January 18, 2005

• Hmmm, as a boy, there is one thing that I wish I had been told earlier about the female body: that every girl has an "on" button.
• I'd like to help you (worthy goal and all) but this is kind of unfocused. Can you be more specific as to your target age range and what you're really looking for? He's Not That Into You and The Rules don't have much to do with body questions and issues (I think Our Bodies, Our Selves is still a pretty useful and relevant resource for that) so planning to do a rebuttal of those books* would be very different than an owner's guide to the female body. Also, of course, the questions asked by a 12 year old who is just entering puberty are very different from those asked by a sexually active 23 year old and I would think it would be difficult to cover that much ground. *also a worthy goal!
• Talk about masterbation and female erogenous zones. Girls don't often talk to each other about it, and may not know how / that it's an option. The few women I have talked to about it began at a much older age than the few men I have asked (like age 18 versus age 11). It fits all in with being comfortable with your body and genetalia (since you have to understand / not be grossed out by yourself to do it), and with understanding your own sexuality. I'm curious - how do The Rules or He's Not that Into you relate to books for young girls? They are aimed at older women (30s), and are about relationships. I don't think I would ever have read anything like them when I was 12-15, which I'm guessing is the age you are talking about.
• This owner's manual, could it double as a user's manual? I don't mean to be crass of anything -- there's a lot that, as a boy, I don't know on a practical level, and probably should. (Sister Lynn's sex ed classes tended to skimp out on detail...)
• OR anything. (Damn preview...)
• Ok, well, those books I mentioned just sort of irritate us and got the converation started about how women get wrong ideas about thier bodies and media fed images that start early and are often carried into adulthood. The idea was that those negative images that are planted from ages 12 to 21 allow books like "HJNTIY" to play on sort of "dormant" insecurities. It would be a bit "Our Bodys, Ourselves" but with updated language and concepts, i.e. new birth control, date rape drugs. Ideally this would be a book that could serve a range of females from 12 up through mid-twenties, depending on upbringing, age of sexualization, etc. , as well as a resource for "hip" moms to engender conversation. The point of canvassing like this was to attempt to address real womens issues and also to narrow the subject matter a little, as the initial concept is broad (pardon the pun).
• Sorry, Skrik, but I'd say just the opposite - that girls' bodies aren't necessarily sex machines. I still avoid getting proper medical care because I'm unattractive, and having internalized attitudes like that, I don't have a concept of my body as something that should be taken care of. I can't see it as anything but "useless" or "broken" because it doesn't serve its so-called intended purpose. Health takes a backseat to the shame of not being sexy. This, for lack of a better word, is fucked up. So I wish I'd had some down-to-earth, this-is-just-a-part-of-you-like-your-elbow sort of advice. ...but yes, that is vague.
• 1. I consider myself to be a fairly well-educated and informed person, however, despite the efforts of well-intentioned Health Education teachers and the aid of diagrams in school textbooks, I didn't know where my "on button" was until I was 22 years old. If I hadn't felt so self-conscious about my personal bits, maybe things would have been different. This may be more of a cultural problem than an educational one. 2. It wasn't until I was an adult, reading about Fertility Awareness, that I understood that cervical mucus is a natural part of a woman's physiology. I always thought there was something wrong with me. It makes me really wonder how many women just assume they're having a yeast infection every month.
• I went out with a girl one time who read "The Rules" and called herself a "Rules" girl. So I got the audio cassette out from the library and listened to it one day at the beach. The next time I called her, I knew that she would have to hang up after 8 minutes. After 7 minutes, I told her that I had to go. I had planned to use the Rules against her a bit more, but she abruptly ended our relationship after the second date. She came to my office and left a note for me telling me that there was not enough room in her life for both a man and God. Had she told me in person, I would have asked her which one she considered me to be.
• I'll provide details, if I know I'm credited or given copywrite.
• *head explodes*
• women get wrong ideas about thier bodies and media fed images that start early Much of this grows out of consumerism and market forces, not just the media, so this book will need to unravel that can of worms to truly drive home the point of why it's not ok to buy into it all. Great book idea and I hope to see it come to fruition.
• At the risk of sounding completely dorky... I'm writing a couple of chapters of my dissertation about this. One deals with mainstream notions of pre-teen girl sexuality, the other deals with menses and menstruation and both examine how manuals such as the one you're trying to write deal with such issues. I could either a) send you the whole (in-progress and still needing work) chapters or b) give you a list of the manuals that I have read with a 50-cent review of each. My email's in my profile.
• sort of an "owners manual" for the female body a frank and modern resource for young women to help combat dreck It's narrower in scope than your project, but the goals made me think of AAMV.
• A close friend of mine (who's actually a lot more attractive than she thinks she is) has similar feelings about caring for herself as Wurwilf. She hasn't had a pap smear in a decade. It's maddening. I would agree that the beauty should be addressed in manual for young women, especially given the number of completely inane magazines that are directed at them. How I look has always been way too important to me. I know that biologically it's important and people often can't help how shallow they are, blah, blah, but it would have been nice if I could have accepted that we can't all be supermodels, a little earlier in life. Also, the clitoris--what it is and what it's good for. I have friends who have never had orgasms. This is really, really sad. I found my clit when I was about 5 years old. My best friend didn't find hers until she was 17, which seems a little late to me. Different strokes for different folks, though, eh?
• "What do you wish you had known/been told earlier?" that it just gets better and better, the older you get. *it* being everything: sex, orgasms, love, life.
• *it* being everything: sex, orgasms, love, life.* Plus, self confidence, acceptance of one's own self, the ability to not be in a relationship and still have a great life. Those are probably the hardest things to explain to a young person.
• How about: Women get called "sluts" when they have sex a lot. Men get called "studs." Neither of these is wholly correct. While there are positive and negative aspects to having one sexual partner, a few, or many, no choice is inherently superior. If you are sexually experienced, don't let anyone call you a slut. Your worth isn't determined by how few or how many people you've slept with, either positively or negatively.
• What Wurwilf said. I know exactly how you feel, and sometimes I wish I had a daughter so I could make sure she didn't feel that way.
• I wish someone had told me that trying something new does not equate with "making a fool out of yourself." I wish someone had told me that you don't have to get married to leave a bad situation at home, just go. It will all work out and be ok. I wish someone had told me about GSL's and work-study. I wish someone had told me that marriage isn't always forever and there's no rose covered cottage. I wish someone had told me to USE THE DAMN BIRTH CONTROL. I wish someone had taught me to manage money. I wish someone had told me it's better to be independent then to buy into the stay-at-home-be-a-good-wife/mother thing. Maybe that's changed, but when I was growing up (Catholic) that's what you did. Go girls. Get a career. Get an independent source of income. Get a retirement. After my third child, mid-twentys, I wanted a tubal ligation. The doctor told me that I was too young, and even if my husband didn't care, what about if something happened, and I wanted to marry again and I "couldn't provide my next husband with children." I wish someone would have told me to go ahead and tell him what I was thinking: FUCK OFF! Don't ever let anyone tell you your crazy. Believe in your instincts when you think something's wrong in a relationship. Do what's best for you. I wish someone had told me it's ok to follow your passion in life. Pursue it, no matter what anyone else says. Finally, I wish someone had told me to make the most of what you've got--and you've always got more than you think. I wish someone had told me it's not what you know, but knowing where to find out, that's the important thing. I was young and pretty stupid for far too long.
• Also, the clitoris--what it is and what it's good for. I have friends who have never had orgasms. This is really, really sad. ...but don't err in the opposite direction and reinforce the now-current conventional wisdom, implied in the quote, that an orgasm is just a clitoris and "correct lovemaking" away and that every woman is, by nature, equally and easily orgasmic. That belief is screwing with people's heads, and it needs to stop.
• (And by "people" I most assuredly meant "women". I'm not concerned about men; my habitual gender-neutral language notwithstanding.)
• I discovered masterbation at a VERY early age, and although I wasn't scared enough to stop doing it, I was quite convinced that I was somehow hurting myself, or that I was some kind of bizarre freak for many, many years.
• I wish I had known that having sex for the first time was just a physical act, and not the life-changing, instantly-recognizable-to-everyone experience I'd anticipated. That relationships are what matter. And that how much sex you do or do not have says nothing about your worth as a person, your desirability, or your potential talent in the sack.
• Not to mention that most women's first times, particularly if they were adolescent, aren't that terribly enjoyable. Maybe young women should be warned about that? Or, horrors, given information (and empowerment) sufficient to make this much less often the case?
• I still avoid getting proper medical care because I'm unattractive Dear Wurwilf I have seen your picture. You are not unattractive.
• BlueHorse wins. And makes me want to cry.
• How a good bra fits. I still have trouble with that one. BlueHorse mentioned tht she wishes she felt able to speak out to "authority" (her doctor). This is HUGE. I remember feeling that I couldn't ask a family acquaintance not to touch my shoulder because I thought I was being rude. This is another thing I still struggle with.
• Wow, thank you all for being so honest. This is helping a great deal, my writing partner and I have put this out several ways and Monkeys are by far the best responderers.
• ACK! I hope you're still around, starry. I went to an all-Catholic girl high school, and have a non-physical agenda that should be in your book. By 12 years old, girls should start learning how money works: naming financial goals, how to set a budget and spending, how credit works. Also, there should be a chapter showing how much education relates to earning power... and how what you earn relates to how much choice you have in this world. By the time girls are 18, they should know how to invest in their future as well as they know their bodies!
• and yeah, I know it's off-post, but think about it... a companion book.
• As someone who is responsible for the health eductation of hundreds of teenage girls, the best advice is: if there is anything you actually want them to learn: repeat it often. On every page. In different colours. But repeat it. And keep repeating it. And even then, they will turn around and say "I wish someone had told me...." Never underestimate an adolescent's ability to ignore something! And most girls I have Q and A sessions with, still think you can't get pregnant the first time you have intercourse.. you can't get pregnant on your period... etc. I might have some more of their questions at work. Will look tomorrow....
• I think it's really important to counteract all of the damage that the media does to adolescent girls. If there's any way to provide some facts about "models" and how unusual their body types are, that would help a lot of girls accept themselves (or at least begin to accept themselves) as they are. I wasted a lot of time and energy thinking I was too fat (hello, size 6, how I miss you). Maybe even providing some "real" (sans makeup, lighting, photoshop, etc...) photos of popular models/actresses juxtaposed with what's found in magazines, on billboards, in the movies and on tv. Also - exposing them to the fact that the media is very manipulative would be helpful. Explaining that the media's main goal is to get you to want a product that you don't need - either with fear or peer pressure or whatever. Provide examples. And everything mentioned above. I wish I'd been free enough to explore my sexuality. All girls catholic school isn't exactly liberating or informative.
• arch1- def. still around as long as excellent ideas pour in, I'm reading. we don't have our first official content meeting till Saturday. And I think that the financial issues could be worked in, growing up girl is about more than sex and menstruation, it's the kind of good idea we might not have thought of ourselves. And we'll certainly be laying into the media heavily, I've noticed even so called "progressive" magazines like Jane and Bust can sometimes send mixed messages.
• I wish I'd learned that it's not important to wear the latest, most expensive fashions, and that anyone who tries to humiliate you for being unfashionable is a miserable asshole. I also wish I'd learned to defend myself physically, and that karate classes had been available for little girls when I was growing up. And I wish I'd learned that what other kids think of you is so, so unimportant. I also tried to get guys to like me by acting more like a guy ... I don't know where I got that notion, but it only ever worked to get me more buddies. For some reason, guys weren't attracted to a girl who could belch loudly.
• Eek - Land of Green Ginger - you mean if I'm using a diaphram I still need contraceptive jelly during my period? (I cringe at the thought of the risk I've been taking - and only in my dreams could I be mistaken for a teenager.)
• Indeed jb: ovaries can shoot out eggs at any time:) Although it is less likely, if that helps!!
• your bra size changes over time. the size you get when you're 15 isn't what you wear when you're 18, 22, or 25. silly, but a true revelation. ways to avoid yeast infections/bladder infections: i.e. wear cotton undies or boxers, avoid tampons. there are more options than tampons and pads, too. don't mess up your feet by wearing shoes that pinch/contort your toes. pay attention to birth control pills and side effects. women react differently to the various dosages/plans. you can always request that your annual exam be done by a woman. and ditto on everyone who already recommended standing up for yourself with authority figures (especially in matters of health or wellbeing). never let anyone tell you it's just a "female problem." Look at the story of Laura Hillenbrand, and how her illness was dismissed as being in her head.
• I wish someone would tell young girls that they don't have to look anything like a fashion model to be attractive. I'd develop this further, but something tells me that those umpteen zillion copies of model-saturated magazines coming out this month are gonna talk louder. Sigh.
• Daily vaginal discharge - what Lilin said. The (wrong) idea that almost all women are easily orgasmic if you just give 'em some clitlove - what kmellis said. Birth control pills make many women gain weight, and can have other icky side effects (nausea, loss of libido, etc.) yet they're pushed on teens as just about the only good contraception option besides condoms (and takes care of your zits too! =P). When I was 19 I went to my college health clinic to find out about getting a diaphragm, and they put me on the Pill instead. (Diaphragms/IUDs etc. were "for older women"). Oh, and it was only recently I found out that the Pill is so low-dose now that if you're just a couple hours off from your daily dose, you may as well not take anything at all. So I basically played roulette for years (midnight shift job, upside-down college schedule, lots of late doses). Not comforting. Luckily for girls now there's the Patch and NuvaRing. What I wouldn't give for a book or a website that has pictures of women's bodies, nude, not pornolized, at every stage of life; and then go back in time to give that knowledge to myself as a teenager. I was just discussing this with my husband the other night, that I had no idea that my body would change so much from pregnancy - it was even more shocking a change than puberty, to me. (You think you're going to have your body the same way for a lot longer than you do. No wonder women spend the rest of their lives trying to get the body back that they had in their late teens/early 20s - since that's now the pitched standard.) Yet it doesn't faze him. He'd slept with women that had kids. He'd met a few strippers. And I realized that men probably see more real women's bodies than women do. Porn (even enhanced as it is, there's still a range of shapes), strip clubs, former lovers. I'm not sheltered by any stretch, I've seen nekkid women, but they were around my age. Not older. Not with kids. You compare yourself to this young, airbrushed standard because you never have the chance to see mature women's bodies. What you see is what's considered most aesthetically pleasing, not the 95% of what really is. There was this great young women's magazine called Girl a few years ago. I saved a few issues. Refreshing. The models were a wide range of sizes. The attitude was hip without being undermining or product-pushing. I've never found anything like it before or since, unfortunately.
• A few years ago, Ann Landers (or maybe Dear Abby) had people write in to suggest clever ways teenage girls could persuade their boyfriends to stop pressuring them to have sex. This was obviously well intentioned, but the subtext was (1) all teenage boys want to have premarital sex and no teenage girls do, and (2) if a boyfriend doesn't respect you enough to respect the choices you make about your sexuality, it's your responsibility to come up with some clever way to get him to stop pestering you (rather than his responsibility to stop asking like a jerk). I think these are pretty common messages that teenagers get, and I think they're harmful to guys and girls alike. So I'd like to see teenagers told that some teenage girls will choose to have premarital sex, and some boys will choose not to. And that whatever gender you are, if your significant is pressuring you to do something with your body that feels wrong to you, you should dump that thoughtless, selfish jerk and find somebody who will respect your choices.
• Tell girls that it is not just ok, but wonderful to be smart. Even smarter than the boys. And that, eventually, boys do make passes at girls who wear glasses.
• The greatest day in my life was when I realized I'd finally reached an age where women thought intelligence was sexy. Oh, what a day of rejoicing that was.
• don't mess up your feet by wearing shoes that pinch/contort your toes good dogs, YES--not only will tight shoes mess up your feet, but heels are an abomination--they'll screw up your feet as well as mess up your back big time If you want to play fun games in 5 inch heels for a half hour or so that's one thing, but wearing them to work is stupid media manipulation and how to recognize and avoid it should be taught in grade school to all kids, not just girls--although I think girls are more susceptible
• Media manipulation is a good thing to expose! Bodies: at 41, I still have never seen another woman naked and up close, and sometimes I still wonder if there's anything wrong with me, if I'm shaped differently, whatever. Also, periods. They change over time and if they're irregular it's normal (mine disappeared for three months when I was in 7th grade and I was sure I must be pregnant since I had never heard of another explanation - despite the fact that I had hardly ever even spoken to a boy, all I wondered was why God had it in for me and how I was going to explain the 2nd coming to my parents.) As you get older they get heavier, which I didn't know either, and everyone gets blood on their fingers sometimes, which I just found out myself, in this thread,, which really hit a nerve for me, especially the comment about feeling like a menstrual retard, I so relate to that. I wish I had fully realized that my body is my own property and I had a right to say no, don't touch me, to anyone. And that going to bed with anyone who asks you to is probably not a sign of how radical, free and feminist you are. I also wish I had understood just how much power, for lack of a better word, my body had at that time and the effect that it had on men. I didn't understand that at all. I wish I had known as a young girl how damn beautiful I was, I really was, and how beautiful every young girl is. But I'm not sure you can learn that except in retrospect.
• I often hear that kind of insight - that people don't realize how beautiful they were when they were younger - and hope that those with the insight don't do it again. It would suck to be 90 and belatedly grasp the reality of my 60 year-old hotness, though who knows if at 90 I'd even care.
• I wonder why we're taught to be so body shy? It's something I've worked on getting rid of, and I think it's connected to hating our bodies in general.
• Oh! Don't forget to tell girls that they should start seeing a gynecologist on a yearly basis as soon as they even think about having sex. And to just go to Planned Parenthood if they can't deal with getting their parents to take them. Trust me - the folks at PP will practically give you a medal if you go in for information before you start having sex. Probably because they see too many kids who didn't get useful info early enough.
• Natalia poet and cook There are days in which I wake up beautiful and it is not possible to me to be that lit-up face, so I have to get drunk because I've never been able to stand being beautiful. -- Natalia Toledo