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Freudian fear and cooked statistics
The recent media alert about sex-crazed "tweens" is mostly a lot of hoo-ha with naught behind it.
By Karen Houppert
[10/22/99]

Love me, love my guns
A shotgun tumbled from a closet and my husband drifted from my heart.
By Susan Straight
[10/21/99]

Against maternity clothes
What does a hipster mom-to-be do when she has to trade her leather jacket for pink jumpers? She cries.
By Sarah Madsen Hardy
[10/20/99]

Beached whale or bitchin' babe?
Turns out pregnant is sexy. Who knew?
By Helene Stapinski
[10/20/99]

For the bad times
Sometimes a friend in crisis is better than a friend for life.
By Lauren Kessler
[10/19/99]

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"Guys like it, I guess," says Abigail.

"What is it with the boobs?" Miaka, genuinely perplexed, stares down into her paper cup of apple juice.

Eponine has an insight. "I have this friend that has really big boobs," she says. "Now, I don't know if this is just a coincidence, but she's gone farther and has a lot of friends who are boys ... and she's like a lot more experienced."

"One of my really good friends has big breasts," Abigail says. She launches into a breathless monologue: "One of the guys she liked at camp went around saying he could get to third base with her on the first date, and just because of her breasts they thought she was easy, so she'd try to hide her breasts, which is hard in the summer because you don't want to pack on so many clothes. And her bed was just by mine and at night we'd lay there hugging and she'd be crying because she wasn't treated fairly just because she was developed, and she didn't have super-big boobs or anything either, just like, maybe someone who was a little bit older, but because she had breasts she felt like she was doomed and cursed."

Off on their boob-tangent, the girls echo the adult experts: Are girls who get boobs early inherently loose, or are the girls assumed to be loose simply because they've got big boobs?

Although grownups have no problem devoting a cover story to talking about sex and tweens, it seems that they are less willing to talk to tweens about sex. Though my gaggle of eighth-grade girls was supposed to get a sex-ed unit last year, they complained that they never actually got to the puberty chapter in their health class.

Nonetheless, the girls assure me, they are pretty well-informed about these matters. Then Miaka admits she was really worried when she got these two little bumps on her chest: "Finally I went to my mom and asked her about them because I thought I was getting cancer."

They mention a gym teacher who took the girls aside one day during a running exercise to point out that some of them had boobs that were jiggling and suggested that they get better bras. Her tactlessness and disrespect engenders uniform disdain from the girls.

"Like she's the big boob expert!" Miaka sniffs.

Buried in these girls' bravado is the sense that they'd like a foundation of information, please, but a lot of elbow room to experiment with how they answer the question "What can I do with this new body and how will it mesh with my old self?"

Although they are forthright about their ambivalence, and their desire to stay just as they are -- kids -- they are also proud of their new appearance and their budding sexuality.

Even in the throes of puberty, the girls seem to have a calmer view of their changing bodies than the adults who are penning articles on puberty and sex.

The subtext of their comments goes something like this: Can't we just play with -- and display -- our looks and our bodies without folks assuming we're after intercourse? The actual text goes like this:

"Somebody whistled at me once, recently." Abigail smiles as she says this.

"Ugh," Miaka says, crinkling her nose.

"No," Abigail corrects, "I actually liked it. It was like, I dunno, like he saw me."

The girls nod their heads. And later, when Abigail confesses that she's had "vivid dreams" about guys, they nod again. "But that doesn't mean I'm going to have sex with them." Agreement all around.

"I like the idea of romance better than sex," Miaka says. "I guess I don't know what it feels like to be ready for sex, but I know what it's like not to feel ready." She shrugs. "And that's how I feel now."
salon.com | Oct. 22, 1999

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