squirrel away parts of their identities online, what will this mean for the selves they learn to present in real time? When I was in middle school, writing a note was my only alternative to direct conflict with a peer. Most of the time, I was forced to stand with butterflies in my stomach and blurt my feelings, as best I could, to the friends who had let me down. On some of those days, I lost my temper, uttering stupid things I didn't mean; on others, my courage dissolved into sobs. But sometimes, I hit those conversations out of the park. It wasn't easy. I had to try, fail, and try again. I had to wrestle with the messiness of relationship. I had to
learn.

Today, girls can click and send around all that. It is a trade girls make with clear short-term reward but unknown long-term cost. Girls who type instead of talk are missing out on the in-person conversations they need to develop their social skills and communicate successfully. As they lean on texting to navigate their most difficult conversations, they are not getting smarter or more effective in real-life conflict. If anything, like muscles that atrophy without use, girls' social skills are being stunted. Technology may speed up relationship, but it will delay authentic connection. Ironically, like water that changes to steam, the drive to avoid conflict in real life may simply create much more of it online.

Social media is a temptation that offers the promise of something glorious but also exacts a painful price. At its best, social media allows girls to connect and explore their evolving identities. At its worst, it preys on girls' most painful insecurities. It becomes a weapon capable of pulverizing a child's reputation and self-esteem. Cyberbullying continues to confound adults and girls alike. Most schools talk to students about it, but few can do anything when an incident transpires in a private home. In the meantime, almost no one talks with students about what some call "digital citizenship." The day-to-day online interactions where children and teens play out their friendships—and begin the conflicts that mutate into cyberbullying—remain mostly unexplored. Girls are navigating this new terrain as best they can.

Still bigger questions remain: Is all this information valuable? Do girls need it? Aren't some things better left unknown, unseen, and unsaid in relationship? Although this book is an argument for girls to assert themselves more, it does not follow that everything must be said and known. A surprising number of girls agree. When I ask group after group of teens if their friendships would be better without technology, a majority of girls raise their hands. They say yes.

From the outside looking in, Erin seems an unlikely candidate for bullying. BeautifUl and popular, she is the kind of girl I might have worshiped in junior high. Yet Erin was punished in part because girls resented her social success. As I asked around after girls like Erin, I learned she was probably always a vulnerable target. Erin was a girl who "thinks she's all that."

At 8:00
A.M.
in Mississippi, nineteen seventh-grade girls were slumped in their chairs, limbs dangling listlessly over metal and plastic and wood, cheeks pressing into the cool desktops. I felt like Atlas holding up the conversation, until I asked, "So, what is the big deal about a girl who thinks she's all that?"

The bodies rustled and looks slung around the room like arrows.

For once Amber didn't bother raising her hand. "They think they're better than all of us."

Christina added, "They put everyone else down."

"Sometimes they just push the girl out of the way and go after the boys. And they don't act like that to the boys."

"Mostly what they do is they try to flirt with all of their friends' boyfriends, and they think they can get anybody."

"They act like they're stuck up," Lacey said.

The next day, with the fifth graders, I asked, "Why don't we like the girl who thinks she's all that?"

"She thinks she's pretty!" one said indignantly.

"What's wrong with that?"

"She brags about it," Dee Dee said. "Most girls walk around like they're everything, prancing around, walking down halls saying 'I'm better than you are.'"

"What does she do when she brags?" I asked.

"My hair's so pretty," she sneered, imitating.

"Is that how she says it?"

"I'm prettier than you are. I'm just way better than you!" she replied in a sultry voice, then choked into giggles.

"Okay," I said. "Act it out. Let me see."

"They fix their hair during class. They prance around!"

"So let's see it," I urged. Raneesha jumped out of her chair and sauntered down the middle of the circle, swinging her behind dramatically.

"She's shaking her booty, right?" I asked. The girls roared. "So why don't we like that?"

The laughter settled gently like a sheet laid on grass. Silence.

"We may go somewhere, and she may be getting [the boys'] attention. And they may start liking her and not me," Dee Dee said.

"What's the right way to act, then?" I pushed.

"You just don't say it all the time," Lizzie said.

"Keep it to yourself."

"Act regular!"

"Act normal!"

"What's normal?" I asked.

"Just walk around not shaking your booty!" Lana said, frustrated.

"Act like everybody else."

"Act quiet," Raneesha said firmly.

"You can be friendly and happy and just ... do things that every one else does and don't hurt other people!" Lizzie exclaimed.