Girls & Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape

Orenstein refers to Joan Jacobs Brumberg’s book The Body Project (1997) about the cultural history of the female body. Brumberg states that girls used to believe self-improvement meant being less vain and more focused on helping others, but now, self-improvement means improving one’s appearance. With the advent of social media, this compulsive focus on looks has only increased, particularly for girls. Orenstein observes how young women experience themselves on social media as “brands,” and their friends are their audience. Their image determines who they are. The goal of being the “ideal” girl means young women’s online profiles are judged more harshly than men’s; women are criticized about how many times they post, what kinds of posts they make, how much skin they expose, et cetera. They must be sexy, but not too sexy; they must be confident, but not desperate. Orenstein states that the line young women must walk to convey the right image on social media is extremely thin.

Orenstein notes that sexting statistics tend to be unreliable, but it’s clear that girls are twice as likely as boys to be pressured or even threatened into sending explicit photos. She notes the dangers of this coercion, which can lead to more long-term depression, anxiety, and trauma than coercion into real-life sex. Some girls agree to send photos when pressured because they want to please the recipient or be seen as hot. Others send photos when outright extorted in some way. Some girls, though, see sexting as a way to experiment with sex safely; it can be a way to express sexuality without the risk of physical engagement.

Orenstein recounts the movement to celebrate big butts in music and social media influencing that began around 2012. Examples of celebrities who sparked the trend include Beyoncé, Nicki Minaj, Jennifer Lopez, and Kim Kardashian. Butt selfies and Brazilian butt lifts became popular, as well as clothing that lifted and enhanced butts. Matilda Oh, a high school student Orenstein interviewed, defended stars like Minaj as challenging societal standards for women, particularly for women of color.

Feminist scholar Bell Hooks argues that this behavior is just another fetishization and reduction of women to their body parts and that it’s not empowering or subversive at all. Matilda claimed it’s different because, “Yes, these women may be products, but they’re also producers” (27), distinguishing being objectified by others and objectifying one’s self. Orenstein draws a distinction: They are reclaiming their sexuality, but they’re doing so inside a system that “demands women look and present their bodies in a particular way in order to be heard, in order to be seen, in order to work” (27). She asserts that this isn’t actual change so much as women who know they’ll benefit from packaging their sexuality within the limited choices available to women.

Miley Cyrus became a controversial sensation when she twerked against Robin Thicke’s crotch while they performed his song “Blurred Lines.” She also pretended to lick a backup dancer’s behind, used a big, foam finger in sexually provocative ways, and performed her now-famous tongue wag. While people across the political and cultural spectrum were horrified, young women argued she was freely expressing sexuality. Orenstein argues that Miley’s performances provided “the illusion of sexual freedom, illusion of rebellion, the illusion of defiance, the illusion that she ‘doesn’t care’” (32); she mastered appearing both liberated and extremely, sexually desirable. She straddled the blurry line between caring too much and not caring at all what others think. Orenstein cites another performance in which Miley simulated sex acts with a little person on stage while wearing a body-clinging outfit. She asserts that that’s not sexual liberation or revolutionary; rather, it’s using the exact sexual expectations put on young women and applying them to something silly.