Reviving Ophelia - Mary Bray Pipher [108]
The junk values of our mass culture socialize girls to expect happiness and regard pain as unusual. Advertising suggests that if they aren’t happy, something is wrong. Pain is presented as something that can and should be avoided by consuming the right things. It’s treated as an anomaly, not an intrinsic and inescapable part of being human. Contrast this worldview with Thoreau’s line: “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” Or with Buddha’s statement: “Life is suffering.”
America in the 1990s places enormous emphasis on the gratification of every need. It hasn’t always been so. When Robert E. Lee was asked the best message to teach the young, he replied, “Deny thyself.” Freud wrote that happiness was the experience of loving and working. He believed that the gratification of all wants was impossible and would be dangerous to individuals and society as a whole.
As a society we have developed a “feel good” mentality. We need to rethink our values and to break the link between negative feelings and chemical use. Ideally, we would offer our children new definitions of adulthood besides being old enough to consume harmful chemicals, have sex and spend money. We would teach them new ways to relax, to enjoy life and to cope with stress. We have a responsibility to teach our children to find pleasure in the right things.
Chapter 11
SEX AND VIOLENCE
CHRISTY (14)
During our shifts at the homeless shelter, Christy and I talked about her life. Her mom was a state worker and her father an engineer. They were strict but loving, child-centered parents. They were also devout Catholics who taught Christy that sex was for marriage. They lived in a ritzy neighborhood, and Christy was a member of an elite track club. As a child, she’d won many races. She was in the gifted program and attended summer camps for gifted kids. Because she was ahead of her classmates, she skipped third grade. But this meant that when she hit junior high she was immature socially and physically.
“I was nervous about school,” Christy said. “I wanted to prove I was as cool as the other kids. I wanted a boyfriend to take me to the parties that the popular girls got invited to. I knocked myself out to get into that crowd.”
I asked how she did that.
“I realized right away that being smart was trouble. I felt like I was ‘severely gifted.’ I got teased a lot, called a brain and a nerd. I learned to hide the books I was reading and pretend to watch television. This one guy in my math class threatened to beat me up if I kept breaking the curve. I made Bs and Cs. My parents were mad at me, but I ignored them. I knew what I needed to do to get by.”
Christy joined her school’s cross-country team. Some of the boys in the elite group invited her to parties. She had a gang of friends who were the jocks and the preps at the school. By the end of seventh grade, she even had a boyfriend.
“He was great, really sweet. We kissed and held hands but nothing else. We talked on the phone about twenty hours a week. Our parents wouldn’t let us go out.”
Her first boyfriend moved after the seventh grade. But soon many other boys were asking her out. She liked Adam, who was older and more experienced than her first boyfriend. She said, “I remember this one party. We were drinking margaritas and playing this question game. Someone asked about sex. Have you ever gone all the way, or had sex in a car, or had oral sex, or sex with two people at once—stuff like that. If the answer was yes, we had to drink our margaritas.”
“I was the only one who never took a drink and I felt so embarrassed.” Christy paused.
Christy explained that she liked Adam and wanted to make out, maybe “go to second base,” but stop before they had intercourse. She was curious about sex and eager to try things, but she didn’t want to lose her