1,359 notes

Recently I was struck by two different dialogues on Facebook. One was about Charlie Sheen. The other was about Britney Spears. A man posted a status update about going to Sheen’s show, and the thread discussed how smart and funny and talented Sheen is and that despite the controversy and general hubbub, “he’s fine, he’s okay” and “a brilliant marketer” and “totally knows what he’s doing”.

Meanwhile, I’d posted a link to a Britney Spears video on my own Facebook page, partly because I’m fascinated by the way people react to her. Britney immediately came under fire for being “a poor role model” to young girls everywhere. No “brilliant marketer” comments for her.

Both Sheen and Spears have a noted history of drug use. Both are sexy and openly sexual. Both are, or have been, at the top of their professions. Both have undergone episodes of bizarre, even tragic behavior that is suggestive of addiction and mental illness.

Yet in the buzz around Charlie Sheen at the height of his notoriety, what I didn’t hear was anything about how he serves as a poor role model for boys.

This is interesting to me, because – unlike Britney, at least to my knowledge – Sheen has a documented history of domestic abuse.

As in: he hits women.
As in: he once shot a woman in the arm.
Let me repeat that: he freaking shot the woman.

But this is no big deal. It gets glossed over. Whenever I brought it up – in person or online – people would lift their virtual shoulders in a virtual shrug and move on.

(Possibly because the women involved were so easily characterized as ‘bad’ girls. Which in the end comes down to this: slut. Which means: vile and disposable.)

In comparison to Sheen, Britney did reveal her belly button at a young age. And that, of course, is a threat to civilization as we know it. Spears is held up as a “poor role model” because we can perceive her as trashy and slutty and “asking for it”.

Once you reduce a girl to her sexuality – and god knows that never ever happens in this culture – she becomes less than human, so you no longer have to treat her as a human. Which means the Charlie Sheens of the world – rich, powerful, white – can do with them as they please. If the girls get, you know, a little bit shot — well, it’s their own damn fault. That’s the message that some boys are absorbing from Sheen’s treatment of women and our celebration of him. That attitude, I suspect, will prove more dangerous to girls than any of Britney’s outfits or dance moves or little-girl singing voice.

There’s some irony in the fact that, like Britney, Reese Witherspoon got pregnant at a young age – but unlike Britney, who was married, Reese conceived out of wedlock and had a shotgun wedding.

Also, she said “motherfucker” on stage.
Also, she is still young — and divorced.
Also, she’s an actress (which used to be synonymous with prostitute).

Not so long ago, these things would have pegged her as morally defective. She wouldn’t technically qualify as a “good girl” (which means she’s probably “cooler” than she gives herself credit for).

But what Witherspoon seemed to be getting at in her declaration of herself as a “good girl” has to do with the idea of exposure. Whether it’s a reality TV show or an unfortunate cell phone picture, a good girl does not show herself to the world in this way — or if she does, she “hides her face”.

She guards her shame.

She never makes eye contact.

A “good” girl is not only virginal – and thus qualifies as morally sound, even if, like Jessica Wakefield in the Sweet Valley High novels, she’s kind of a sociopath – but modest and quiet. She covers up. She is seen – without being seen. She talks in a nice voice and smiles a lot. She’s the angel of the house, and stays in the house, which was the historical point of this exercise in the first place.

She’s not loud or opinionated, she doesn’t rock the boat, and she doesn’t draw attention to herself.

All of this is convenient for others. The funny thing about silence is how it tends to favor the dominating person or group. The dominating narrative, the ruling point of view, becomes a sort of truth by default: what we as a culture assume when we’re given no reason to assume otherwise.

It’s the winners who get to write history, after all. The others are silent or silenced.

But there does seem to be a link between sexual expression and self-expression, in that a ‘good’ girl is not in full possession of either. Her body doesn’t belong to her: it ‘belongs’ to her father, to her future husband, to the government that decides if she can have an abortion or the religion that decides if she can use birth control.

Her voice doesn’t fully belong to her either: she has to be careful what she says, and how she says it, and who she might offend.

‘Goodness’, then, seems to involve an amputation of the self. You make yourself ‘good’ to be loved and accepted, and in the process sacrifice your authenticity. You give yourself away until you no longer know who you are – assuming you ever did.

I’m not sure what you actually get for this, in the end.

Fitting in, as the wonderful Brene Brown so astutely points out, is not the same as being accepted for who you are – in fact, the one renders the other impossible. Being trained to please and serve leaves you ripe for exploitation; the inability to assert your boundaries makes you easy to abuse in large and small ways.

“Raising a girl to be ‘nice’,” a therapist – a woman in her sixties, married and with daughters — once remarked to me, “is like sending her out into the world with one hand tied behind her back.” She should know. Many of these women turn up in her Beverly Hills office twenty years later: divorced, discarded, aging, with no ability to support themselves and no sense of who they are at core.

So honestly, in the year 2011, these are a girl’s options? She can be ‘bad’ (and disposable) or ‘good’ (and turned in on herself)?