Coming of Age Narratives
If women aren’t even taught it’s okay to say yes, how can you expect them to be able to say no?
The protagonist’s hand slips daintily down into her lace underwear and out of frame. A pensive expression falls across her angel face. Her eyes close. A moan escapes her pouty lips. She’s at a crossroads, she’s somewhere between ingénue and sex kitten, and there’s always an older man involved.
Why is it that male coming of age narratives always feel autonomous, like they are coming into their own and becoming a man and like going off on a vision quest or howling at the moon or something, and female coming of age narratives are a thing that happens to women? Female coming of age narratives read like cautionary tales, like Go Ask Alice — what might happen to you if you have sex and really “go crazy”. But where is the girl version of Almost Famous? Where is the narrative where yeah, losing your virginity is a part of it, but there’s also adventure and music and discovery and, most importantly, life goes on?
How radical would it be to have a female coming of age narrative where the main focal point isn’t something bad happening?
Subsequently, the way that we’re taught to approach sex is completely different. Girls are expected to always be on the defensive — look sexy, but don’t have agency. We’re expected to relish in someone else finding us sexy, but don’t even have a framework from which to embody sexiness for ourselves. And if we do, we fear slut-shaming and a culture that asks women what they were wearing before they ask what he did.
We’re trying to have these conversations around consent and accountability before we truly understand the root of the problem — if women aren’t even taught it’s okay to say yes, how can you expect them to be able to say no?
If society is teaching them that it doesn’t really matter if they actually enjoy sex, that they are not the main focus, it makes sense that when something bad or uncomfortable or unsafe happens, they aren’t able to recognize it. Because why would they? If we’re teaching them that it’s supposed to hurt, that it’s normal to never have orgasms, that sex should be something you do for your husband in exchange for emotional support and a cuddle, how do we also simultaneously expect them to leave the second they sense danger?
If the only thing parents are telling their daughters about sex revolves around warning them to not leave their drinks unattended or that if they wear a short skirt they’re inviting the inevitable to happen, then of course these girls will grow up assuming bad experiences are the norm.
Alternatively, they’re getting messages from porn and Cosmo articles, and even, I don’t know, perfume ads that the way to please men is to be sexy, bend over backward, and ignore their own needs. They’re getting the message from rom-coms that romantic love is the be-all and end-all and that sex should be this easy thing that you don’t have to discuss beforehand. It just happens. In beautiful, filtered light, with soft music, with partners who are completely in love and cum at the same time.
The messages that are being sent start much earlier than the age in which women are typically beginning to have sex. Years before women are actually able to express their own desires, they are already getting their cues on how to be sexy instead of feeling sexy — shave religiously, perfect the sexy arms-crossed shirt take off, practice moaning and throwing your head back in the mirror for hours, learn how to walk in a way that makes your hips sway back and forth.
Meanwhile, boys are taught that they should always want sex, that if they refuse or aren’t in the mood, they might be emasculated or shamed. They are taught that prowess and endurance are everything and that the only way they can truly enjoy sex is if they are exerting power over another. Even if they’re taught to relish in their dominance, they are also taught that they couldn’t possibly show anyone their true emotions, that they need to repress their true feelings until they become nonexistent.
In the same way, women learn to exchange sex for feelings, men learn to use sex as an artificial sense of emotional fulfillment, without actually showing emotion availability.
We impose these gendered, toxic narratives on young people, we make sex this dangerous taboo, unspeakable thing, and then we expect them to somehow have healthy relationships with their own sexuality. We prioritize the imaginary audience — a concept that speaks more to the aesthetics and norms of sex than to the actual ability to feel close to another person — far more than we actually speak about navigating pleasure.
We can’t begin to have these larger conversations — about who has power, about who is being subjugated by this power, about why we as a society have allowed those who have the power to continue to have power while silencing those who do not — until we can have a conversation about who is allowed to enjoy sex and what that might look like, through a lens that is consensual and mutual. And those conversations need to start with our coming of age stories, and who gets to tell them.
