Fast Girls: Teenage Tribes and the Myth of the Slut - Hardcover

Emily White

3.42

372 ratings by Goodreads

9780684867403: Fast Girls: Teenage Tribes and the Myth of the Slut

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0684867400 ISBN 13: 9780684867403

Publisher: Scribner, 2002

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

In a study with a feminist perspective, the author explores the archetype of the high school "slut" in American society, revealing how it is a type of urban legend that does not reflect the reality of women's lives.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

About the Author:

Emily White, a freelance writer, was the editor of The Stranger, an alternative weekly newspaper in Seattle. She has also been a contributing editor to the Web site OpenLetters.net and a Stegner fellow in the fiction program at Stanford University. Her work has appeared in Spin Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, The Village Voice, Nest, and L.A. Weekly. White lives in Seattle, Washington, where she is the writer in residence at Richard Hugo House.

From Library Journal:

These are both excellent sociological studies about girls, women, and sexuality. In The Secret Lives of Girls, Lamb (psychology, St. Michael's Coll.) explores the idea (the myth?) of the "good girl." Many girls and young women, she attests, lead double lives, acting sweet and well behaved in public but sexual and aggressive and guilt-ridden in private. Using more than 125 interviews with girls and women of all races in 25 states, Lamb compellingly argues that girls are neither inherently "good" nor the passive victims whom some psychologists (e.g., Mary Pipher) have made them out to be. Teens and women often conceal their sexual desire and hunger for power via diaries and other secret means. Yet as little girls, they played healthy sexual games like catch-and-kiss and naked Barbies (though that finding pertains only to white America; Lamb found that African American girls rarely play sexual games with one other). Girls feel powerful (translation: good!) when they engage in mischief, swear, and successfully dominate siblings. Aside from revealing a misconception, this intriguing and significant book includes two chapters for parents, "Raising Sexual Girls" and "Raising Aggressive Girls." Highly recommended for social science and child-rearing collections. White, a freelance writer, reports on the high school slut. Who is she? Why is she so universal? What happens to her ten or 20 years after high school? White finds that girls seen as sluts always disagree with what the crowd claims they did, that the "slut" flourishes in a suburban landscape, and that, like anorexics, sluts are usually white. White's perspective is different from Naomi Wolf's in Promiscuities; Wolf concluded that "we" are all sluts, all "bad" girls, and that it's OK. Not so, says White. A deep chasm exists between "good" girls and girls perceived as sluts; it's "us" vs. "them," with girls as girls' worst enemies. While Wolf intertwined personal narrative with cultural history, White bases her conclusions on over 100 interviews with white, black, Latino, and Asian women with solid results. An excerpt of Fast Girls appeared in the New York Times Magazine; for social science collections. Linda Beck, Indian Valley P.L., Telford, PA
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.