Ahh, the sexuality of a teenage girl, what a fine and fickle thing. Flitting from pretty boy to pretty boy like an experimental, yet volatile butterfly, the desire of a maiden is as volcanically repressed and variable as a snowflake. A snowflake butterfly volcano, if you will.
Let me clarify. Within many preteen girls (I daren't say all) sleeps a unique sexual profile. Sure, she may indulge in romanticisms, listening to boy bands sing her praises, dedicating a small shrine to whatever silver screen heartthrob is in the news, maybe even holding hands with that dreamy Josh Henderson in the hallways, because, OMG you guys! But ultimately, these actions result more from a desire to be perceived as mature than any sort of sexual urge.
But it doesn't last long. One day, that frozen cocoon bursts open, and in a great, fiery cacophony the sexually aware teenage girl is born, ready to wantonly objectify and lust after every male she comes in contact with!
That is, until the various powers that be surrounding her snap a cage down onto that persona faster than you can say "yaoi."
See, the silver screen has a bit of an interesting take on teenage sexuality. I, like many of you, can think of half a dozen comedies offhand that make some kind of lewd joke about a teenage guy and his relationship with his right hand. I can think of a dozen more whose main arc is centered around a teenage guy trying to have sex with a beautiful girl. Note, I said have sex with, not get into any sort of relationship with. We see that in film, male adolescent prurience is something to be laughed over, because hey, boys will be boys, right? Everyone knows once his biological clock ticks "on" his every waking thought will be consumed by scantily-clad supermodels, video games and food! Obviously this isn't giving teenage boys nearly enough credit, but we're looking through the eyes of filmmakers here.
Now, how many films can you think of that involve jokes about girls and their electric toothbrushes? How many movies involve getting a heroine into bed with her sexual conquest? (Really, how many raunchy comedies have a girl as the main protagonist at all?) The sexual development of a teenage girl, to a producer, really isn't something to laugh over. It's a social gray area, strange, unfamiliar, and even a little creepy. But, definitely easy to monetize.
It's a bit of an interesting double standard, surrounded by social stigma whose history is so long and tangled it would need a whole different article, if not a book. For our purposes, let it suffice to say that filmmakers don't make crude comedies about sexually frustrated girls because they're too busy making money off of supernatural romantic heroines who are sexually frustrated.
The film Beautiful Creatures, set to release nationwide as of February 14th, is just another in a long line of recent examples of this trend. Its clear ties to the oft-maligned Twilight Saga are clear and inescapable, though the implication the various film trailers give is much clearer on the subject of sex:
It's simple. If this girl has sex with this boy, the trailer implies, she will become evil and the world will end or fall into darkness. Now, before I have a gaggle of girls jumping down my throat and shouting about how that's not really the plot, the story is completely different and the characters are really deep, let me explain one thing: I don't care. I really don't. It's not about the actual plot of the movie, that part is secondary.
What's important is why the producers of these trailers think that the idea of repressed and unfulfillable sex would sell. The idea of some guy and some girl desperately wanting to dance the horizontal tango but barred by some irritatingly transparent macguffin of a plot, with some supernatural elements and Florence and the Machine thrown in for good measure, has been done so many times it's not even funny to parody it anymore. It's clear that most people are tired of this arc, and with good reason: the only thing more obnoxious than the hackneyed semi-goth pretension surrounding this movie is the font they used for its title.
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| Somewhere in Switzerland, an entire foundry of designers sits weeping. |
What would possess any producer to make yet another one of these annoyingly sexless pieces of trash? And who would go to see it, knowing that any sexual investment they have in the characters will ultimately be made worse and go unfulfilled?
Producers and directors of these kinds of films are in a unique power position, one created by decades of complicated sexual dynamics. Thanks to the Sexual Revolution, today's adult woman protagonist can engage in as many or few sensual endeavors as she pleases and, so long as she protects herself, emerge none the worse for wear in society's eyes (think Sex and the City, The House Bunny, True Blood, pretty much every romantic comedy ever).
But almost universally, the teenage heroine is haunted by a need to keep her virginity intact, despite frequent temptation. This would seem like an outdated idea, but recent filmmakers and authors have found a rather clever little loophole by making said virginity of tantamount importance, if secondary to the plot. Think about Twilight, the Hunger Games, or nearly any fairytale adaptation in the last ten years. Even more realistic stories like She's All That and A Cinderella Story are guilty of it, albeit to a lesser degree. "How can you think of sex at a time like this??" screams the film. "We have a competition to win, a witch to slay, a world to save! If you do it now your boyfriend will try to eat you! You'll be irrevocably turned to the dark side! You and all your friends will lose everything you've fought for! And everyone will HATE YOU."
By pitting the girl's sexual needs against all of her other needs (social acceptance, personal fulfillment, a world that isn't ruled by destruction) the film creates an interesting quagmire that seems like an awfully tough sell--but there is one ray of hope. This is the part where Robert Pattinson leans in close. "We can't do it," he whispers, "but you can be seduced all you want."
Yes, so long as the heroine doesn't give in to the pressures building inside her, she remains an integral part of the plot. And in fact, the longer she holds out despite being surrounded by some of the most beautiful manlings Hollywood has to offer, the more value as a human being she has. Really, the sight of Bella Swan holding out until sanctioned heterosexual marriage is just icing on the cake, because teenage girls are now the ONLY demographic segment filmmakers ever expect to remain sexless until marriage. And they use it very much to their advantage.
As a result, we have an entire generation of teen girls obsessed with seduction, who don't actually want to sleep with Taylor Lautner, they just want to touch him, or smell his hair. Or steal his running shoes. And because those actions are extremely creepy, everyone is allowed to mock and deride them for it. And so the tautology comes full circle: we treat the sexuality of teenage girls as creepy and weird, because they act creepy and weird, because we make them feel creepy and weird.
The only thing that would make this sick media fantasy complete would be to just come out and tell these girls outright that their desires are dirty and filthy, maybe punish them for even having a sex drive. Yeah, that's the ticket, punishment, like a spanking, maybe with a whip or a cane, and tie them up so they can't squirm, and--
Wait. Where have I heard this before?
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