Books about teenagers acting grown up

The principal at the local high school has started the practice of having "book club" PTO meetings. She chooses a theme and a few books, and invites parents to have a conversation about it. The first one last spring was about helicopter parenting and the college admissions pressure cooker. This week the topic was a lot heavier: sexual activity and assault among teens.  The three books were Girls and Sex by Peggy Orenstein, Dating and Sex: A Guide for the 21st Century Teen Boy, and What We Saw by Aaron Hartzler.

I read the first and last of these. Both were rather horrifying. What We Saw is a YA novel about some kids who get drunk at a party. A few days later, one of the girls accuses three basketball players of raping her while she was passed out. The school shuns the girl; everyone believes she was too drunk to remember and just wants to blame someone. She was already a girl with a bad reputation and is blamed for being provocative. And the basketball team is lionized and supported by the school administration, even after they are arrested at school.

The storyline is familiar, pieced together from different news stories - and probably from actual experiences the author had or knew about: the drunken parties, the locker room talk, the girl with a bad reputation.  The behavior isn't new, only everything is more public, and videos on social media act as proof to corroborate what drunken girls - or boys- claim.

I read the book in about three hours without stopping. Lots of dialogue, fast moving plot, the mix of "I can't believe this" and "I can totally believe this" propelling me forward into the wee hours of the morning, after deciding I wouldn't sleep until I finished it anyway.

At the book club, one of the moms said she wanted her son to read it. Another mom said she wasn't sure. I hadn't read it at that point, but after reading, I'm pretty sure I would not recommend it to my kids. One the one hand (spoilers!), the basketball players are not depicted as likable, the coach is definitely villainish, and the main character, a girl, is portrayed as deeply conflicted, unwilling to go along with the popular crowd's opinion and ostracizing of the victimized girl. She struggles with trying to stay out of the polarization of the school and out of the way of the news media, who are hanging around to get a story.  She realizes she was drunk enough that she could have been the victim.  The main character eventually discovers that even her kind and gentle boyfriend was present during the videotaping and did nothing to stop the actions of the perpetrators. 

It's not the depiction of the crime or even the bad decision of the "good" kids to go to the party and drink that makes me think this book is inappropriate. Rather, a couple of plot additions ruin it for me. First, the boyfriend and the main character mention drinking again - without any conflict in their minds about how much is too much, whether they might get caught, or reflection about how sick they felt after the party and how alcohol helped fuel the bad behavior. And moreover, shortly after they start dating, they have sex together, without thinking or talking too much about it - and it is presented as a good thing that they both enjoy and that draws them together, even as the girl can't stop thinking about how her friend was raped.

I can get that the author wants to present a healthy sexuality to counterpoise the assault sex that provides the main conflict.  But it is dishonest to present sex as just a thing that happens, as simple and pleasant as kissing, especially first time sex. When I was talking to my sister about this, she chided me that people aren't always punished for their bad choices, but that's not my complaint (and the perpetrators do finally get caught). What really bothers me is the dishonest depiction of teen sex as a morally neutral part of growing up. It's propaganda of a different kind.  And it's what places this book, like The Fault in Our Stars, on my banned list.

The struggle to figure out what "healthy sexuality" is stymies the author of Girls and Sex.  She spends part of the book criticizing the hyper-sexualization of girls and their willingness to be used by boys in exchange for popularity.  But in another chapter, she lambasts Pam Stenzel and other chastity promoters for scaring kids away from sex, and she struggles to find anyone to hold up as a model of what healthy sexuality, or  even healthy body image, looks like (because it requires marriage).

This book is supposedly a research book, and maybe Orenstein was trying to be balanced.  She invited girls to speak to her about their experiences with sex and their attitudes towards their own appearance and sexuality, so there is definitely selection bias. The girls either say they are proud of their bodies and want to show them off, while at the same time feeling sick after hooking up and wishing some of the hook-ups would call, or they say they have a healthy relationship with a longterm boyfriend, but they still do things they don't want to in order to keep their boyfriend.

First she looks at high school girls. They wear skimpy clothes and lots of make up to school to attract attention and claim that that attention gives them power and makes them feel good about themselves. They look up to Beyonce and Miley Cyrus for their freedom in "expressing themselves" and "being themselves" and in not letting anyone define them, which is kind of hilarious, because they do the exact opposite, I would posit.  These power poses reflect an imbalance of power in sexual encounters - that one partner should be in control of the other, or at least in control of him or herself, regardless of the other.

Some of the girls dress sexy because they think they look good, which gives them self-confidence, but one girl admits she spends all day at school wondering what people think of her outfit.  The poses on Instagram and other media outlets are supposed to give them more self-confidence and pride in their appearance, but the pictures are carefully edited and scripted and lit just right and then used as a basis for their self-esteem.  Again, the message is about conforming to someone else's idea of beauty.

Adolescence is already a time of intense self-absorption. Give me uniforms!

Orenstein spends a good portion of the book discussing the hook-up culture on college campuses and what the new standards of hooking up are.  For many girls, weekends involve getting dressed up in few clothes and high heels, trying to get into frat parties, getting drunk at frat parties, hooking up, and then feeling hungover the next day.

Some girls claim to like the easy going shifting of sexual partners and the apparent "success" they have in the hook-up culture.  But others feel trapped in the pattern, obsess about boys who never contact them again, and obsess about their appearance. 

Not all the girls she interviews are in the hook-up culture. Some claim they waited until they were in a relationship to have sex. She talks to a couple girls who claim to be glad they were able get over the guilt they felt about having sex by being choosy about with whom they have sex.  Others still feel guilty but say they wish they didn't.  She never talks to girls who are not having sex by choice, mainly, I would guess, because her survey wasn't directed toward them.

Orenstein can't seem to decided whether to admire these girls who take control of their sex lives or to pity the girls who aren't experiencing any of the real pleasures of sex in a committed relationship (which would require marriage).  She seems to want girls to have a satisfying sexual experience - but doesn't seem to share the concept of the human person being more than a body or the idea that body, mind and soul are all so linked that the happiness or pain of one affects the other.

When you look for these books on Amazon - or Overdrive, the library's ebook service - the list of similar titles reveals that there are many books on the same or similar topic out there.  Date rape and rape when one person is under the influence of alcohol or drugs are hot issues right now after the incident at Stanford last spring. And it's not a new issue.  And sadly, even though supposedly in the minds of progressives, more open attitudes toward sex should lead to more egalitarian or at least more satisfying relationships and to fewer cases of sexual assault, I am  not sure if is happening. 

The thing I remind myself of after immersing myself into these absorbing topics is that there are a lot of kids who don't fit the population who are considered in these books.  I shouldn't read these warning books too often because they weigh so heavily, when in actuality a lot of good kids are doing amazing things and avoiding the bad things for the most part.  Adolescence is tricky territory.  There's truth in that sound bite that we should believe the best, but prepare for the worst.