Sultry Nuptials on Silky Eventide…or a Treatise on Breasts, Bread, Pop-culture, Social Media & Women’s Complicity in the Continued Degradation of Female Sexuality
Several months back, I decided to write a story about sexual assault against a young girl and I have been working on it, in fits and starts, ever since. What I initially thought would be a short story has now turned into 53 pages and it seems that I am only now scratching the surface. There is so much psychology to explore regarding why assault occurs and how it impacts its victims and the last thing I want to do is to be flippant in my approach. I feel that I owe it to anyone who has survived sexual assault to do my due diligence and educate myself about the actual implications of what happens to a girl’s spirit after surviving assault – be it a single outlier or a repeated offense. As part of my education, I have begun to read essays, memoirs, literature and research on the subject, including: The Apology and In the Body of the World, both by Eve Ensler; Summer, by Edith Wharton; and Reviving Ophelia, by Mary Pipher. I laugh at my scant library as my list of resources is skinny at best and hardly all-inclusive. Please, should anyone have any useful titles that they would like to share, I would be grateful for the suggestion.
I wanted to write this story, currently titled Cat Thief, as a tribute to a dear friend who has survived sexual assault, but also as a tribute to any girl who has been victimized, regardless if she is known or unknown to me. It seems that there are much too many such girls out there and each of them deserves recognition, empathy and encouragement. I feel both arrogant and woefully inadequate in writing such a story as I have, thankfully, never myself been a victim; in fact, this process feels very much akin to my experience as a student teacher while teaching Black American literature to a room full of black students in Oakland, Ca. As a white, waspy girl from New England’s middle-upper class, I felt both a fraud and an imposter. I’m not black and cannot in any way relate to the experience, so how could I possibly teach black literature with any kind of credibility or authority? Simply put, I couldn’t. All I could relate to was the humanity inherent in those books and, in the end, I hoped my shared humanity with those students counted for something. When it comes to matters of race and gender, marginalized populations, the underserved and the overlooked, our shared humanity may prove our only consistent recourse.
But back to the subject at hand: although I have never been physically overpowered, coerced, controlled, gas-lighted or assaulted, I have experienced emotional ridicule, sexual pressure and unwelcome advances. I also know how it feels to be physically smaller than a man who is sexually aggressive in a culture that continues to encourage female docility, and I have travelled that incredibly treacherous walk of having to sort out how to extricate myself from a precarious situation with the least amount of harm possible. This has meant giving more than I wanted and promising more than I knew I would ever willingly give - all because it provided an escape route. Dishonest? Certainly. But did it ensure my dodge from aggression lapsing into assault? Probably. I’m sorry that I was wily but, still, I’m grateful for my sly behavior if it spared me the terrible fallout of actual assault.
Sexual aggression toward women and what it means to be feminine vs. attain feminine power is a complex, tangled subject that is incredibly difficult to reduce to pithy maxims about right vs. wrong or strong vs. weak. And it’s an especially interesting topic for me not only because of the love and admiration I feel for my friend who has so courageously survived assault, but also because I am now mothering a thirteen-year-old girl. A girl who - like any other - is navigating the choppy waters of establishing her independence while still retaining dependency on the family structure; a girl who needs to develop her own identity as an individual while still wanting to be accepted by the mainstream culture so as to avoid the painful and, at times, dangerous sting of social isolation and rejection; a girl who wants to feel attractive, sexy and desirable while retaining her integrity and authority, but who also wants to experience the introduction to her sexuality and femininity according to her own terms and according to her own timeline. My suspicion is that the girls of my daughter’s generation have much pitted against them during their rite of passage from childhood to adulthood. But this is no anomaly as the same was also the case for most, if not all, of the generations of western girls who preceded them. We need only recall the likes of women such as Margaret Fuller, Simone de Beauvoir, Angela Davis and Ruth Bader Ginsburg to get an idea of both scope and prevalence.
In my experience, the majority of what is pitted against girls lies somewhere between the quality of their life at home and the cultural messaging that saturates western media. These two spheres of influence are likely linked as the quality of life at home must be largely informed by our culture’s values and how we define, as a society, what connotes feminism and feminine sexuality. Because I do not have a view into the quality of anyone else’s home life, I can only comment on the pervasive and confusing messaging I see in our media and, from that, speculate on how it might be impacting not only my daughter’s adolescent experience, but the experience of other peoples’ daughters as well.
One media moment in particular stands out in my memory. I had brought my daughter, ten years old at the time, to the 2020 Super Bowl party at a friend’s house. Most of the mothers there were within ten to fifteen years of my age and, like myself, both college-educated and self-described feminists. Jennifer Lopez performed at the half-time show and I remember feeling like the odd-man out as I seemed to be the only woman there who was taken aback by a performance that, according to my perception, endorsed nothing other than junk values, and potentially dangerous junk values at that. Although there were admittedly some fun and spirited moments to the performance, I ultimately found it irresponsible, if not potentially harmful.
During her 10-minute act, Lopez sexualized herself in every way possible: she wore a sheer body suit bedazzled strategically to cover only her breasts, butt and genitalia. While the sequins and decorations acted as a screen, they simultaneously drew attention to the very body parts she was attempting to cover; namely, her breasts and genitalia. The camera zoomed in while she simulated masturbation, then zoomed out for a larger view as she pole-danced, twerked and simulated sex with a male performer who approached her from behind while gesturing proudly at her body – as though it were a commodity he had just purchased, as though she were his captured game. One of the lyrics that caught my attention during the performance was the repeated chorus of “I always dreamed of a love like this.”
What, I wondered, was the message that our daughters were receiving? There on the screen, with all the fanfare of stage lights, costume changes and pyrotechnics, were hordes of near-naked women gyrating and bending over with their rear-ends high in the air, singing about “a love like this.” Is the message embedded in those lyrics espousing that “true love equates to sexual promiscuity and license?” That, as girls, we are lovable only if we are hyper-sexual and stuffed into bedazzled sausage casings? What about the love that can develop between two people as the result of friendship, trust, successful communication, shared values, loyalty and mutual appreciation?
When the half-time show came to an end and the commercials aired, I looked around the room to see the other mothers’ reactions. To my surprise, they were whooping and cheering, their daughters obediently following suit beside them. They had all loved the performance and found it to be good entertainment. They commented on the sophistication of the choreography, the production, the costumes, the athleticism. And they were right - there was certainly no lack of production or talent on that stage. In fact, that stage was jam-packed with dancers and musicians who had likely worked extremely hard for the chance to dance and sing along with someone the likes of Jennifer Lopez - and for the Super Bowl, no less. Still, I felt a lingering sense of discomfort and, although typically quiet in larger social settings, I decided to speak up.
“All true,” I said, “but I’m not sure I support the messaging.” As soon as I gave voice to my objection, I immediately regretted it as I could feel the energy shift among most of the other mothers, one in particular. But I had thrown out an opinion so I had better back it up. “This is the Super Bowl,” I continued, feeling painfully self-conscious and prudish. “Think of how many thousands of young girls just saw that. Kind of over-the-top, don’t you think? Like maybe Jennifer Lopez should consider an alternative message that promotes girls as whole people rather than degrading them to nothing other than sexual objects? I mean, what about feminism? It’s 2020!”
One of the mothers laughed – well, jeered is more like it. And then she shot-down what I said in one fell-swoop. “Are you kidding me? Jennifer Lopez is in her power. Clearly, she’s gaming the system and laughing all the way to the bank. Makes her a smart business woman, don’t you think? I mean, if we’re all stupid enough to line up for it, then why not earn millions of dollars? And besides, why hide the fact that women are just as sexual as men? Why shouldn’t women own their sexuality? Flaunt it, even, if that’s what they want to do. There’s power in that. I think it’s good messaging for our girls.”
Feeling dismissed and sheepish, I said something vague and then let the subject drop. I didn’t dare say more because, in all honesty, it’s much easier for me to stick to my guns in my writing than it is for me to stick to my guns in live discourse (a character flaw, perhaps, but one I’ve come to accept as part of who I am. I have been easily cowed most of my life whenever talking with someone assertive, especially men; but I am learning, bit by bit, to be more confident about speaking up. I suspect that this submissive quality is a stubborn holdover, however, of trained feminine docility more so than it is an innate personality trait belonging to me in particular). Regardless, I’ve never forgotten that one mother’s comments because there was, and remains, quite a bit of truth to it.
Girls are sexual beings. Many women find as much fulfillment and release in sex as their male counterparts do. And just like men, women can be easily aroused, have sexual fantasies, masturbate and thoroughly enjoy a good orgasm - even a marginal one. Like men, many women want the freedom to be openly expressive about feeling sexy or sexual. Finally, women should be nothing if not proud of their bodies as they are an awe-inspiring combination of both utility and beauty. Our breasts, wide hips and supple thighs are life giving at the same time that they are deeply soothing. As a child, I sought comfort by laying my head on my mother’s soft belly and I distinctly remember feeling simultaneously curious and delighted at the sight of her breasts. Then, when I became a mother and my typically small breasts suddenly swelled by two cup sizes, I remember feeling like I should lay everything down and thank god for my good fortune. Not only was I gifted overnight with a beautiful and perfect baby boy, but I was also enriched just as suddenly with a smoking hot rack. I had cleavage…finally! Soft, pillow-y breasts that pushed up out of my bra and had me fitting into dresses like never before. I celebrated my sudden booby fortune with at least as much joy as did my then- husband, to say nothing of my newborn who happily tapped into his 24-hour mobile milk bar and, within nine short months, went from a nine-pound pint to a twenty-nine-pound growler.
In sum, the female body is nothing to overlook. Any trip down a museum hall will confirm how much it has been celebrated over the centuries. From Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus to Manet’s Olympia or to Picasso’s Femme Nue Allongee, there is no shortage of homages to the female form. The reclining nude abounds and captures our imaginations as much as it does the pages of our art books. True to history, our celebration of the female form endures into the present day and is as robust and prolific as ever.
Yet…still…
As much as I revere women’s bodies, there is something that is not landing for me in today’s media culture. Something that feels stubbornly and distinctly wrong, even increasingly so. I scratch my head because the overall trend, as the years pass and the generations come and go, seems to be an increasing commoditization of women’s sexuality that distorts what should be fun, meaningful, comforting and beautiful into something that is painfully cheap. And female artists themselves are oftentimes at the helm of this trend. It leaves me befuddled and worried; I wonder if we’re taking our girls perception of what it means to be sexual and essentially tossing it in a toilet. Encouraging them to circle the drain with what should be a celebrated value all the way down to a junk value. Much of what I see today in my daughter’s Instagram feed and in the music videos that she closely studies are meaningless, even grotesque portrayals of what it means to be a sexual woman. In the end, it seems that we have betrayed the very thing that we hold so dear and, in so doing, deposited our daughters on the shores of a veritable, sexualized wasteland.
Strong words, I know. And I apologize for that. I loathe soap-boxes and, more so, I tend to feel repulsed by the self-righteous. Nonetheless, here comes my “but” and I’m going to shout it with obnoxious italics - and in bold, no less. I have a thirteen-year-old girl who is actively, daily, almost minute by minute, trying to sort out her sexuality. Shouldn’t it matter how we, as a society, choose to coach her? And here comes the crux of what it is am trying to say: shouldn’t those who have the most visibility – namely, the celebrities, the producers, the directors and the tech magnates who saturate television, film and social media feeds with constant, pervasive images and messaging – have some sense of responsibility for the product they are so covetously pedaling? I hark back to the old maxim which, I contend, ought to be a truism: With great power comes great responsibility. Yet a large margin of our social and cultural influencers seem to have little, if any, of such an old-fashioned ethic. And I am further amazed because many of the people I know in “the real world” seem to be increasingly stepping over to the influencer’s perspective. This exodus - this movement from what I believe should be sacred to what is now cheaply consumable (and profitable) - leaves me feeling both naïve and increasingly alone.
As an example, even the local bread-maker in my tiny community seems to have been converted. Well, I do not know this woman personally so it’s unfair of me to call her a convert; but I have been to her shop, I have seen her in action and I have seen her Instagram page. Since I have only just become familiar with her, it’s entirely possible that she has always leveraged her assets for advertising purposes and that the advent of social media promotion did not coincide with how she chooses to advertise. I simply don’t know. But, what I do know is that her bread is outstanding, her customers line up outside her door and her IG page is very, very sexy. Smart business sense? Obviously.
To provide an illustration, many of her IG posts are short video clips of her kneading dough. The background is appealing in a grainy, bohemian kind of way: wooden bread boards dusted in flour, rolling pins, floral bouquets, pretty mixing bowls, heavy ceramic crocks containing whisks, spoons and other kitchen utensils. But here’s where the real draw comes in: the foreground. The camera is positioned so that the frame captures just her workspace, including her hands busy at work, kneading dough which, as a physical exertion, leaves her large bosom - quite literally - heaving. And she’s usually not wearing an apron. She’s usually wearing a form fitting, low-cut tee or tank top, her breasts strategically spilling forth and undulating/ jiggling/ shaking in rhythm with her hands that roll, roll, roll out the dough.
Sex and bread. Who knew? Actually, it makes perfect sense. What’s more comforting than freshly baked bread? And what’s more comforting than a generous bosom? We have been celebrating bread since the dawn of recorded time, as made evident in the bible and in the various ceramic shards unearthed from anthropological dig sites. As a quick Google search reveals, “Bread is also a gift from God: when Moses fed his people in the desert with food which fell from heaven, and during the last supper, when bread became the body of Christ. When Jesus multiplied the bread to feed the crowd, bread became a sign of sharing. It also symbolized the Word of God which nourished the crowds.”
What else nourishes crowds? Breasts. Like bread, breasts have been nourishing crowds since time immemorial. In fact, I bet that if we were to argue which came first - bread or breasts – breasts would win every single time. So, hats off to this particular bread lady. Brilliant advertising.
If I’m honest, part of me wishes I could advertise in the same way. If only I could position my iPhone to capture my workspace: a similar workspace to Bread Lady’s insofar that it is also directly in front of my breasts. My only issue is that my computer monitor tends to block the view, typing doesn’t quite make my bosom heave like kneading dough would do and, dang it, I don’t have a bosom. I have tiny little suggestions of breasts because my three children suckled away whatever undulating loaves I once had. And, to add to it, people don’t need to purchase poetry, essays, short stories and novellas like they need to purchase food, so my particular commodity isn’t quite as urgent. Still, I am quite certain that if I titled at least some of the links to my latest blog post with something salacious, provocative or overtly sexual, I would likely get many more hits and, possibly, more followers. But, in my estimation, that would be a bait and switch because I don’t tend to write very often about bread or sex (though, make no mistake, I probably like both at least as much as everyone else does). And a link titled something like “Sultry Nuptials in Silky Eventide” that, turns out, lands on a manifesto about ethics in advertising might actually alienate my readers.
This kind of advertising doesn’t seem to backfire for Bread Lady, though, and it certainly doesn’t backfire for the influencers and entertainers who are pedaling female sexuality. Just the other night, as a way of testing how other female artists are promoting their work, I asked my daughter to select four music videos by two female artists that we could watch together. She knows that I am writing a short story about sexual assault but she doesn’t know about this essay and I decided to keep mum about it. I wanted to see what my daughter watches and I wanted to observe her reaction free from my input or influence. She selected two videos by Ariana Grande and two videos by Billie Eilish. I was happy with her selection because, based on the little I know of those two artists, their public personas have been quite different. Ariana Grande seems to repeatedly put sex at the forefront whereas my impression of Billie Eilish was that she tended to sidestep sex altogether – perhaps even as a means of social commentary.
There was absolutely nothing artistic nor noteworthy about Ariana Grande’s two videos, Into You and Thank you, Next. They were exactly what I expected and unoriginal at best. While she sang lyrics like “a little less conversation and a little more touch my body,” the following images flashed across the screen: motorcycles, cheap roadside motels, bottles of hard liquor, Ariana writhing on top of an ice machine, close-ups of her thickly glossed and pouting lips, girls twerking, cheerleaders shaking pom-poms and offering up their rear-ends, all while Ariana – as the proverbial sexy school girl in mini-uniform – played with the camera as either a doe-eyed innocent or a sultry-eyed temptress. Hello Brittany Spears, Taylor Swift, Jessica Simpson, Katy Perry, Selena Gomez, etc., etc. The list is interminable and exhausting.
Not so for the first Billie Eilish video we watched, Your Power. In the video, Eilish sits on a mountainside in the desert wilderness. She wears comparatively modest makeup and is fully clothed; her cleavage is covered and she has on hiking boots. The palette of the video is monochrome while the mood is contemplative and melancholy, as if in gloaming. The lyrics are decidedly unemotional yet confrontational: you swore you didn't know / I wonder why you didn't ask / She was sleeping in her clothes / But now she's got to get to class/ How dare you? / Try not to abuse your power / Does it keep you in control? / For you to keep her in a cage, etc.
While she sits there singing, a constrictor slowly wraps itself around her body until it is finally coiled about her neck. During the snake’s deliberate and pre-mediated journey from her lap up to her throat, Eilish remains passive, even dormant - as if her fate had been pre-determined. Then, as the snake begins its rhythmic squeezing, she starts to suffocate – her movements restricted, her breath increasingly shallow. While the snake strangles the life from her, Eilish’s emotional state oscillates between quiet resignation and matter-of-fact accusation.
The symbolism in the video is obvious yet effective and the message ultimately worth hearing, especially in the wake of the #Me, Too movement and the accusations levied against such powerhouses as Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein. I was pleased with the video because I felt that it offered an important juxtaposition to the messaging inherent in Ariana Grande’s two videos, and I was grateful that my daughter could watch another female performer challenge social trends (another Eilish video, Not My Responsibility - which I subsequently watched on my own – takes another stab at challenging our media culture in her direct, no apologies address of public body shaming).
But as quickly as I had felt affirmed, I was just as quickly disappointed because the second Billie Eilish video that we watched, Lost Cause, reverted back to the same, tired old antics pedaled by Ariana Grande and that whole host of other female pop performers, namely: cheap sex and junk values. In the video, Eilish and a group of female friends have a sleepover, during which they cavort about in silk pajama tops with plunging necklines, squirt confetti string over one another’s breasts, jump up and down on the bed in mini-shorts and then fall to twerking on a Twister board, all while singing about the fact that Eilish’s former boyfriend turned out to be a lost cause, and not her worthy.
Huh? Did I miss something? What happened?
I expressed my dismay aloud, to which my daughter immediately protested, “God, Mom. Give her a break. She’s just having fun.”
Okay, fair enough. Maybe I need to back-off. Maybe Eilish just wanted to be playful and silly, maybe she just wanted a break from her former persona of “creepy” girl. As I explored earlier, women – just like men – are multi-faceted beings and Eilish has as much right as Ariana Grande, my daughter or me to express her sexuality. But – jeesz - did it have to be so canned and clichéd? Worse, did it have to be so cheap? And why would Eilish further demote her credibility by singing about someone who was not her worthy while simultaneously correlating her own worth to nothing other than that of a young female body ripe for sex, albeit a female body ripe for sex who was clearly having a good time? Maybe that was the point, I don’t know. I’m not sure that I understand the point.
So, if I’m confused as a forty-eight year old woman, just imagine what must be going on in my daughter’s thirteen year old brain, to say nothing of the minds of countless other adolescent girls who spend hours every single day scrolling through media feeds and watching YouTube videos, most of whose messaging continues to repeat the same idea that is stubbornly repeated generation after generation after generation. And that message says, in no uncertain terms that - no matter how much we resist, no matter how much we recoil - in the end, a young girl’s highest value is, most definitely, her sex appeal. It seems that we can’t escape this sad yet inevitable reduction. That no matter how many social movements and no matter how many awareness-based curriculums we introduce into our classrooms, the simple, indisputable fact is that sex sells. It’s a truth as old as the hills - a truth as old as bread and the bible, and as familiar to us as the life giving breasts that nourish our masses.
So perhaps I had better just throw in the towel and embrace it. Maybe that was the source of the quiet resignation so evident in Eilish’s Your Power video (and so obvious in Marilyn Monroe’s untimely demise). And maybe that is why Eilish condoned the making of the Lost Cause video. Maybe she just resigned to what is. Good business sense, I guess. But soul-sucking, gut-wrenching, and deeply sad business sense.
Still, our coffers need to be filled; mine included. So why not take it all the way to the bank? I have a vintage Royal typewriter that sure as hell ain’t no computer – there is no screen to block the camera’s view of my breasts while I lustily type away at the keyboard. Why not give it a shot? You know, post a short video clip of myself in a low-cut negligee while I get all randy with the backspace and shift keys. Hell, I could twerk whilst I slip a fresh piece of paper into the roller and then collapse into orgasmic rhapsody when I hear that sexy little ding alerting me that I have bumped against the rightmost margin.
Ugh. I sound scathing and I hate that; I don’t mean to be - truly. I guess it’s just that I feel sad. Sad because some of us women are complicit in contributing to the very culture that holds us under wraps. Myself included. I’m not blameless. I worry about my sex appeal. I worry about how I look. I rarely post a photo of myself on FB or IG wherein I don’t look at least marginally pretty. And I am absolutely guilty of trying to control the positioning of cameras or how I’ll be captured in a frame so that I look at my highest value: in essence, younger, tighter, sexier.
And I see our daughters actively, nervously, anxiously doing exactly the same. I have complimented my daughter on the pretty application of her makeup because I know that is something she needs to hear. In fact, she’s now so much better than me in the art of makeup application that I have twice asked her to do mine, and then quietly run off to take a selfie (oh, how I cringe in shame). Worse, I have given my own daughter an assist in sculpting her media persona. I have been the photographer on designated IG photo-shoots wherein the sole purpose is to get at least one good shot that she can post on IG. Why? Because she feels compelled to post pretty pictures of herself because that is in keeping with what her friends are doing, and with what is so inextricably seeped into the very veins of our society’s culture. The platform wherein so many of our daughters (and sons) now socialize is behind screens and in media feeds. She had better look her best ‘lest she feel the potentially dangerous sting of social rejection and isolation. And, as is so well documented, the fallout of social isolation for adolescent kids - girls especially - can be deeply sad, if not treacherous and violent. Their mental health and physical safety are at stake.
This direct correlation between the mental well-being and physical safety of our adolescents brings me back to the origin of this essay – my not-so-short story currently under construction about sexual assault perpetrated against a young girl. According to a Rainn statistics report, every 68 seconds an American is sexually assaulted. 1 out of every 6 American women has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape in her lifetime compared to 1 out of every 33 American men. To drill in a little further, of the victims under the age of 18, 34% are under age 12, while 66% are between the ages of 12-17 (https://www.rainn.org/statistics/scope-problem). My daughter is currently 13 years old – right in that window of time when, god forbid, she is most likely to have a brush with sexual assault.
There are many underlying causes that contribute to sexual assault, including: “a
family history of conflict and violence; a childhood history of physical, sexual, or emotional abuse; an emotionally unsupportive family environment; poor parent/child relationships - particularly with fathers; or association with sexually aggressive, hypermasculine, and delinquent peers (https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/sexualviolence/riskprotectivefactors.html). I do not assume that social media is the majority contributing factor to sexual assault, but I would venture that, unwittingly or not, it can influence how we behave. As I already testified, I see it influencing not only how I sometimes feel about myself but also how I think I should manage my public image (running off to take a selfie whenever I look my best so that I can post it on social media, all in the hopes of garnering likes so that I feel both accepted and appreciated; essentially, part of the community). And I most certainly see the same not only with my daughter, but with her peers as well.
The good news is that I struggled through my adolescent years well before I ever had to worry about managing my public persona on social media feeds. And although my generation had MTV, endless TV commercials and glossy magazines covers, I did not have access to a veritable media wilderness on a personal device that I scrolled through for multiple hours per day (a landmark report released by Common Sense Media finds that teenagers, ages 13-18, scroll for entertainment purposes an average of nine hours daily. Let that sink in, folks – nine hours. My kids, I’m sorry to admit, are a healthy part of that statistic).
Unlike today’s kids, however, I am now an experienced adult who has had the time to learn from trial and error. I’ve had the opportunity to develop the many parts that make up my whole and I can compartmentalize how I am influenced. And, although I like to look and feel sexy, I certainly don’t feel the need to be sexy all the time. I am willing to go to the store plain-faced and in a baggy old t-shirt with my hair a tangled mess. I’m generally disinterested in sex while reading and writing because I am using that time instead to actively learn an idea or express a thought and the sudden introduction of sex would be misplaced. And although I can probably twerk (not sure, I’ve never actually tried), I would only do so with the man I both love and trust because, simply said, that shit is private. Not only is it private, but it’s sacred and I wouldn’t share that with just anyone because that cheapens my value, to say nothing of my self-esteem. Finally, and here’s what is probably most important when it comes to our kids, I can clearly discriminate between sex, love and consumerism. I know when I am being manipulated and I know when I am willing to be manipulated. This is not the case for our adolescents simply because their brains are not yet fully developed. It’s a matter of math and we are messing with their psychology before they even get out of the gate.
So, back to sexual assault. If we continue to market women as sexual objects, we will likely continue to suffer from incidents of sexual aggression and assault. We’re naïve to think it could be otherwise. And, although there is nothing wrong with expressing sexuality, I believe emphatically that it should only be one of many parts that we express about ourselves. We are complex beings: we feel excited, sad, curious, happy, dejected, included and excluded. We have interests and passions and good days and bad days. We have families and friends and moods and experiences. And, yes - we also have sex. But sex isn’t exclusively who we are, and it isn’t exclusively who our adolescent daughters are.
Bread Lady succeeds in walking the line of presenting a comprehensive public persona. Her Instagram page is balanced, complex, sophisticated and nuanced. She posts photographs not only of her bread and her boobs, but also of her shop, her staff, her flower arrangements, her friends, her nature walks and the daughter she so clearly adores. In all likelihood, however, Bread Lady’s followers are probably middle-aged, educated and well-to-do consumers who are discriminating and mature, and who can harmlessly enjoy the overt boob shots. Sadly, this is not the case for the majority of Billie Eilish’s followers, nor for Ariana Grande’s or any other entertainer or social media influencer who is actively targeting an adolescent audience; worse, a female adolescent audience. And although Eilish has and will likely continue to be smart, aware and challenging in terms of how she chooses to portray herself, I’m not sure that is the same for Ariana Grande and many of her compatriots. As far as I can tell, their messaging remains squarely in the realm of sex, sex, sex.
I learned a lot from reading Mary Pipher’s book, Reviving Ophelia, and I would like to quote her here. Adolescent girls “are in a boat that is being tossed around by the winds of the world. The voices of parents, teachers, friends and the media can blow [them] east, then west, then back again. To stay on course [they] must follow [their] own North Star, [their] own sense of who [they] truly are. Only by orienting north can [they] chart a course and maintain it, only by orienting north can [they] keep from being blown all over the sea.”
As she further explains, letting yourself be blown by the wind will only turn your boat in circles. Today’s social media is a storm that tosses our girls about in ways that are derogatory at best and dangerous at worst. Our girls are on a slippery treadmill, circumnavigating a drain that pulls them again and again into messaging that repeats that their greatest asset, their highest value, remains their sex appeal. It is a deep groove in our social consciousness that is deepening still. How can this be so? Why is this code? Our girls have every right to experience every part of themselves – the good, the bad, the fierce, the determined, the smart, the silly, the curious, the sexy. Let’s show them what it is to be three-dimensional and what it means to be complex, layered and textured.
From the voices of Alice Miller, Simone De Beauvoir and Pipher herself, “…strength in adolescence requires an acknowledgment of all parts of the self, not just the socially acceptable ones… strength implies remaining the subject of one’s life and resisting the cultural pressure to become the object of male experience….resistance means vigilance in protecting one’s own spirit from the forces that would break it.”
Let’s unite, ladies, because we’re smarter than this. Our daughters deserve so much more than the malnourished and nutrient-starved pulp we are feeding them, nine hours of each blessed day.