Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Talking points 6 Tolman and Higgins" how being a good girl can be bad for girls": Connections

In “How Being a Good Girl Can Be Bad for Girls” Higgins and Tolman write about  girls and sexuality and parpallel it to young men. In one section they write about a women who’s son was getting attention from girls, the women wrote to Ann Landers who received twenty thousand responds, “..what this says to me is that a good many young girls really are out of control. Their hormones are raging and they have not had adequate supervision”(Tolman 206). This is what is mentioned in Raby’s article about teens and the storm. It suggests that teens can not control themselves.In Raby’s article there are quotes from two teens girls one. Vienna who said, “ and they say ‘oh your hormones are going crazy’…” (Raby 436). The another teen is Jazzy who said, “I think what it is when you are a teenager, people are like, ‘your hormones are racing” (436). It seems like a constant theme for teens to hear this. Raby writes about the storm and how it affects teens, “the storm creates an understanding of teenagers as powerless in the face of the inevitable tempest of hormones and uncertainties that they must cope with” (443). She was writing about how the idea is set in place and how the teen must adjust to it. In Easy A Olive’s teacher asks  guidance conselour to make an appointment with her. He also says, “ I think she;s gon through a phase” when he referrs to her new choice of clothes and the A on her shirt.

Tolman wrote about boys being praised for sexual behavior and how girls being called “obessed”(207). In the movie there is a little of this when Olive and Brando come out of the room. Brandon is cheered by the boys, while Olive is gwaked at. There is a revese desricption of what happens with Olive in Krassas article, “Master Your Johnson” says, “Men have sex with women, of course; and while it is a sign of virility to have more than one woman at a time, the women are there to please the man”(Krassas 114). It is a sign of masculinity for a man to sleep around, but with women in the movie it is a rumor waiting to happen.

In movie homosexuality is viewed as odd and bad. Brandon says he gets picked on everyday at school and even at the end of the movie he runs away to be free. With Brandon homosexuality is not a passing phase, even though he tries to hide it. The father says it is a phase he went through. The overall message of this movie is that female sexuality should not be openly expressed, while men’s should. This perpetuates the dominant ideology that Tolman and Higgins write about in the beginning of their article. This media matters because it shows how far a teen would carry on just to be noticed. It also showed multiple sides a teenage high school experience. It is not just the loner, or the big kid or the awkward kid.

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