Reviving Ophelia - Mary Bray Pipher [128]
Femininity training was strong. We were taught that if we couldn’t say anything nice about someone, don’t say anything. (I remember being delighted when Alice Roosevelt Longworth was quoted as saying, “If you can’t say anything good about someone, sit right here by me.”) We were admonished that “it’s not smart to be smart,” and that we should “let boys chase us till we catch them.”
By junior high the all-girl activities were different from the all-boy activities. Boys played sports while we walked around the gym with books on our heads so that we would have good posture. Boy Scouts camped and fished while Girl Scouts sold cookies and learned to sew, bake and care for children.
I read the Cherry Ames student nurse books. In every book Cherry would meet a new young doctor and have an innocent romance in a glorious setting. Thank goodness I also read Nancy Drew and the Dana sisters’ mysteries. Those amateur sleuths were competent and confident, brave and adventurous. They gave me role models that were lively and active. They had boyfriends, but they were always ditching them to go solve a robbery.
The prettiest girls were the most popular. I read Teen magazine with its fashion and beauty tips, and I rolled up my hair at night and combed it out in the morning. I still can feel the pressure of those big spiky rollers on my scalp. I did bust-building and tummy-flattening exercises.
Boys preferred dating girls whom they could best in every way. Achievement in girls was valued as long as it didn’t interfere with social attractiveness. Too much education or ambition was considered unfeminine. When I received the Bausch & Lomb science award at a school assembly, I almost expired of embarrassment.
Sexuality was seen as a powerful force regulated by God Himself. There were rules and euphemisms for everything. “Don’t touch your privates except to wash.” “Don’t kiss a boy on your first date.” “Never let a guy go all the way or he won’t respect you in the morning.”
Sex was probably my most confusing problem. I read Pat Boone’s Twixt Twelve and Twenty, which didn’t clarify anything. I wasn’t sure how many orifices women had. I knew that something girls did with boys led to babies, but I was unable to picture just what that was. I misunderstood dirty jokes and had no idea that songs were filled with sexual innuendo. Well into junior high, I thought that the word “adultery” meant trying to act like an adult.
One of my girlfriends had an older cousin who hid romance magazines under her bed. One day when she was away at a twirling competition, we sneaked up to her room to read them. Beautiful young women were overwhelmed by lust and overpowered by handsome heroes. The details were vague. The couple fell into bed and the woman’s blouse was unbuttoned. Her heart would flutter and she would turn pale. The author described a storm outside or petals falling from flowers in a nearby vase. We left the house still uneducated about what really happened. Years later, when I finally heard what the sex act entailed, I was alarmed.
I was easily embarrassed. Tony, the town hoodlum, was my particular curse. Tony wore tight jeans and a black leather jacket and oozed sexual evil. In study hall he sketched a naked woman, scribbled my name on her and passed her around the room. Another time he told me to hold out my hand, and when I did, he dropped a screw into it and shouted, “You owe me a screw.”
There was a scary side of sexuality. One friend’s dad told her, “Don’t get pregnant, but if you do, come to me and I’ll load up my gun.” A second cousin had to marry because she was pregnant. She whispered to me that her boyfriend had blackmailed her into having sex. She was a homecoming queen candidate and he said he’d go to homecoming with her only if she gave in. He claimed