When I was 13 years old, I was raped by my then 15 year old boyfriend. For years, I held back from telling anyone except for some of my closest male friends. Why did I hold back from telling anyone? I felt it was my fault. We had gone on one date, and his parents invited me to visit at his house. At some point, his parents left without me being aware; and unfortunately I was unable to escape.

I was so terrified of my female friends disowning me or making fun of me after this incident that I held back and didn’t tell any of them. The reaction I got from my male friends was what did me in. They didn’t seem to care, and gave me the advice of not telling anyone. I went through an intense period in my life where I was extremely depressed, and nobody could understand why. To this day, I am still burdened with emotional and trust difficulties.

Each and every day I grow more anxious about the sexualization of girls that I am viewing in the media. Girls are becoming sex objects at younger and younger ages; this is not okay! Television shows like Toddlers and Tiaras are a prime example of this; where parents are dressing their young children up to look like miniature adults. These children are shown wearing small amounts of clothing, makeup, and sporting spray-on tans. Marketers don’t care about the social issues that may result from their fashion lines of infant sized padded bathing suits; they simply care about making consumers buy their product. My biggest worry is that boys are picking up on the messages that girls who dress this way WANT to have sex. The experiences I went through back then ruined my life at that time, and I would do anything to make sure that other children and youth aren’t going through similar experiences.

I am now a 19 year old student in University looking towards finishing a degree in child and youth studies. My goal is to help any child or youth out there going through their lives with difficulties dealing with the pressures of our ever-growing sexualized culture. If there is anyone out there reading this who needs someone to talk to, I will 100% be there with no judgement. You can talk to me about absolutely anything; I WILL LISTEN and I will try to help. Just email me at you.do.have.a.voice@gmail.com and I will try to offer you the support that I never got. Also, check out this article for more information on other resources available for survivors of rape.

A friend of mine recently created a zine about the slut/stud double standard for a electives course called Feminisms that she’s taking. She included various fairy-tale-esque ads she found in magazines depicting women as love-obsessed. Watching her make her zine got me thinking about the image we always see of women as relationship-focused and emotional. Specifically, it got me thinking about the way we’re generally told girls and boys view random hook-ups, and I began to question whether those views are as widespread as we’ve been led to believe.

Remember the movie He’s Just Not That Into You? For those of you who missed it, the basic premise of this highbrow film (read: crappy rom-com) is that women and girls make up all kinds of excuses to rationalize men’s jerky behavior. According to He’s Just Not That Into You, we come up with justifications when a guy doesn’t call us, ignores us, or just treats us generally badly.

Apparently, we all need to realize that, upsetting as it is, he’s just not that into us. I agree. If someone is treating you badly, chances are they aren’t worth your time. But I have one issue.Movies like He’s Just Not That Into You and nearly every other rom-com in existence (save, maybe 500 Days of Summer) tell us that men often act like jerks and sometimes act nice. They usually tell us to find the nice guys, but they never address the fact that women also act like jerks, and sometimes she’s just not that into you.

It’s time to realize that girls and boys can be found on all points of the spectrum. Yes, for many girls a random hook-up is a hopeful entrée into a relationship, however for other girls it is just a random hook-up. Similarly, there exist boys who view random hook-ups as more than a successful attempt to get some. The stereotyping we see in popular culture showing women as desperate for relationships and emotional connections, and men as taking advantage of any chance to get physical isn’t entirely accurate, doesn’t allow for outliers to the formula, and creates misunderstandings.

It’s nearly impossible to escape high school (and from what I hear, college) these days without hearing about, seeing, or participating in immense saliva-sharing (hello, rising herpes rates!). I have to say, as a senior in high school, what I’ve seen does not follow the rom-com pattern. I have one very close friend who seems to think every random hook up is a possibility for a fully-developed relationship, and finds herself disappointed every time things don’t work out that way.

On the other side of the spectrum, a friend recently hooked up with a guy at a party, not expecting anything, and was approached by him the next day. Apparently the guy wanted to address what he expected to be her dismay that the hook-up didn’t mean anything. He was surprised when she wholeheartedly agreed and was surprised he would have thought anything else. I guess the moral of that story is that boys watch just as many rom-coms as we do.

The fact is, random hook-ups are probably a little confusing for all parties involved, since they don’t generally involve much talking about what it all means before it all happens. As with nearly everything in high school, if people said what they really felt, many more feelings would probably be preserved, but I don’t think anyone sees that changing in the near future. In the meantime, maybe we can just make a couple of movies about her not being into him, and cast Ryan Gosling as the weepy, confused reject instead of Jennifer Connolly.

Originally posted on Rachel Simmon’s blog. Fiona also writes for Barbara’s Angels. 

As much as my generation seems to support Facebook, I believe that underneath all that tagging and friending, there’s a deep-seated resentment that we’ve had to grow up in a world where it’s the norm to share your relationship status with strangers.

I’ve blogged before about the issues I think Facebook creates for teenage girls, and I’ve heard a lot more of my peers agreeing with me about the perils and annoyances of Facebook. My Facebook blog last year received more comments than any other piece I’ve posted, and it seems that many others share my attitude about Facebook: I wish that Facebook didn’t exist, yet I still have a Facebook for several reasons.

I hope to debunk the myth that all teenagers are drinking the facebook Kool-Aid and pose the question: will my generation ultimately defect from Facebook? Believe it or not, grownups, I don’t think I’ve ever heard a kid my age say they “love Facebook,” a two word pairing adults seem to imagine us uttering all the time. Clearly, despite its popularity, Facebook still strikes a lot of people in my generation as having negative impacts.

At this point, you’re probably wondering why I keep my Facebook. In a nutshell, I have a Facebook because I’ve always been afraid that deactivating it would cause my friendships with certain people to suffer. I have a lot of friends who I don’t go to school with, including friends from other countries who I’ve met through international programs I’ve attended. I also use Facebook to communicate with classmates about schoolwork and organize logistics for clubs.

Finally, I use Facebook because no one in my generation checks their email! Teenagers reading this: WTF? Like, maybe I’m being retro and old in saying this but email is a great way to communicate—and if any of you used it, I wouldn’t have to be so dependent on Facebook!

A few weeks ago, I set out to interview my friend, and Rachel Simmons’s former teen blogger, Lilly about her recent disappearance from Facebook. That’s right…Lilly is a Facebook defector. I went into my conversation with Lilly especially curious about three topics: friends, schoolwork, and email.

Lilly told me she abandoned Facebook this September, but that she’s wanted to do it for a long time. She’d resisted because she’d always thought that after she got to college, deactivating her Facebook would make it difficult to keep in touch her high school friends, a concern I definitely identified with.

I asked her about the strain on her friendships with these people. Lilly told me that she still communicates with many of them through text messaging and email (woohoo! What what!), but that it’s certainly true that she’s lost touch with some people by deactivating her Facebook. “It’s been very indicative of who my true friends are,” Lilly told me, “My birthday was on the 31st and it was definitely interesting to see who remembered without facebook there to remind them.” Lilly said she didn’t want to be part of such vapid measurements of relationships and that quitting facebook has helped her do this.

Lilly also talked about the pressure to cultivate a perfect persona through one’s Facebook profile or as she puts it, pressure to constantly be your own PR person. “The whole language of Facebook stalking really irks me. That’s so sad that that’s what our interactions have become. They’re so diluted. No one says on their profile…‘I’m really messy and I sorta suck sometimes.’”

Lilly said she still finds out about school events, clubs, and homework assignments, although she said she is sometimes the last to find out about parties. “Sometimes it means, you know, showing up at a party and not realizing it’s a costume party until you get there,” Lilly said, laughing. But, these are small issues Lilly is more than willing to deal with.

“It was just taking up so much time. I didn’t realize until I got rid of it how instinctual checking Facebook was for me.”

When I asked Lilly if she ever thought she’d return to Facebook, she told me that, although she had been planning on going back over winter break, she really doesn’t want to. “I don’t think I’ll ever want to go back to having it,” Lilly said, “And when I tell people I don’t have a Facebook, they sort of get this look on their faces…like they get it.”

After my conversation with Lilly I felt both more tempted to ditch Facebook and more frightened to do so. Facebook is such an integral part of all of our lives, yet many of us seem to be noticing its flaws more and more. I’m still not sure if I’m big enough to take the plunge…are you?

Originally posted on Rachel Simmon’s website. Check out Fiona’s own blog, Barbara’s Angels.

sometimes, alone time is a good thing

When I was fourteen, my dad told me that the most important thing I would ever learn was how to be alone. Granted, he said this as he took away my cell phone, Facebook and cut off all ties I had to the outside world. I was crushed to say the least. At the time, high-school-freshman-me felt like my dad was completely overreacting to the fact that I had made out with a boy, especially since he was my boyfriend. That meant something, right? And my friends had all kissed boys, so I didn’t understand why it wasn’t okay that I had, too.

However, the time spent on my virtual desert island, as sucky as it was, really allowed me time to think. During this period I spent most waking moments alone in my room — it was that or talk to my repressive parents, so the choice was obvious. Stuck in my own head, I was able to think about the boundaries I needed to set for myself. I’d already hit first base, and rounding home was clearly the point of the game. Only here’s the thing: at fourteen, the idea of doing anything more than kissing terrified me.

Even though I was perfectly content with simply kissing, my boyfriend at the time was pushing me to do more. After all, we really did care about each other and both of us had heard stories of other fun “extracurriculars” our older friends partook in. Even though at the time I was uncomfortable with handjobs, blowjobs and *whisper* sex, I was considering trying them. But the thing was, I was only thinking about doing them because I wanted to be liked. On my personal lonely island, I came to the realization that if I gave into any of those things at that moment in time, I wouldn’t like myself.

That’s how I learned that if your boyfriend or girlfriend doesn’t respect your personal boundaries, forget them. You do you.

In the meantime, I’ve compiled a list of fun things to do solo, until you find the right person and it feels like the right time.

- write haikus professing your undying love to yourself
- beat your personal best running time
- catch up on your zzz’s (no need for beauty sleep, we’re all beautiful to begin with)
- practice kissing on your hand (no need to get out of practice)
- learn to cook your favorite meal

The thing is, after I spent all that time without having to please other people, I no longer felt the need to compromise on things I knew would bother me just to be with a certain boy or even a certain group of people. My advice for everyone out there is to learn to be your own best friend. It’s the one person you have to live with for the rest of your life. So BEFORE you end up in an intimate situation with anyone, think about what you’re comfortable with. That way, when you are with somebody you respect and you feel ready, the whole experience will be that much better.

“Mom, look! That’s Rocky and CeCe, from ‘Shake it Up‘! Can I pleeeeease get one of their clothes?” She stands on her tiptoes to reach the highest shelf and points to a t-shirt with an attached pinstriped vest that is almost identical to the one CeCe is wearing in the poster above the rack of clothes. “I like that one!”

My post-elementary school years have contained very little Disney Channel, which I consumed vigorously as a child. But after spending a week with a seven-year-old, I was fully informed on how Disney is functioning today. I know every person says this about the shows they watched when they were kids, but I truly believe that the shows were much better then, especially for girls. Or maybe it’s just that now I’m more aware of the messages the media sends.

After reading about the marketing system Disney uses in Peggy Orenstein’s Cinderella Ate My Daughter (not intended toward my demographic, but I still found it quite interesting), I’ve been genuinely frightened. On the Disney Channel they really shove their products down their viewers’ throats. They don’t just air an episode of a show. They have to then follow the show up with an interview with the show’s co-stars, then a music video of their newest song, all within a half an hour. It’s no wonder this young girl’s eyes was drawn to the ad immediately.

As I stood in the same aisle as this girl in Target, I muttered to her like a batty old woman, “Don’t you realize what you’re doing? You’re buying the clothes that she is wearing! You are not thinking! The advertisers have infiltrated your brain already!” Of course, within a minute, the vest-shirt combination was in her mother’s cart.

A few minutes later, two girls and their mother passed by with a cart. One girl, about seven, sat in the cart’s bottom, and the other, maybe ten years old, walked next to it. The younger girl was rooting through a small pile of clothes next to her crossed legs in the cart. “Sophia’s shirt is an EXTRA-large!” she said loudly, giggling. “Mommy! Why’s Sophia’s shirt an EXTRA-large?” she asked, smirking at her sister. Sophia sped up walking, blushing. Sophia looked to be at a completely healthy weight, similarly in body type to both her mother and sister. What struck me, though, was how such a young girl already thought that the size “extra-large” was something to mocked, and mentioned, and giggled at. She knew that it was fodder to embarrass her older sister. I gather that looks have been a source of sister feuds for centuries, but I had a feeling the media threw something in here, too.

Disney usually plays it safe in terms of political and social correctness, so I was shocked that another Disney show, “Good Luck Charlie,” mentions weight quite frequently. On the show, which features a family of four children and their parents, the two sons frequently mock their dad for being overweight. When I saw this, I was completely shocked. Many TV shows have featured overweight fathers, but I’ve never actually heard it mentioned, let alone mocked, on a show targeted towards young children.

These experiences, although tiny in the scheme of my life, these girls’ lives and feminism itself, gave me personal proof of the influence of the media on the young girls of today. The girl who wanted the Disney shirt proves that Orenstein’s claims, as well as those made by many feminists, aren’t alarmist. Sophia’s little sister, as well as Sophia’s own apparent humiliation, prove that the associations with weight begin at a very young age.

It makes me so sad that by the age of seven, girls might already think that their appearance ties to their worth as a person. It makes me sad that people think that at all, but now it’s happening even younger. I saw it happen in Target, of all places. It’s easy to blame the media in situations like this, but it also can’t be denied: we need to do something about this, and Disney isn’t a bad place to start.

Alexa also writes for her own blog, Blossoming Badass

why does it have to be one or the other?

I honestly dislike judgmental people, but I am not going to lie – I have definitely judged people in my life. Hey, I’m not perfect and we all do it to some extent. What really bothers me is when people start to judge each other on how sexually advanced someone is. Prudes are judged for being very conservative (stereotypically) but I think girls that are more involved with guys are judged way harsher. I think slut shaming is stupid and pointless, especially in high school. I am only a sophomore but what I have observed is that girls are called sluts just for making out with boys that aren’t their boyfriends or if things go a little farther than just kissing. But the thing is that people become sexually active at different rates.

I go to a small high school where people in your grade know a lot about you. I grew up with these people, so it makes sense, but what doesn’t make sense is why we judge each other. For example, a boy in my math class let it slip that we hooked up a few times. Then his ex-girlfriend finds out and then people start saying awful things about you. As it turns out, if one person starts to call you a slut, everyone else joins in.

What I find annoying about slut shaming is that just because I might have made out with four guys in my life does not mean that I am going to have sex with any of them. Even if I did it would not be anybody’s business.  My point is that in high school you have boys and girls that have not had their first kiss yet or have only kissed their boyfriends/girlfriends but then you also have boys and girls that have don’t much, much more. It’s impossible to judge someone if you have not been in their situation. If someone is calling another person a slut or another nasty name, then they need to remember that almost the entire population of the Earth will at some point in their life be sexually active in some way. And when you look at it like that, this slut shaming business makes absolutely no sense at all.

Social Justice Club

Oh, I’ve always been into social justice. Don’t be fooled by the title. What I mean is the social justice club at my high school.

I’m going into ninth grade at the end of the summer, and I was in social justice club for a few months in grade eight. It pissed me off, because we never DISCUSSED anything. We were always do, do, do. Go collect teddy bears for homeless children. Go collect batteries. Go decorate a corner of the lobby with “go green” messages. Which is all great, but we never really discussed the roots of social justice. The closest we came to that was when we invited the proprietor of a local battered women’s shelter to talk to the club, which was one of the most informative and fascinating discussions of my life. It made me realize that this is what social justice SHOULD be like: doing and learning.

Then, a few weeks after summer began, I discovered the Ms. Magazine Blog. Then I discovered the fbomb. And I wanted to get involved.

I attend a uniformed Catholic school. The closest thing we have to a feminist club is Social Justice. Last year, the high school SJ club sold t-shirts showing several men and women holding hands, saying ‘STAND UP FOR WOMEN’S RIGHTS’, in memory of the Virginia Tech killings, when a man, due to misogynistic beliefs, ordered all the men out of his classroom and proceeded to shoot the women. One girl, in response to the shirts, asked, “Was he gay?” Because, clearly, gay men have no use for women and therefore go around shooting them. There are a LOT of misconceptions still around. Which is precisely why we need a social justice club.

So I’m joining SJ again. For two reasons: One, because the high school club seems interested in expressing opinions, as well as taking action. And two, because the club NEEDS more members to correct the misconceptions. We need SJ because there are honor killings, rapes, and sexual harassing of women, and even men, every day, in countries all over the world. And social justice club, even if I have issues with its methods, is the one way my school has given me to make a difference.

I just wanted to thank everyone at fbomb for helping me see that. And I am SO getting me one of those t-shirts.

YA Saves

I have been an avid fan of Young Adult fiction since the third grade. I vividly remember standing in the library check out line with the rest of my class during “Library Time” eagerly digging into my Judy Blume while my classmates palmed their Judy Moody books. I think that moment can also be pointed to as the precursor to my reading Anna Karenina in eighth grade when my classmates were reading…well, they weren’t reading. But that’s a self-indulgent admittedly pretentious digression.

I think it’s this deeply ingrained love of YA that caused the low grade rage I felt when reading the recent Wall Street Journal article by Meghan Cox Gurdon. It’s worth reading (in that it’s a piece of crap but will make the rest of this post make sense) but here’s a short summary: YA is shockingly dark and evil and corrupting the youth of America. If teens read the kind of YA that’s about cutting and rape and depression (oh my!) they will be normalized and thus teens will immediately adopt all self-destructive behaviors and situations presented in YA.

Where to even start?

First of all. To assume that teens will blindly imitate what they read in YA, which I suppose is a possible outcome, is to assume the most basely obvious result. It only scratches the surface of the teenage psyche and expects insultingly little of our comprehensive and analytical skills. It’s also the result that (and I am willing to bet my entire YA collection this) happens the least. Reading about cutting, for example, does not make a teen want to cut. A past trauma, depression, or need to control does may make a teen want to cut. Books are not tools used to create armies of mindless drones.

So what’s the most prevalent outcome of reading YA? It’s an outcome so painfully obvious to me that it almost hurts to have to write it, but since some people apparently insist on remaining blind, I’ll type it out. Reading about the darkness that plagues so many teens’ lives – about the rape, the abuse, the cutting, the depression, the reality for many of us — provides a way for the teens who identify with these situations to feel release, to learn that they are able to overcome these situations. To truly understand that they’re not alone.

And for the rest of us? For those of us who were lucky enough to stumble into a life void of these tragedies? Well, we learn empathy. We learn the invaluable lesson that the path we took through life was not the path that most other people have taken, and thus we learn to shape our world views in a less self-centered, close-minded, ignorant way. And it even indirectly explains to those who bully out of ignorance who their victims really are, and thus how torturing them is wrong. In fact, I’m not sure there is any better bridge for teens to cross into a feminist mind-set then the very type of YA Fiction that the author of this WSJ article so admonishes.

Then there’s this author’s tirade of how these books are grotesque. Well guess what? As a generation that was born into images of terrorist-driven planes crashing into a New York City landmark, of catastrophic natural disasters that rendered our people and even our leaders defenseless, of polar bears swimming desperately to no where because their habitat is melting because we just had to have that Hummer and of soul crushing poverty we’re kind of used to things that are grotesque. And beyond that, we are the ones that will have to throw ourselves head first into the grotesque if we want any chance of ensuring future generations a world with any light at all. If we’re protected as young adults, if we’re shielded from the truth of this world, how the hell can our parents or our teachers or anybody else expect us to ever tackle it head on when we’re actual adults?

But in all honesty, the contents of this article – while I found them appalling – weren’t altogether shocking. There have always been whistle-blowers on progress that doesn’t present itself in a neat little package of political correctness, sunshine and rainbows. Older generations always fear younger generations, at least to some extent. What did kind of surprise me, however, were the books that were missing; the books that I think actually deserved to be criticized and the books that actually are a negative force and threat to my generation.

I’m talking about The Clique. I’m talking about The A-List. I’m talking about Gossip Girl. I’m talking about whatever new vapid series of books is in vogue right now.

Okay, maybe it’s a bit of hyperbole to deem these books as threatening to the future of our generation, but really? While the books the Wall Street Journal demonized may be violent or dark, shouldn’t we be worried about the books that are all shiny gloss? These books, which in my opinion have literary merit equal to a middle schooler’s “What I Did Over The Summer” essay, and probably use parallel language, follow young women as they aspire to nothing more than a hot guy and a shopping spree. They teach young women to aspire to beauty over intelligence, to single-mindedly pursue what you want despite whatever harm it may cause others, and to create shallow, meaningless friendship.

But no, we really should be worried about the effects on our teens of reading the tale of the aftermath of a homophobic hate crime, or a young girl recovering from sexual assault.

Thank god there are awesome people, like the fabulous YA author Maureen Johnson (@MaureenJohnson), who decided to take action against this article, and promoted the twitter hashtag #YASaves, which gave YA readers from all walks of life a chance to defend YA and the positive ways it has impacted their lives. Because — what a concept! — young adults are able to determine and elocute how literature benefits us.

I hope Meghan Cox Gurdon does herself a favor and reads the #YASaves hashtag. Maybe she’ll actually learn a thing or two about how teens feel about YA. And maybe before she writes another article, she’ll ask us.

Today, my lovely FBomb friends, is a wonderful day. Why is that? You may perplexedly ponder. I don’t recall hearing talk of it being International Free Cupcake Day and  I’m pretty sure Ryan Gosling isn’t going to spontaneously show up on my doorstop “Hey Girl” -ing me…is he? IS HE?!?!

NO! HE’S NOT! BUT THIS IS EVEN BETTER! IT’S BACK UP YOUR BIRTH CONTROL NATIONAL DAY OF ACTION!

Yay!

So here’s the thing about birth control: there’s no excuse not to use it and everybody should. Especially teens. Especially, especially feminist teens. I don’t think most kids in our generation even comprehend how much fighting the awesome women who came before us did to secure us the right to even have birth control, and beyond that, the social revolution that made it possible for women to have sex without it being solely for reproductive purposes within marriage. Those were some awesome feminist revolutions that occurred so that we could have sex without having to immediately get married or start a family – instead we get to have sex lives AND professional lives AND do whatever the hell we want to do, which is pretty freakin sweet.

But sometimes, we slip up and don’t use birth control. Or, even if we do, malfunctions happen (condoms break, y’all). Or, worst of all, women can be forced to have unprotected sex – one out of every six American women has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape in her lifetime.

All of this shit sucks. But it doesn’t have to be the end of the story, because this is where Emergency Contraception comes in. Here’s the 411, via Back Up Your Birth Control:

WHAT IS EMERGENCY CONTRACEPTION?

EC is a safe and effective method of birth control that can prevent pregnancy after sex. EC is not the abortion pill. It will not work if you are already pregnant. It does not protect against sexually transmitted infections or HIV/AIDS.

HOW DOES EMERGENCY CONTRACEPTION WORK?

EC can prevent pregnancy by delaying or inhibiting ovulation. It may also inhibit fertilization. There are three brands of EC (Plan B® One-Step, Next Choice®, and ella®) approved for pregnancy prevention.

EC is a great idea, right? Well, in the grand tradition of many great ideas before it, there are people out there who don’t want to “corrupt” society with it, especially not in the hands of teens. Luckily the Center for Reproductive Rights has a petition that’s trying to take of that.

Honestly, it’s hard enough to get adults to talk to us about sex. If schools have sex education curriculum at all, so much of it is based on abstinence. So many kids have such limited information about regular birth control that it’s depressing to think how few know about EC, and even worse to think of kids who really could’ve used it, and how different their lives might be now if they had.

My challenge to the FBomb community is this: one of the greatest parts of our feminist identities is that it has educated us in so many areas (like reproductive rights) that we probably otherwise would know little about. I’m sure all of us have friends who don’t identify as feminists and who may know very little about this stuff. I think our job, as teen feminists, should be to start these conversations amongst our peers (Awkward? Maybe. Necessary? Yes.), and stand in for the adults of authority in our lives that may be failing us. And the Back Up Your Birth Control Campus Challenge is making it even easier by hosting a challenge/contest on the very topic.

Of course, our ultimate goal should be to have more comprehensive sex education in our schools, and even further to be a society that isn’t ashamed of talking openly about sex and makes information about it widely available so that we can all make the best choices for us. But until then, I guess it’s up to us.