high school – Pop Fiction Women

Last week Carinn floored me with her vulnerable and deeply personal essay about the Moody-Trip-Pearl love triangle in Celeste Ng’s novel, Little Fires Everywhere, which we had a lively debate about on the podcast. Her focus was on Pearl, and more generally, on whether there was anything wrong with a young girl wanting intimate experiences without telling everyone? To that question, I say absolutely not. But there’s more to this debate for me. More perspectives to examine.

For me, it was never #teamMoody vs #teamPearl. It was always MOODY vs TRIP. As between the two of them I thought Pearl should have chosen Moody who Ng had set up as a real friend and confidante to her. They were intellectual equals, he respected her as a person, and she could trust him. I wanted her to pick Moody and was frustrated that she chose the cliche older cuter boy who, in my view (as written), had little to offer other than popularity and good hair.

Now I should stop here and say what I imagine many of you are thinking…DUH, she’s a teenage girl navigating high school romance, of course she is going to choose the cute, popular, athletic boy. And here is where I admit those guys never really appealed to me. Even then, I had a thing for the nice guy, the guy I could talk to, who would listen, who showed up for me, and made his admiration widely known. And that’s where I really shut down to Trip. Whether he suggested it on Pearl’s behalf (doubtful), or whether he was hiding their relationship for his own reasons, this detail sealed the deal for me on #teamMoody. I like the guy who liked public adoration.

I haven’t forgotten about Pearl in this love triangle. I expressed frustration with Pearl when we talked on the podcast. I didn’t like how she left Moody out in the cold and, at times, lied to him about where she was and made up excuses for why she kept bailing on him. To me, this made her a shitty friend because he had been there for her from the beginning when she moved there and had no other friends. Then she ditched him when she got the chance to “upgrade” to Trip. I felt she was lying to the one person who had been kind and welcoming to her and who she seemed to have genuinely had a connection with. So lying for that reason seemed wrong — not that she was wrong for lying about the intimate things she was doing with Trip or that she should have had to reveal that to Moody (or anyone else).

Having said that about Pearl, I was challenged by Carinn’s perspective that we may judge a young woman for wanting to keep her intimate experiences private/secret, or worse, that we may judge her and shame her if she chooses to reveal her intimate experiences or if they are somehow disclosed (the slut shaming). I find myself wanting to land somewhere in the middle. Why is it either/or? Lie or tell all and risk slut shaming?

I guess I believe, perhaps naively, that a teenage girl should be able to have consensual, exploratory intimate experiences with boys privately. I know that’s what I did — and it ran the gamut like many other teenage girls (I’m thinking of Lady Bird here too, another favorite of ours). I never felt like I was keeping that a secret or lying, it was just private between the two of us and why would I tell anyone unless maybe my close friends if I wanted to share? And hopefully I’m doing these things with boys I trusted who also would keep it private. I wouldn’t think a person should ever have to reveal those intimate details to anyone.

But I am totally open to having my naivete exposed. I have been told more times than I can count that perhaps I didn’t ever act or feel like a typical teenager and am willing to concede my rose-colored blinders could still be on. I am also totally willing to admit that I have called women sluts — obviously not in a very long time but I am certain high school me is guilty of that type of unfair judgment when I should perhaps have considered their agency and desires as factors — maybe even as notions to be applauded. At the very least, I should have considered the gray.

As Carinn reminds us, though, this IS an essay about Pearl, Moody and Trip. So back to her lingering questions and my thoughts in response…couldn’t Pearl have just said to Moody, “I can’t hang out today”, or just not make the plans in the first place? Or if pressed, couldn’t she say I’m seeing someone or even Trip and I have been hanging out? Why would she have to reveal she is having sex with him? I don’t think she should ever be forced to do that. Her intimate experiences are hers alone.

It’s been weeks since Kate and I recorded our Little Fires Everywhere episode, and it’s one I can’t stop turning over in my mind. Actually, “turning over” is the wrong phrase to describe it. Thoughts of that episode pierce my thoughts, swirl around my mind like a hurricane, cloud my brain like steam from a laundromat vent.

Specifically, these disruptive thoughts revolve around our conversation about the Little Fires Love Triangle of Pearl, Moody and Trip.

Kate wondered if Pearl and Trip were keeping the intimate relationship a secret because Trip was ashamed of having sex with Pearl. Kate seemed to suggest that Pearl would have no reason to want to keep it a secret. Or she might even want people to know, because Trip is a catch. But she was mainly focused on the hardest gray area — that because the result of them wanting to keep the relationship a secret, that the lying that came from it was unequivocally wrong no matter the reasons behind it.

In our debate, Kate was firmly #teamMoody (over #teamTrip) but I saw it differently. I was all in for #teamPearl. I saw her agency and I understood the unstated rationale behind her actions. I vehemently defended Pearl’s right to keep the secret with Trip, even if it meant lying to Moody.

But my defense didn’t sit well with me, like a raspberry seed in between two molars. So I spent time unpacking why we — or really, I — had relationships or encounters that I wanted kept secret. Well, there’s probably too many reasons to mention, but the ones I want to explore deeply come around what it means to be a high school girl.

Is there anything wrong with a young girl (Pearl is 15, a sophomore in high school) wanting intimate experience? Kate and I would agree that there isn’t, but in reality society is uncomfortable with a young girl exploring her growing sexuality. And that begins at puberty, an age which terrifies people.

Is there anything wrong with a young girl wanting intimate experience without telling everyone?

Of course I would say no, right? That’s what I said about Pearl in our Little Fires episode. And I said that because I have kept secrets without there being any internal shame. I wasn’t embarrassed about what I was doing, and neither was my partner.

A girl with instincts, openness and interest in intimacy, should be allowed to safely and wisely explore those feelings. But doing it in the open? That’s so much more complicated. I don’t think I realized how much shame was coming from the outside — that I’d learned that it was easier, and had better results, if I kept it a secret. That’s how to avoid what I called high school, but is now referred to as “slut shaming.”

Here was a high school scenario for me: I hook up with a guy — at a party, after school, in private. It is assumed we have sex, because why else would you be discreet about it? What other reason do you go “find a room”? If you lock yourself in the bathroom, it’s because you’re having sex. If you meet up with no one around and don’t tell anyone, it’s because you’re having sex.

It seems a high school girl can’t do anything besides make-out in front of a crowd and have sex.

That’s because there’s very little articulated in between. Not in movies, TV shows, even on social media where there are tons of overt and cliched “sexy” pictures with no reference to what one might do with that sexiness, or how it might feel. No mention of touching breasts, of finding erogenous zones around ears or behind knees, of skin to skin, of writhing around with your clothes on (the health class 101 “dry humping” thanks for the reminder, Lady Bird). These were all such normal parts of my high school experiences, but they are rarely portrayed or discussed. I wonder if it’s because adults lose sight of these “in between” phases or whether it’s because in high school not everyone feels free to explore them. I understand why.

I did explore these feelings and as a result was on more than one occasion excluded from parties, the focus of some nasty gossip, the target of hurled insults. One night, our school did a charity “fashion show” and I wore the borrowed dress of an upperclassman. First of all, I had been specifically forbidden to wear anything she donated for the show because she thought I was a slut. I did it anyway, and she confronted me, made a huge scene about it. Apparently, now the dress was ruined because it had touched my disgusting used body. I was a fifteen year old virgin.

Thankfully, this is where I really developed my “give zero f*cks” muscle. I had no choice but to learn how to move forward with labels like slut and tease (yes, both). Part of the lesson I learned was not caring about what other people said about me. But also, part of the lesson was learning to keep things a secret. All secrets require lying.

I suppose there will still be people who say instead of lying I should have changed my behavior. What I wished I could have changed was other people’s interest in the things I did in private. But I couldn’t. And not exploring physical intimacy felt more wrong than lying to protect myself.

It was in those encounters that I learned what felt good to me and what didn’t feel good. In fact, I learned how to FEEL good, and I learned it in a way that didn’t come from how I looked or how I acted. In intimate acts I was trying to please no one but myself. I learned to direct my partners. I learned to be fully in my body. I learned to let go.

I also learned how to say no. I learned to say stop. To say stop for now, to say stop forever, to say stop for today, even if another day we went farther. To the same extent that I wasn’t trusted and believed outside of intimacy, my partners were the opposite. They respected my word and accepted it. Some people might be able to get all those experiences with one partner. I’m okay if you call me a slow learner. It’s better than the alternatives.

But this WAS about Pearl, Moody and Trip. And I still have questions.

How much do you think Pearl was motivated to keep the secret knowing that other girls in school would call her a slut or a gold digger or a social climber?

Does Moody deserve the truth in a way that would force Pearl to tell him about the relationship against her desire? If Pearl felt she could not break the secret of her intimate relationship with Trip, should she have ended her friendship with Moody rather than lie about her whereabouts when she was with Trip? Should she have told and suffered the consequences? What if the consequences were cruel or unfair retaliation?

As the premiere of the TV adaptation of Little Fires Everywhere approaches, I am nervous about how this love triangle will be portrayed. I desperately hope they will give Pearl even more agency and empowerment rather than stepping into cliches and out-dated tropes.