We can drop the “good girl” act, Sharon Lamb says. Lamb, author of the new book “The Secret Lives of Girls: What Good Girls Really Do–Sex Play, Aggression and Their Guilt” (The Free Press, $24), says girls have always had a deeper, darker side that society should recognize and respect. Lamb offered these insights to WomanNews:
Q. Could you sum up some girlhood secrets that were revealed to you in your interviews with women and girls?
More Top Picks Best Tea Sampler Sets
A. They talked about everything from “playing doctor” to the “practice” of girls kissing other girls at sleepovers, or dressing up and acting out sexy scenes from TV and movies, to more extensive things such as actually acting out what they think of as sex.
In terms of aggression, girls might feel guilty about hating people they “shouldn’t” hate. Or they do little aggressive things that could be as horrible as killing a baby mouse or as mild as pinching a baby brother. Whatever the acts, the girls are often disturbed for the rest of their lives because they couldn’t believe that a good girl could do such a thing.
Q. Lots of the women would ask you during their interviews, “Am I normal?,” especially concerning their girlhood sex play with other girls. How would you answer that?
A. I’d say their actions are very common. When you play with mostly other girls, that’s probably who you’ll first experience your sexuality with. It’s who you feel safe with. You know they won’t tell your mother!
Q. Whom did you write this book for?
A. I wrote it for women, because I wanted them to look back and feel less guilty about the things they had done. I also wanted to help parents deal with whatever they see going on in their children’s lives.
Q. About the chapter “Naked Barbies,” were women surprised to find out it’s common for girls to put their Barbies in compromising positions?
A. Some of them were surprised. I don’t think people felt a lot of guilt about their naked Barbies. They could distance themselves a bit by having Barbie act out a sexual part.
Q. You criticize sex education as being merely about reproduction, menstruation and avoiding pregnancy, and you call for a more comprehensive program that recognizes sexual pleasure. Won’t critics say this will encourage children to have sex?
A. We’re talking about teenagers now, and they’re already encouraged to have sex. But they have a very narrow idea of what it is: intercourse. When you teach about pleasure, you broaden the avenue of all things that are sexual. It might have the opposite effect and help girls [being pressured into having intercourse] say, `This isn’t what I want.’ Right now, girls are getting trained by their peers in a very male-oriented sexuality.
Q. You write that society fears that if girls are encouraged to recognize and express their anger, they’ll go on shooting sprees like boys have. Doesn’t that fear make sense in such violent times?
A. Anger and aggression is a resource in everyone. You don’t have to use it all the time, but you have to develop it and know it to use it when it’s appropriate. . . . We don’t have to advocate aggression in girls; it’s already in them. We just have to recognize it.
Q. You tell parents to teach their daughters to fight back. That goes against eons of socialization.
A. When girls get sexually harassed in school, their response is usually to tell on the boy. It’s always met with shock if a girl turns around and says, “Don’t you dare do that to me!” Having a sense of your capacity for aggression helps you be more assertive. If you accept that anger, you’re more successful in the world and not so easily cowed.