Secret Girls' Stuff

by Margaret Clark

  I hope I’m normal. I often feel like that when I look at boys, especially pictures of Tab Hunter. I’ve seen his three films and all. He’s just a dream of a guy.

  The problem with these real people who have become fantasy lovers is that when you meet them in real life they are usually very ordinary.

  They often have bad breath, underarm BO, or FO (foot odour), zits and freckles which you don’t normally see under their make-up if they are TV stars, or they are so up themselves! Some stars and heroes are really nice, but they usually have lovely girlfriends with slim figures, thin thighs and long legs up to their armpits, silky blonde hair and eyes with palm-frond eyelashes, charming personalities and they never get pimples or PMT.

  Hero worship is safe. You can drift away into your own private world with your secret love and weave wonderful magic dreams with Mr Perfect. But the reality is boys. And some of those bitchy so-called girlfriends, because once boys are involved in your life the game play can change and some sneaky moves can happen unless you know the score.

  Dear Diary,

  Graham Davis is a real sort and why he’s going with Sandra Weymouth I don’t know! Then Ally told Graham that Sandra Weymouth has mono so he dropped her. I was hoping he’d call me. I dropped my pencil case at his feet and I keep saying ‘hi’ when I ‘accidentally’ bump into him which is about a hundred times a day. He must know I like him. But when he dropped Sandra he didn’t call me. I was so disappointed. I hate disappointments. So I went on a date with Emile Curfurd to the movies.

  He’s about six feet tall so I had to nick Mum’s high heels in case he wanted to pash on with me after the movie. I stuffed paper in the toes of her shoes so they’d fit but I slipped going down the theatre steps and sprained my ankle and Emile hasn’t asked me out again. He probably thinks I’m a total square.

  Also, most boys haven’t a clue how to handle this sort of stuff. Girls often share secrets, discuss feelings, and read magazines which tell them how to share secrets and discuss feelings.

  Boys usually read car, truck, motorbike or sports magazines, they don’t read Dolly or Girlfriend or Cleo or Cosmopolitan. They don’t usually reveal their feelings about things to each other. They mostly talk about sport.

  Did you know that there’s been research about how males and females use the phone? Females phone their girlfriends and talk about clothes, food, hair, other females, males and all their other problems.

  Females actually process their stuff by talking about it out loud and it helps them to get rid of their worries and concerns. A female can say goodbye to her friend at the front gate then phone her up half an hour later and talk for two hours.

  Males use phones for business or to talk about sport. Their conversations are usually brief. That’s why, when girls phone up boys, the conversations are often one-sided, with the girl doing a lot of the talking, unless the boy has older sisters and is used to phone-law.

  When I was a teenager it was considered forward and unladylike to phone a boy. The boy was supposed to do the phoning up and the asking out. Have you ever hung round a phone hoping for that special guy to call you?

  As granny always said, ‘A watched kettle never boils’ and believe me, a watched phone never rings! You think, he said he’d call.

  Then you think, maybe he’s sick. Then you think, maybe he’s dead. You pluck up courage and phone him, and his sister answers and says, ‘Who?’

  Which means he hasn’t discussed your existence with family members. Or worse, she says, ‘Okay, I’ll get him for you, Jane,’ and your name’s Emily.

  To sum up this stuff:

  Boys are different from girls.

  Boys think differently from girls and tend to hide their feelings.

  Girls are better at knowing about love, dating, romance and sex than boys.

  But some girls get confused between buddy friendship with boys, romantic love with boys and sex with boys!

  Boys can be very cruel with their comments and sometimes they are the reason why girls start to lose their self-esteem, diet so much and even become anorexic.

  This is an extract out of a letter from Mindi, age fourteen:

  I know I’m too fat. At school when we go to PE my thighs are twice as fat as everyone else’s and when the boys hang off the fence at school and whistle at us playing netball they call out ‘Go, Thunder thighs ,’ and ‘ Miss it, Red,’ because I also have red hair and white skin covered in freckles. All of me is too fat, not just my legs, I reckon. I’m trying to eat less junk food. I need to look thinner so these boys will think I’m cool. One of those boys called Andrew, well, like I used to go out with him. He said he dropped me because he didn’t like to be seen with a fat Buddha like me because one of his mates called me that. I don’t want to go out with Andrew again, I just want to show off thin legs, and I’d like to strut and flaunt it if I had thin legs.

  I wrote back:

  Dear Mindi,

  These boys are teasing you. Try to ignore them. Also at fourteen girls often get chunky while their hormones are kicking in, then suddenly the weight falls off. Also you could be a person with naturally rounded thighs, and if you diet the rest of you will get thin and your thighs will still be large. I know. Because this was me. Skinny all over with fat thighs. Exercise will tone you so keep playing basketball. Cut down on the junk food and try not to think about being too fat. The secret in losing weight is to eat a BIT less and move a BIT more. And go, girl, strut your stuff. Be GLAD you’re a girl! Bye from Margaret

  5

  Love and Sex

  Let’s face it, some boys just want sex from a girl and nothing more.

  Some girls just want sex from a boy and nothing more. But most girls are looking for affection and this thing called love. Love is a tricky concept. Like, you can love chocolate. You can love your puppy. You can love your mother and father. You can love friends. You can love boys like your brother and cousin. But what I’m talking about here is romantic love.

  Now it gets even more complicated. You can have infatuation. And you can have romantic love. It’s very hard to tell the two apart, because the symptoms of falling in love and falling in infatuation are very similar. Infatuation is when you’re madly in love with someone, but you don’t really know them well. Then if you do ever meet them or go out with them, sometimes you realise that this person is not the one for you. It’s not true love. But that’s okay because infatuation can be fun unless it turns into an obsession thing (like stalking).

  Here are some symptoms of early love or infatuation.

  When you see or think about the boy you are infatuated with, your heart does this sort of loop-the-loop and you feel breathless. You might even go red in the face and your hands might go clammy. If it’s sex-based as well, you might get this tingly, squiggly feeling down in the pit of your stomach and you might even produce slippery moisture in your vaginal area. (Whether it’s a fantasy dreamboy, a TV star, or the real living breathing article, no matter, the reaction can be the same.)

  You often find yourself doodling his name on your pencil case, or drawing your name entwined with his, or you go round graffitiing ‘Liam 4 Bree’ or whatever on school bags and locker doors. (This could be love or infatuation.)

  You hang around hoping to get a glimpse of him walking down a corridor or through the mall. Then you yell out, ‘Hi Liam,’ and when he turns around you get your girlfriend to take his photo. You get multiple copies made which you keep by your bed, under your pillow, in your diary, in your science textbook, and inside your locker door. If you’re in love with a TV/pop star you watch his TV program and buy up every magazine with his photo and plaster them on your walls, or buy every CD and play them over and over.

  You just want to be with him, either physically holding hands, or gazing at him playing sport, or daydreaming about him. (This happens when you’re in love, too.)

  Sometimes you even feel sick in the stomach and can’t eat (a bonus, because you lose weight). You can also get a sort of glow ab
out you when you’re in love or in infatuation. The whole world seems to smile on you and you feel loved even if the person doesn’t know you exist, because he does, in your head.

  You go all dreamy and you can’t concentrate.

  You just think of your love constantly — you want to cook for him, sew for him, climb Mount Everest with him, and you hate cooking, sewing and climbing.

  This is all normal. Even in today’s society where recognition of women’s rights is paramount for most girls, there is often this strong urge to mother/take care of/ nurture your guy. It might be socialisation, it might be hormones, it might be genetic, I don’t know.

  And some feminists might want to argue about it, but this is how I think it is.

  Women and girls in love can be very vulnerable. Men and boys can too. But it’s usually teenage girls who are looking for affection and romantic love more than teenage boys.

  Now, guess what? Most boys don’t do a lot of this dreamy stuff. They can go a bit misty-headed in the first stages, they can gaze at a girl’s photo or stare at Pamela Anderson’s boobs for hours, but mostly they don’t react quite as dramatically. Okay, there are exceptions and some do go all romantic. They hang around the front door of your house and serenade you with mournful love songs they’ve made up on their guitars and send red roses, and phone you constantly, but these are the exceptions. If you actually get one of these types it can become very oppressive and almost suffocating in time.

  Also jealousy can occur and that is one of the most negative emotions in a relationship, because it means one of you doesn’t trust the other. Girls often act too clingy and give in to the guy all the time because they’re scared he’ll go off with someone else if they don’t. Consuming jealousy (and clinginess) can wreck a relationship.

  Jealousy is based on uncertainty about yourself. Am I too fat? Too demanding? Too much of a doormat? Will he get sick of me? Should I get a nose job? What if he finds someone else who looks better than me? What if …? Low self-esteem feeds jealousy. This guy likes you for your qualities. He likes you for the way you look and act and are! There’s no need to be jealous. Of course if he’s a two-timer, jealousy is justified, but you don’t need that crap in your life, so give him the flick. My granny used to say, ‘Jealousy’s a curse, but a bellyache’s worse’. The problem is that severe jealousy gives you bellyache, heartache and stresses you out. You don’t need it.

  Most boys like you to do what they want to do. Think about it. They like you to watch their favourite type of movie. They like you to watch their favourite type of sport. To get a boy, some girls (and women) will resort to telling lies.

  ‘I love war movies.’

  ‘I love standing freezing for hours watching footy.’

  ‘I love dirt bike racing.’

  ‘I love jalapeno on my nachos.’

  You might genuinely love all this stuff. That’s okay. But if you don’t, eventually if you tell lies like this you’ll come unstuck. You’ll feel resentful because you’re always doing what he wants to do. Look around at some of the married people you know and you might see women with set expressions on their faces dragging along behind their guys going mountaineering, sailing, fishing, motorbike racing, etc. Of course many women love doing these things. Many women learn to love doing these things. Some of them hate it; they do it to keep the man happy and for ‘peace and quiet’.

  What I’m saying is you need to be happy doing what you want to do, too. So don’t try and turn yourself into a compliant doormat to satisfy his every whim. Do you know what will happen? He’ll get – ho, hum – bored.

  Okay. So you’re in love. You’ve been going out for a while. Now comes the question of sex. Or you might have already had sex and not loved the guy. Whatever.

  There is no right age for having sex with a boy. In other words, if you turn sixteen and think, ‘Omigod, I’m still a virgin, I’d better rush out and grab the first guy I see and do it,’ it will be a disaster.

  When I was a teenager we didn’t know anything about sex. We didn’t learn about it at school. We learned about it from each other’s stories, and it was usually secret rumours from a few bold girls who’d either done it once or read some books. Secrets we believed:

  1 You couldn’t get pregnant if you had your period. Wrong. Of course you can.

  2 You can’t have sex if you’ve got your period. Wrong. Of course you can, only some couples don’t like having sex then because it can be messy.

  3 You can’t get pregnant if you do it standing up. Wrong. Sperm are strong little swimmers. They’d swim to the North Pole to reach that egg!

  4 You can’t get pregnant if the girl is on top. Wrong. Like I just said, sperm can swim upstream no worries.

  5 If a boy has sex with you and pulls out before he comes you can’t get pregnant. Wrong. Some sperm might have already escaped and be swimming upstream as fast as they can go.

  6 If you swallow sperm you can get pregnant. Wrong. It has to actually go near your vagina.

  5 If you get pregnant and have a hot bath you’ll get rid of the baby. Wrong. If that was true half of us wouldn’t be here.

  6 If you drink castor oil it will get rid of the foetus. Wrong. It will just make you feel sick.

  7 If a boy has only one testicle you can’t get pregnant. Wrong.

  There’s been masses of stuff written about sex. There’re videos showing you step by step how to do it. There’re porno flicks to get you excited. You learn about sex in school. You know all about ovaries and fallopian tubes and how not to get pregnant.

  So how come I get letters and emails from girls who don’t know whether they should have sex with a boy or not, who don’t like sex because it hurts and they think they’re abnormal, who get pregnant, who get used sexually by boys and then dumped, who think they have to screw every boy in sight to be popular, who are unhappy about sex?

  Dear Margaret,

  You’ll probably think I’m weird writing this. I mean, I don’t even know you, although I feel like I do through your books, especially Back on Track. That was such a cool book.

  I’ve been going out with Josh for four weeks and he wants me to have sex with him. I want to, but I’m scared I won’t be good at it. I’ve read Dolly and it says to put on lubricant. When do you do it, like before you go on the date? And if he doesn’t have a condom am I supposed to have one ready? And what if he won’t put it on? My friends tell me that boys think condoms spoil sex. Oh, I’m fifteen and Josh is my first real boyfriend. He says he’s had sex with six other girls and he knows what to do. Sorry if this sounds dumb, but I’m desperate. Please write back, from Rebecca.

  This was a difficult letter to write back, because it’s not really my business whether Rebecca and Josh have sex. I remember writing something like:

  Dear Rebecca,

  You sound uncertain about the whole sex bit. First of all I think you need to talk to Josh about it. He should get the condom, but then girls often tell me they don’t trust the condoms that boys might have had in their wallets or pockets for months, because they might have defects.

  You can put on lubricant at any time. You only need a smear, not half the tube. If you’re scared, your muscles will tighten up and it will probably hurt. It sounds as if you’re feeling pressured to have sex, so maybe you should wait for a while. You have to feel happy about it or you’ll feel used up. I can’t say whether you should have sex, that’s something you need to decide, but Josh needs to wear a condom whether he wants to or not, okay?

  When I was working as a counsellor a woman contacted me about her daughter and asked if I could have a talk with her. Apparently she’d been playing Truth or Dare with this group of guys at school and one had dared her to suck him off in a corner of the oval. And she did it! In front of a heap of other guys! I tried not to look shocked.

  ‘Why?’

  She shrugged. ‘Dunno. I just … he dared me so I did it.’

  ‘How do you feel about it now?’

  ‘All these gi
rls reckon I’m a slut. It was stupid. I don’t know why I did it. And now all these boys want me to do it with them.’ She burst into tears.

  This was a nice girl. Confused, but basically with good values and commonsense. She’d liked this boy. The Truth or Dare game had become a sort of power struggle, and she wasn’t going to give in. But in doing what he wanted she’d demeaned herself and put him in the position of power. No boy (or person) on earth is worth this hassle.

  When I was a teenager we didn’t have sex with our boyfriends because society at the time said it was taboo. The main reason was that we might get pregnant. Unlike today, getting pregnant was a terrible social disgrace. There was no pension, no government support, most parents would not help a pregnant daughter. There were no abortion clinics, only dirty backyard operations usually run by untrained women wielding crochet hooks; it was illegal to have an abortion, and if a girl got pregnant she was quickly packed off to a Lady’s Home in the city, where she had the baby and immediately gave it up for adoption.

  When I was at teachers college two girls got fat, disappeared for six months, then came back to finish their teaching course, and we didn’t dream that they’d gone off to have babies. (Later I learned that they’d both given their babies up for adoption.)

  The other option was what was called a ‘Shotgun Wedding’ or the girl ‘had to get married’. She wasn’t supposed to wear white, although some did, and the baby would be born seven months later and they’d say it was premature. What a web of deceit and lies the old rules encouraged.

  Yet there were big pluses. We didn’t have to worry about whether we’d do it or not; we just didn’t. It was easier in lots of ways. When I talk with girls nowadays they say, ‘We wish it was like that now. If we don’t sleep with the guys they’ll go out with someone else.’