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| TROUBLED TEENS | |
 June 20, 2000 
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ANNE TAYLOR FLEMING: For some years now, we've been reading about the problems of adolescent girls. First, there was Carol Gilligan with her pioneering work; then, a few years back, the big best- seller, "Reviving Ophelia." The gist of their research was the same: Little girls are feisty and full of beans and hope in equal measure, but that confidence and sass gets knocked out of them when puberty comes, and the culture at large begins to send big-time messages to them about being female, feminine, appealing. They lose their way, their voice. They go underground, start wearing feminine camouflage: Tight pants and crop tops, lip gloss and hair gel. They go from subject to object, daredevils to dieters. I just figured that in the last couple of years, things had gotten a lot better, what with all the moms I know doing their dead-level best to counteract all those cultural messages and raise strong, vibrant daughters. Not just mothers-- fathers, too, have been in the trenches, encouraging their daughters on the soccer field and in the science lab. But a casual look at the teen magazines for girls gives grievous pause to one's optimism. They are ever more chock full of beauty and sex tips. These are just some of the how- to manuals for little Lolitas. From "Cosmo Girl" to "Sugar" to "Jump," there are date guides and kissing instructions and dieting tips, not to mention all the ads full of rail-thin modelettes in skimpy clothes and come-on poses. What's a 12- or 13-year old to make of all this? Of herself - the complicatedly burgeoning body? And just when you start asking those questions, along comes another cry of concern from a different phalanx of authors and researchers, this time about boys, and the analogies are quite startling. Obviously, the signs have been there, at Littleton and West Paducah and Jonesboro, America's sons-- some of them, anyway-- turned into homicidal adolescents. These are only the most damaged and damaging poster boys for the crisis. There's a whole sea of hurting and lost boys underneath them, suffering from much of what girls are suffering from: Low self-esteem, loneliness, an obsession with the way they look. If girls are looking at rail- thin models and rock stars, boys are measuring themselves against the pretty boy movie stars and muscle-bound sports icons of the society, including the jocks on their very own campuses, who often deride them as oversensitive wimps. Read the bios of the killer kids, of Harris and Klebold, of Kip Kinkel and Luke Woodham, and you'll read the same thing: Teased by jocks; called "faggot"; called pudgy and gay; teased for being fat. It's all there: The sexual putdowns, the "you're not good enoughs," all coming at that moment when boys are struggling to be men in a culture that fawns over the suave and muscled, leaving the awkward loners with their angst and anger and acne to withdraw into cyberspace, where they can practice video revenge that sometimes explodes into an actual schoolyard killing spree. In short, boys are now being as commodified as girls. They're being tyrannized by images of masculine perfection, just as girls are being tyrannized by images of feminine perfection, at a time when so many parents are working so many hours, they can't be there. Obviously, some kids-- perhaps a lot, girls and boys-- are doing great, defining themselves with moxie and individuality. But a lot of others are struggling, and all the rest of us can do-- parents, mentors, whatever, whoever-- is listen hard and care hard, and do our best to shepherd them safely through the commercialized minefield that is now American adolescence, circa 2000. I'm Anne Taylor Fleming. |
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