{"id":1110,"date":"2008-09-12T00:11:00","date_gmt":"2008-09-12T05:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/girlwpen.com\/?p=1110"},"modified":"2008-09-12T00:11:00","modified_gmt":"2008-09-12T05:11:00","slug":"sex-and-sensibility-removing-the-kid-gloves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/2008\/09\/12\/sex-and-sensibility-removing-the-kid-gloves\/","title":{"rendered":"Sex and Sensibility: Removing the Kid Gloves"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Sex and Sensibility<\/span>
Sex and Sensibility<\/span> <\/span>is a weekly column from Kristen Loveland that seeks to put the reasoned voice of a young woman in her 20’s into the “sex wars” fray. Sometime member of the “hook-up generation” and frequent skeptic of the social, cultural, and sexual messages young women receive from the religious right and national media, Kristen provides a voice for a much-discussed generation that has had little chance to speak up for itself.<\/span><\/p>\n

Removing the Kid Gloves<\/span>
by Kristen Loveland
<\/span>
In an article appearing in Wednesday’s New York Times<\/span> titled \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Girl Talk Has Its Limits,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/a> the lives of young girls are once again put under the microscope for inspection by a pack of inquisitive adults. Not content to explore the sexual landscape of Miley Cyrus, cultural scrutiny now delves into female friendships and asks whether girls really should be talking, or \u00e2\u20ac\u0153co-ruminating\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, with each other so much, because \u00e2\u20ac\u0153[s]ome studies have found that excessive talking about problems can contribute to emotional difficulties, including anxiety and depression.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

First of all, this is old news. My roommate\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s abnormal psychology textbook from 2004 notes, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It is known that rumination is likely to maintain or exacerbate depression, in part by interfering with instrumental behavior.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Notice the terms \u00e2\u20ac\u0153maintain\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153exacerbate\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthe depression derives not from the rumination itself but from another source.<\/p>\n

Unsurprisingly, one of the not-so-hidden assumptions of this article is that girls have an unhealthy obsession with boys:<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I could see it starting already,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she said, adding that she has made a concerted effort recently not to dwell on her own problems with friends and to try to stop negative thoughts. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153From sixth grade, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s boys are stupid, boys have cooties,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153And then it progresses to boys have cooties but 20-year-old cooties. So you might as well change it when you can.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ah yes, the fragile female psyche. I might ask why the author wasted over 1,000 words devoted to a question bound to lead to a dead end. After all, will you ask your daughter to bottle up her worries instead? I might also ask why the author used fictional models from Heathers, Mean Girls, Sex and the City,<\/span> and Gossip Girl<\/span> for female friendship. Sure, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll admit that I talk to my girl friends\u00e2\u20ac\u201da lot. I get a feeling of distinct pleasure when I look at my cell\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s phonebook, considering which of my good friends I should call next to ruminate about \u00e2\u20ac\u0153so-and-so who failed to call\u00e2\u20ac\u009d or \u00e2\u20ac\u0153you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll never guess who showed up last night\u00e2\u20ac\u009d or \u00e2\u20ac\u0153is it just me, or does she seem a bit self-centered lately?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d But these exchanges have never quite reached the dramatics of a Lindsey Lohan-led cast, though they might be a lot more interesting if they did.<\/p>\n

While I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d like to say that the article\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s author clearly hasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t seen enough Woody Allen movies, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s true that females are more prone to clinical depression than males. Nonetheless, it seems rather facile to place 1,000 words of emphasis on co-rumination as explanation\u00e2\u20ac\u201deven irresponsible as I watch the article trek up the New York Times<\/span> \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Most Emailed\u00e2\u20ac\u009d list. Because in the end the article (note its placement in the Fashion & Style section) is simply another of those proprietary \u00e2\u20ac\u0153What\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s wrong with our young women?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d pieces that will make the rounds of forwarded email and provide all too simplistic answers for questions that really deserve more complex consideration. What\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s wrong with our young women? They talk to each other too much. What\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s wrong with our young women? They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re too superficial. What\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s wrong with our young women? They give away the milk for free.<\/p>\n

While newspapers and magazines are understandably aching to draw readers in, we can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t ignore the implications of such incessant prying into young women\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s lives. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s noteworthy that so many articles focus, or place the blame, on the actions of young women themselves (friendships, sexual relations, drinking habits, college experiences, etc.), instead of on the society in which they are raised. But perhaps we aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t so much interested in solving \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the young women problem\u00e2\u20ac\u009d as in lifting back the curtain to sneak a covert glance at that object of intense public fascination: the Miley Cyruses, the Britol Palins, and all the other bright young female things that seem so troubled. As one writer notes<\/a>, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The modern American female is one of the most discussed, most written-about, sore subjects to come along in ages.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

The funny thing is, that was actually written back in 1957, which means the new ain\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t so new. A young Nora Johnson was talking about “Sex and the College Girl” in the 50s, the era of the domesticated and constrained female, who kowtowed to the reasonable, responsible expectations of society. Yet Johnson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s description of her generation struck me as so relevant to today:<\/p>\n

We are deadly serious in our pursuits and, I am afraid, non-adventurous in our actions. We have a compulsion to plan our lives, to take into account all possible adversities and to guard against them. We prefer not to consider the fact that human destinies are subject to amazingly ephemeral influences and that often our most rewarding experiences come about by pure chance.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Those are my italics. I emphasize that last line, because I think it is something we often forget as a society, perhaps in an effort fill the news feed, perhaps in an effort to re-corset our daughters. Depression and anxiety are, of course, conditions to be treated seriously. But efforts to analyze each and every aspect of young American women\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s lives, (always premised, of course, on a concern for those young American women\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s well-being), is a form of the strictest regulation, and ignores the intense wonder of unknowing and chance.<\/p>\n

Whenever I read stories implying that we should worry about such-and-such an aspect of young women\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s behavior, I picture an invalid who lives to be a hundred by lying on her sofa all day. But does she live<\/span>? And is she any more psychologically sound for having been removed from experience all these years\u00e2\u20ac\u201dor has her mind warped in on itself, obsessively concerned with the minutiae in life because she has never known the larger things? Shouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t we… wait, sorry, I had to catch myself there for a second. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m afraid I was getting rather alarmist.<\/p>\n

Anyway people, remove the kid gloves.
<\/span><\/span><\/span>
<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sex and SensibilitySex and Sensibility is a weekly column from Kristen Loveland that seeks to put the reasoned voice of a young woman in her 20’s into the “sex wars” fray. Sometime member of the “hook-up generation” and frequent skeptic of the social, cultural, and sexual messages young women receive from the religious right and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1901,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21115],"tags":[21395,176,100],"class_list":["post-1110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sex-and-sensibility","tag-girls","tag-sexuality","tag-youth"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1901"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1110\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}