Dirty Little Secrets - Kerry Cohen [15]
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 still be in love with her all those years later. And then add to this that so many images of girls—in these movies and elsewhere—show them overly concerned with what boys think of them.
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.1
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