Overview

Be sexy but not sexual. Don't be a prude but don't be a slut. These are the cultural messages that barrage teenage girls. In movies and magazines, in music and advice columns, girls are portrayed as the object or the victim of someone else's desire -but virtually never as someone with acceptable sexual feelings of her own. What teenage girls make of these contradictory messages, and what they make of their awakening sexuality - so distant from and yet so susceptible to cultural stereotypes - emerges for the first time in frank and complex fashion in Deborah Tolman's ""Dilemmas of Desire"". A unique look into the world of adolescent sexuality, this book offers an intimate and often disturbing, sometimes inspiring, picture of how teenage girls experience, understand and respond to their sexual feelings, and of how society mediates, shapes and distorts this experience. In extensive interviews, we listen as actual adolescent girls - both urban and suburban - speak candidly of their curiosity and confusion, their pleasure and disappointment, their fears, defiances or capitulation in the face of a seemingly imperishable double standard that smiles upon burgeoning sexuality in boys yet frowns, even panics, at its equivalent in girls. As a vivid evocation of girls negotiating some of the most vexing issues of adolescence, and as a thoughtful, richly informed examination of the dilemmas these girls face, this readable and revealing book begins the critical work of understanding the sexuality of young women in all its personal, social and emotional significance.

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9780674008953

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For all the panicky ink devoted to teen sex, until now there has been no academic study on what teenage girls actually want. Tolman...fills that gap by focusing on girls' desires, rather than on the social ills they're usually quizzed on...The teenage voices she has collected are articulate and refreshing...[Tolman] makes a convincing case for why we should listen: girls in touch with their own desires make safer, healthier choices about sex.

"""Girls are the objects of boys' sexual desires and have no desires of their own."" In this provocative study, Tolman...turns this notion upside down. Basing her research on extensive interviews with both suburban and urban teens, Tolman investigates how young women's first sexual experiences may be influenced by societal pressure to dissociate from their own bodies and desires...Tolman shows the chilling dangers--for individuals and society--when girls are afraid to take ownership of their sexuality...And she offers ideas for how change can happen...Parents and teachers alike will find much to contemplate and borrow from in this fascinating account.--Gillian Engberg""Booklist"" (11/15/2002) Tolman bases this qualitative study of teenage sexuality on what she calls the ""listening guide"" method of research (a method she helped pioneer), in which she records interviews on various topics and then reads through them several times looking for different themes. She drew her sample of 31 girls from high school juniors in two different settings, one urban and one suburban...Though reluctant to be honest about their sexuality in a group setting, in part because of potential gossip, the girls discussed their feelings with Tolman in a one-on-one setting. The quandaries the girls face--whether they assert, embrace, or dismiss sexual desire--is Tolman's theme. Though the girls told her they felt sexual desire, they at first often denied it. They fear getting pregnant or being labeled as sexually promiscuous...The book is a powerful tool in the struggle for improved sexuality education, since even the most sophisticated of girls seem to lack basic kinds of information.--V. L. Bullough""C For all the panicky ink devoted to teen sex, until now there has been no academic study on what teenage girls actually want. Tolman...fills that gap by focusing on girls' desires, rather than on the social ills they're usually quizzed on...The teenage voices she has collected are articulate and refreshing...[Tolman] makes a convincing case for why we should listen: girls in touch with their own desires make safer, healthier choices about sex. confusion, the dangers involved, and what sorts of changes might help arrest this trend. girls are afraid to take ownership of their sexuality...And she offers ideas for how change can happen...Parents and teachers alike will find much to contemplate and borrow from in this fascinating account. most sophisticated of girls seem to lack basic kinds of information. they're usually quizzed on...The teenage voices she has collected are articulate and refreshing...[Tolman] makes a convincing case for why we should listen: girls in touch with their own desires make safer, healthier choices about sex. Bombarded by conflicting social messages--sexy but not sexual; open but not slutty--it's no wonder teenage girls are often confused by sexuality. Tolman, an expert on sex and gender, offers an analysis of that confusion, the dangers involved, and what sorts of changes might help arrest this trend."

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