Don't Kiss the Girls, Make Them Cry

'[...]romance is as rare as a corded phone among adolescents -- or at least among those teenagers privileged enough to attend Milton Academy outside Boston.

The sex life of Milton students came to national attention two years ago when five hockey players were expelled for receiving oral sex from a sophomore girl in the team's locker room. The girl, who was 15 at the time, was put on administrative leave and eventually returned to class, while three of the boys were charged with statutory rape. The Milton student body divided over whether such treatment was fair, but most seemed to agree that what "Zoe," as the authors dub her, did with those five boys was just an extreme version of what went on all the time at the school.

[...]

girls who are willing, eager even, to submit to boys. And to their credit, Jones and Miley don't gloss over how sexist, and humiliating, this state of affairs is. Jillian, a smart impassioned writer for one of the school's papers, recognizes that Zoe's "behavior was part of a larger high school culture in which sex and girls' deference to boys reigned." Yet, this clever girl (whose name, like that of the other students, has been changed) got drunk at a party and loudly begged everyone there for a condom so she could have sex with a boy who'd just told her he loved someone else. When one of Jillian's friends hears of Zoe's disgrace, she chants to herself in horror, "I could have been her."



But Jones and Miley offer no conjecture about why this sex is so one-sided, why the guys get pleasured and the girls do the pleasuring. (And whatever happened to kissing?) As marriages move closer and closer to equality, why are teenage boys the keepers of the chauvinist flame? One kid, a hockey player but not a member of the locker room gang, helpfully explains that "he loved not having to do any of the work." So one could blame "a sports culture that promoted the use and abuse of girls," as Jones and Miley do for the event that led to the expulsion. But that doesn't illuminate why Annie drops everything to service Scott, a flabby fellow with bad breath.



Adults are easily evaded in this world. Dorm rooms are sneaked into and out of. The parents of day students unwittingly host drunken orgies in their basements. And readers learn that it's easy to sneak into the chapel for sex during a school dance.One of the hockey players charged with statutory rape eventually sued Milton, claiming (with a straight face, presumably) that the school "did not do its job in preventing sexual acts among students and fostered an environment in which students could easily break rules." [...]'


texto: Don't Kiss the Girls, Make Them Cry, Rachel Hartigan SHEA, no Washington Post de 11.9.2007, p. C02

filme1: Larry CLARK [1995] Kids
filme2: uma desgraçada qualquer no YouTube.