Reviving Ophelia - Mary Bray Pipher [112]
Then we talked about making decisions to be sexual. I explained that a girl’s first sexual experience is important. It’s a template for later experience. If she’s fortunate, her first experience is with someone she loves and who loves her, and sex occurs in the context of an emotionally committed relationship. If she’s fortunate, the lovemaking is gentle, passionate and deepens the caring between the two participants.
Almost none of the girls in that group were so fortunate. Their experiences had been confused, hurried and impersonal. Intercourse happened to them. Most of them had been coerced into sexual encounters. None had had sex as the result of a conscious choice to share love in a relationship.
I helped them do imagery work. Until they could picture a good experience, I doubted that they could have one. So I told them to have fantasies of good dates with respectful guys who were interested in where they wanted to go and what they wanted to do. The date should last all evening and include compliments, talk and fun. At first they found this impossible. They didn’t think dates like that occurred, but gradually they could conceive of a decent date.
These girls desperately wanted acceptance and would do anything, including have sex with virtual strangers, to win approval. I taught them to develop their own list of criteria. At first the lists were heart-breaking. One girl said, “The guy should spend money on me—you know, take me to McDonald’s or someplace.” Another said, “The guy should say he likes me.”
We started where they were. Any criterion was a step in the direction of assuming responsibility for making conscious choices about sex. They learned that they could decide who was a worthy sexual partner. After a few weeks some of the girls developed slightly tougher criteria.
All girls need help making sense of the sexual chaos that surrounds them. As opposed to what they learn from the media, they need to be told that most of what happens in relationships is not sexual. Relationships primarily mean working together, talking, laughing, arguing, having mutual friends and enjoying outings. Girls need to be encouraged to be the sexual subjects of their own lives, not the objects of others’. They need help separating affection from sex.
Girls want to be sexy but respected. They want to be cool and sophisticated, yet not jaded and promiscuous. They want to be spontaneous, yet not die of AIDS. Lizzie and Angela are examples of girls with typical problems with sexuality in high school. Lizzie is a good student; Angela is a dropout. Lizzie comes from a strong family and Angela from a broken home. Lizzie was popular and well adjusted, mature for her age; Angela was immature and impulsive, with few close relationships. Both girls were casualties of our cultural chaos.
LIZZIE (17)
Lizzie was referred by her school counselor because she wanted to transfer to a different school. Lizzie drove to my office for an after-school appointment. She was a willowy senior dressed in a plaid skirt and fashionable sweater. She was friendly and polite, but cautious about therapy. Early in the session she said, “I think I’m a healthy person mentally. I’m not sure I should be here. All my problems are in the real world, not in my head.”
I asked what those real-world problems were. “My friends,” she said. “Or rather the people I thought were my friends. At this point, most of them aren’t talking to me.”
She told me her story. Lizzie was from a working-class neighborhood. As a girl, she fished with her father and bowled with her uncle Leon. She had a loving grandmother nearby who taught her to cook. Her parents worked in a tire factory along with most of the parents of her friends. The children had attended the same schools, played on the same soccer and baseball