American Girls (47 page)

Sometimes, when I was on a reporting trip and I'd come back to my hotel room after a day of talking to girls, I'd have to sort of just sit for a while and take it all in. Whether it was after seeing screenshots of thirteen-year-old girls on “slut pages,” or hearing about a fourteen-year-old girl being mocked and bullied online, or finding out about a sixteen-year-old girl trying to deliver a presentation in school as her classmates flashed pornography at her—I had to just sit and reflect. I felt sad sometimes. I think what made me feel the worst was the sense I got from many girls that they felt disrespected.

So much had changed in the lives of these girls compared with girls who came before them. And yet, as they often said, there were no rules for how to behave in this new social media landscape, no guide for them to know how to respond to the way others were behaving and treating them. They were social media pioneers, but it was as if they were commanding their covered wagons without any maps or sextants.

Being a teenager has never been easy. Faces and bodies are changing, hormones raging, emotions all over the place. Imagine adding to that a constant pressure to take pictures of yourself and look “hot” in those pictures and have people like them. Imagine getting a dick pic from a boy, maybe before you've ever held a boy's hand. Or being asked for nudes at a time when you're just trying to feel comfortable in your changing body, and not always succeeding. Imagine developing a crush on someone, who seems to like you back, only to find out that he's been “talking” to other girls, online, even at the same time you thought you were having an intimate conversation.

My own life as a teenager wasn't perfect—no one's ever is—but I was blessed in many ways, especially in the boyfriend I had in ninth grade. Let's call him Sean. I hadn't talked to him in more than thirty years when I called him up one night, after I'd come back to my hotel room after interviewing Sierra, the Jamestown girl who had suffered so much from being bullied and cyberbullied throughout her life. I found myself feeling very troubled by her story, at the way she seemed to have internalized this expectation to look “hot” and so wanted to be liked and loved and considered hot by strangers on social media. For some reason I wanted to talk to Sean about it. I wanted to ask him what life was like when we were kids, and try to remember if we had known anything like innocence.

“Well,” he said with a laugh. “Not exactly.” He was talking to me from Miami, where he's the dad of three teenagers, a boy and two girls. He reminded me of how kids in our grade were having sex—“I think a lot,” he said. He remembered some girls dressing pretty provocatively back then as well. “So you think it's always been this way?” I asked. Sometimes, when I would tell people about what I was hearing in my interviews with girls, this was what they would say.

“Oh, God, no,” said Sean. “I think the biggest difference is kids are watching porn.” He brought it up on his own. I hadn't told him this was what I thought, too. “It changes how boys look at girls. I mean, how can it not?” he said. He said he talked to his son about porn on a regular basis, telling him not to watch it; “but I know he's probably going to anyway, so I tell him to remember it's not real life. I want him to be able to have a real relationship with someone someday, and the porn kids see just messes with their heads. I can't believe anybody argues with that. It's just common sense.”

When I hung up the phone, I realized that the talks Sean was having with his son were the ones we need to have as a nation. I think, for the well-being of girls, and boys, we need to have a national conversation about online porn and its effects on kids. I'm not advocating censorship. I know, as Soraya Chemaly said, that “porn isn't going away.” There were attempts early on to legislate the accessibility of online porn, but that's a whole other discussion. Parents need to know their kids are seeing porn, either deliberately or accidentally, and they need to consider porn's influence on their lives—on their view of their own sexuality as well as how they treat each other in a sexual relationship. This is especially urgent in the lives of girls. Because the porn that children and teenagers most often see presents an image of women and young women and even teenage girls that is, frankly, degrading. We can't deny any longer the influence this is having on the lives of girls.

But violent porn that is degrading to women doesn't occur in a vacuum. Its popularity is indicative of a culture in which, despite the welcome gains of women in education and the workforce, women and girls continue to experience sexism and misogyny. The fact that there are still people who would deny this seems indicative of a lack of education. I think we also need to start educating girls and boys about the history of the women's movement, in order to help them develop a better understanding of women's experience and to help them grow compassion—boys for girls, girls for one another. In schools, from the earliest ages, in kindergarten, children should be learning about the history of women in America and their struggle for equality, just as they learn about the history of the Civil Rights Movement. The story of women of all races is left out of American education too much of the time. And I think this has got to change.

Now more than ever, I believe, girls need feminism. They're deeply in need of a set of critical tools with which to evaluate their experiences as girls and young women in the digital age. Feminism, as varied and diverse in its expression as it has always been, is at its core a set of critical tools that enable girls and women to recognize inequality and work toward equality—political, economic, and social. So much of what goes on on girls' phones is unequal, beginning with the “hot or not” contest in which many are continually engaging—a form of sexualization that is potentially damaging to their emotional and even physical health.

Many of the girls I spoke to were struggling with anxiety, depression, cutting, and other issues; and while social media use alone can't be blamed for this, of course, there seems to be evidence that it could be exacerbating some of these problems. Often I witnessed, with girls, a kind of unease, a sort of buzzing, rushing, anxious state as they engaged with their phones, constantly checking, checking, to see what was happening or what was being said about them on social media. In our celebrity- and fame-obsessed culture, their engagement with social media also seems to be making them—and perhaps all of us—more interested in self-promotion. At a time in their lives when girls are just trying to discover who they are, for them to then feel pressured into creating an impossibly “perfect” self online, disconnected from reality, seems, again, a very unhealthy if not damaging activity. Should they go off social media? At least more of the time? I think this is a conversation parents should be having with their daughters.

And social media is a place where, unfortunately, girls are encountering attitudes and behaviors that must be called sexist. They need to be able to identify these things as such, and to know that they're not reflective of their self-worth—to know, in fact, that they are challenges to their success and happiness. They need to be able to understand, and respond accordingly, and sometimes fight back. Which a feminist consciousness will help them to do. “Feminism is for everybody,” bell hooks said. Children of all gender identities will benefit from learning about what is also at the core of feminism: self-respect, and respect for others.

We can change the culture of social media. But we need Silicon Valley to help. The leaders of tech, who are reaping such profits from girls' fascination with their products, need to take responsibility for the effect of their industry on girls' lives. Silicon Valley players are smart. We constantly hear how smart they are. If they're also good, they'll address how to stop the exploitation and degradation of girls and all children online. They'll become more active in the fight against the cyberbullying of girls as well as of boys, and of children who identify in other ways. They'll speak out against the harassment of girls and women online, against rape and death threats against women, and the nonconsensual sharing of nudes. A logical first step in changing the culture of Silicon Valley would be hiring and promoting more women in their own industry.

Finally, I think girls need to read. Which they already do; but they need to read more. Early in this book I reported on my conversation with April Alliston, the Princeton professor who talked about how it was with the invention of the printing press that we first saw porn in its modern form. Porn was a reaction to women reading, to becoming more educated and informed. It was meant to degrade women and distract them from becoming educated, in the view of some historians, as a way to keep them from becoming empowered. And so for girls now to model themselves in the image of pornography, one could argue, is for them to embrace their own disempowerment. Girls need to put down their phones sometimes and pick up books.

When I talked to my old friend Sean, he reminded me of how it was when we were discovering first love. He made me remember how we used to walk home from school in the afternoons and do homework together at my house, how we never seemed to stop talking and enjoying each other's company. We never had sex, although we did kiss and so forth. The point of being together was not to have sex, necessarily. It was to become intimate. “Intimacy was more valued then,” Sean said on the phone. I so want girls and all kids to have this experience of feeling close to someone, to feel valued and loved. It would not only be nice—I believe it's necessary. Because no matter how much we may feel that this world of social media is real, as Riley, the girl in Montclair, said, it's “a second world.” The real world we inhabit together is the one that matters; we need to find a way of navigating ourselves and our children back there, to the world of true and lasting connection.

I couldn't have researched or written this book without the honesty and generosity of the girls I interviewed. I thank them all, along with many of their parents, for their candidness in sharing their stories. I trust they know when reading the book that this is only a snapshot in time in their lives. It's a difficult and challenging time for many girls, and their bravery and openness have made it possible for me to talk about issues that affect all girls. I could not be more grateful to them for that.

While researching and writing I had conversations with many people that spawned thoughts and reflection, but conversations with April Alliston, Jeannine Amber, David Buss, Soraya Chemaly, Susan J. Douglas, Donna Freitas, Justin Garcia, Michael Harris, Jennifer Powell-Lunder, and Paul Roberts were especially important in my developing an understanding of the broader themes at work in the stories of the girls I interviewed. I thank them all for sharing their time and brilliance.

Jordan Pavlin, my editor, helped me see how to make the book a reality. I was swimming in interviews with hundreds of girls, which she patiently helped me to crystalize into a narrative. Throughout this process my agent, Kimberly Witherspoon, provided invaluable support and counsel. I thank them both, and feel very lucky to have spun into their orbit.

I wouldn't have conceived of the book were it not for Graydon Carter, who saw a crisis in the lives of girls and sent me off on my first reporting trip to find out what was going on in their lives. I am deeply indebted to him as well as to Dana Brown, my editor at
Vanity Fair,
for their insights, support, and guidance.

I also thank Ellen Feldman, my production editor, for helping to make the book better. I thank Erin Sheehy, Richard Beck, and Benjamin Phelan for fact-checking the book, and Veronica Chambers for reading parts of the book and letting me know about the Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls.

Many of my friends and family members helped me as well, especially my mother, Alice, whose innate sense of how to parent compassionately has been a true north. I also thank my brother, Noah, and sister, Liz, as well as Spencer, Satsko, Amy, Michael, Austin, Calvin, and Daniel for listening and supporting me when I was having trouble, and sharing their friendship and companionship in this years-long process. And finally I would like to thank my daughter, Zazie. Her kindness and suggestions helped me in so many ways, especially in making me realize every day how dear girls are, and how important it is for us to give them a better world.

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