American Girls (42 page)

“I just think that boys are really disrespectful now,” Ashley said. “Like, I feel like they can do anything, and say anything, and it's okay, and it's not okay at all. And I know it's kind of hypocritical 'cause I touch the ‘d.' ”

The others laughed. Ashley was known to be a “wild child,” and one of the reasons was her habit of grabbing boys' crotches. She said she did it because “they do it to us. If they can do it, why can't we?”

They were sitting on couches in a dorm room at Indiana University Southeast, a regional campus of IU in New Albany, Indiana. New Albany is a bedroom community of some 36,000 people on the Ohio River, just across the water from Louisville. It's surrounded by farmland. It has an abundance of fast-food restaurants. “We eat McDonald's like every day,” Ashley said.

New Albany was the town where the five friends in the room had grown up; they'd known one another since middle school. They were Ashley, Meredith, Kelsey, Natalie, and Natalie's boyfriend, Matthew.

They were eating rainbow-colored Popsicles.

“Boys will grab your ass,” Ashley said, “just grab you, and you'll turn around and they just act like that's okay. And their friends'll be like”—bro voice—“
Yeah.
But that's
gross.
Boys feed off each other. I feel like they do it to look cool for their friends.”

“And like, having ‘ten stats,' ” Natalie said, meaning sex partners numbering in the double digits. Natalie was white, small and blond, and wearing a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles T-shirt. “That's cool to them,” she said. “Like having fucked ten girls. Like, guys I went to high school with had competitions” to see how many girls they could have sex with. “The basketball team was notorious for competing on how many girls—like, I know one guy who is up in the
eighties.
Like, that is a bizarre number to fathom.”

“I don't even know eighty boys to fuck,” said Meredith.

“And, like, flipping is an option,” Natalie went on, referring to the practice of passing a girl from boy to boy during a sexual encounter.

“Like running trains on people,” Meredith said. “That's taking advantage of girls when they're drunk. I guess she doesn't have to be drunk, but they tag each other; one gets in there and finishes”—she smacked her hands together to indicate a callous attitude toward “finishing”—“and then he tags his friend and they're like, Yeah, and then
he
does it—”

“Like takes advantage of her when she's drunk,” explained Ashley.

“Like takes advantage when the girl is drunk and unaware that it's happening,” Meredith said. “It's happened to girls at our school.”

I asked if what they were essentially talking about was gang rape. They said, “Yeah.”

The scenario they described was much the same as what allegedly happened in 2013 at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in western New York, in 2013 at Vanderbilt University, in 2014 at Johns Hopkins University, and at other schools around the country, as reported in the news: a girl gets drunk, and a group of boys rape her, sometimes recording the acts on their cell phones. “It's sick how normalized rape is while drinking,” tweeted a teenage girl, @nicolepaigeh, in 2014.

Security cameras from the night of the alleged rape at Vanderbilt show Brandon Vandenburg, his teammate on the Vanderbilt Commodores Cory Batey, and two other young men carrying the unconscious victim to Vandenburg's room. At least five people reportedly saw this, but no one seemed to think there was anything odd about it; at least not enough to report it. Seeing girls passed out on campus and being carried into dorm rooms by boys apparently wasn't that unusual.

Kelsey started talking about Steubenville, the notorious case from 2012, in which an unconscious sixteen-year-old girl was raped by two high school football players and sexually assaulted by others, some of whom shared pictures and video of the acts on social media, in Steubenville, Ohio.

“The guys ‘had a future' and the girl ‘ruined the future' for them,” Kelsey said with a frown. She was a dark-haired white girl; she wore a black sundress.

“She ‘ruined the future' for them,” she went on, “but she's the one that got raped.” She was referring to when CNN reporter Poppy Harlow lamented on-air that the boys accused of raping the girl “had such promising futures—star football players.” “What's the lasting effect, though, on two young men being found guilty in juvenile court of rape essentially?” asked CNN anchor Candy Crowley.

“They turn it around on girls,” Meredith said. “Like, she shouldn't have been drunk, she shouldn't have been acting like that—”

“She shouldn't have been wearing that,” said Ashley.

“Yeah, like she was asking for it, she was dressed like a whore,” Meredith said. “If you're a guy,” she added sternly, “just have some fucking sense—don't do it.”

“Why should it matter what she was wearing?” Kelsey asked.

“Well, when they raped her they took her clothes off, so it didn't matter what she was fucking wearing,” said Meredith grimly.

I asked Matthew how the guys he knew would view the subject of this conversation. He was a white boy, brown-haired, square-jawed, and preppy, wearing boat shoes and salmon-colored shorts.

“It depends on the guy,” Matthew said. “Like, I know guys that would think [running a train] was the ultimate goal. I know guys that I grew up with that their”—air quotes—“ ‘goal' is to ‘Eiffel Tower' a girl.”

“I don't even know what that is,” said Kelsey.

Matthew smiled uncomfortably. “It's when two guys have sex with a girl and they high-five”—he brought his arms down in a V, smacking his hands together for emphasis—“ 'cause, like, one's at one end, one's at the other, and they make the Eiffel Tower,” or a tower shape, above the girl. “It's like a life goal of theirs.”

“Pluggin' her up,” Meredith said.

“Pluggin' her up,” said Ashley.

They laughed, outraged.

What they were describing were common scenarios in porn. Hundreds of thousands of results come up in an Internet search for “Eiffel Tower porn.” “College dudes doing the Eiffel Tower” is the title of a video on the porn site BurningCamel, on which college kids post self-generated pornography. “Running a train” porn, where multiple men have sex with one woman, is another popular theme, with millions of links. “Running a train on bitches,” “Running a train on this MILF,” and “Running a train on teen” come up in searches.

“Guys, like, joke about it,” Matthew said, referring now to “running a train,” “but when it comes right down to it, it's just so, like—I don't even know how to explain it.” He made a disgusted face.

“It's nasty,” said Meredith.

“It's fucked-up,” said Ashley.

“We don't partake in it,” said Natalie.

“But we know people that do,” said Kelsey. “They brag about it.”

“The not-funny part is when it happens and the girl doesn't even want to do it,” Matthew said.

“In all honesty sometimes the girl is willing,” said Meredith, “but it's still gross. It's gross when girls get taken advantage of, but it's gross when some girls want to do it.”

I asked her why she thought it was “gross” for girls.

“Because they're just doing it for the guys,” she said. “They're doing it 'cause they think that's what the guys want…Some girls are like, Let's do the map, or whatever.”

She was referring now to an expression describing when a girl offers up the three orifices of her body—“mouth, asshole, and pussy,” or “the map”—for a guy to enter.

“Stop!” shouted Ashley, laughing.

“Girls say, Let's do the map?” I asked.

“And we know who. And it's pretty sad,” said Kelsey.

“It's just what a person likes,” Matthew said with a shrug. “As a guy, I don't see going to a party, getting drunk off my ass, and seeing who I can hook up with, how fast—that's not something I seek to do. But if you ask five of my closest guy friends, that's
all
they like to do.”

“Like
all
of them,” said Kelsey.

“Like all of them—literally,” Ashley said. “Like almost every dude is like that.”

“Like literally now, even me being with a boyfriend,” Natalie said, “I will get a text that says, Wanna fuck? I keep them to show him,” Matthew, “so he knows who it is.”

“And it's guys I grew up with, known since first grade,” said Matthew.

“It's one man for himself,” Natalie said. “There's no bro code. ‘Yo, wanna fuck?' It's bad.”

“I took a women-and-gender class,” Kelsey said, “but we never talked about some of the most downright ornery stuff that goes on.” In other words, what was happening in the real lives of the girls she knew was not being covered in her college women's studies class. “For example,” she said, sitting up straighter, “for guys it's okay if they fuck like ten girls, but if a girl does it, we're a whore.”

“We're a run-through,” Meredith said.

“We're a run-through,” said Kelsey, counting off the insults on her fingers, “we're dirty, blah blah blah. But if a
guy
does it—”

“ ‘Oh my God, props,' ” Ashley said in a “bro” voice.

“Yeah,” said Meredith, throwing faux gang signs.

“ ‘You're the man,' ” said Ashley.

“ ‘He is awesome,' ” said Kelsey.

“ ‘He pulls bitches,' ” Natalie said.

“And that's stupid,” said Meredith.

“And it really is like that,” said Kelsey.

“On Tinder, like on social media,” Meredith said, “you'll be going through looking at it, and some guys, literally their little biography will say straight up, like, If you don't wanna fuck, don't message me.”

Kelsey gave a rueful laugh. “It's so messed up.”

“They'll tell you, Come over and sit on my face,” said Ashley.

“Like, Don't bother swiping if you're not looking for a hookup,” said Meredith. “And it's just so disgusting.”

Matthew looked skeptical. “Do you think through the generations it's changed, though?” he asked.

“I think it's
out
there more,” Meredith said. “There's more ways now to say it and be up-front about it.”

“I don't think guys have changed,” Matthew said. “I think it's just out there more because of social media.”

It was a Friday night, and the girls of Haines were having a “pre-game,” a drink before going out to bars. “Haines” was the nickname of their house on Haines Street, just off Main, a popular hangout, they said, for “cool girls.”

It was a rickety-looking two-story house with two porches in front, peeling and worn from many years of college kids plowing through.

“Cheers!” said the girls, all white and nineteen, doing vodka shots, followed by swigs of Diet Coke.

They were students at the University of Delaware, which traces its history back to 1743. Three of the college's first ten students went on to sign the Declaration of Independence and one to sign the Constitution. It's a publicly and privately funded university with a quality of education said to be on par with an Ivy League school. The campus is picturesque, with redbrick Georgian buildings and a wide green central lawn. Delaware has an active Greek life, and is consistently ranked as a top “party school.”

A YouTube video from 2012 shows scenes of a Delaware frat party: you see kids drinking from beer bongs; kids grinding up against one another, dancing; girls making out with each other; a boy fingering a girl's crotch as she dances. “Why do you love Delaware?” an off-screen interviewer asks. “Because of the fuckin' bitches here!” says a boy. “We're all fucking pretty,” says a girl. “We're all hot,” says another girl.

“You look sexy tonight,” the girls of Haines told each other. “You look hot.”

They said they were a “pretty well-known squad.”

“Everybody just says, We're going to Haines,” said Rebecca, a tall girl in a black bustier and short shorts. She had long blond hair, canny eyes, and a smoky voice. “We're such a group of stoners,” she said. “Boys come over to smoke a blunt and chill and have a good convo and don't hit on us and don't worry, Does this girl know what she's doing? Does she want my dick? No—we're just friends with them.”

“Everyone knows we're a squad,” said Sarah, an artsy-looking girl in harem pants.

The girls in the kitchen were all in their going-out clothes—bandeaux and bustiers and halter tops and long, low-cut dresses and stylish short shorts. They were all sorority girls, except for Rebecca, though they lived together off-campus rather than in a sorority house.

They snapped selfies together, Instagramming and Snapchatting themselves in their “hot” looks. They consulted one another on what they should write as captions. “Glam squad?” “Oh no, that's so overused.”

There was a lot of long, dark hair and long earrings swinging around and the sound of girl chatter and laughter and the clean smell of shampoo and perfume. “Oh my God, what is that
dress
?” someone asked. Eve—a thin dark-haired girl with angular features—had entered the kitchen wearing something short and tight, black and strappy, shades of
Fifty Shades of Grey.

“It's funny,” Eve said, “all my girlfriends who saw me in this outfit tonight were like, You look sexy, you look great, but then my friend Jake, when he saw me, the first thing he said was, Are you trying to get railed tonight? And I was like—” She blinked rapidly, showing annoyance.

“Getting railed,” she explained, was “getting fucked, having sex with someone, in a really not nice way. It's interesting,” she said, “when you hear girls talk about how you dress, they use confident words, like ‘hot.' And then you hear that from a boy and it's like, Should I change?”

“It's the double standard,” Rebecca said blandly, pouring out glasses of Franzia white wine.

“I feel like girls dress for girls, not for guys,” said Ariel, who wore short shorts and a silky black halter top. “My boyfriend says, You always dress the hottest when I'm not with you. I like to look cute because that's my image on the line when I go out.”

“Cheers,” said the girls of Haines again, clinking wineglasses.

“But most of us here,” Rebecca said, “our friends are all
guys.
We're very much guys' girls and not girlie girls.”

What was a “guys' girl”? I asked.

“Guys like us,” Rebecca said, “because we're not like girls—we're like
them.
This is the house guys come over to to chill, and not the house where the girls are just being dramatic and
naah-naah-naah
”—she made the face of a girl being “dramatic.”

“I always say that I don't want to be a girl,” said Lally, a petite blonde, only slightly embarrassed by the confession. “I
want
to be a guy. I don't like being a girl. I used to hate it.”

“Except for the clothes,” said Rebecca, after a brief silence.

They laughed.

In 2009, the Urban Dictionary defined a “guys' girl” as “a mix between tomboy and girly girl…The guys talk openly in front of her and she wouldn't be out of place going to a strip club with them. A guy's girl enjoys the freedom guys have in farting, eating disgusting food, and in how they discuss sex, but still likes to look and feel like a woman.”

A guys' girl was the antithesis of a “girlie girl,” said the girls of Haines. Girlie girls were “bitches,” “uptight.” And not good friends.

“In every sorority there's one group of catty bitches who think they run shit,” said Eve. “Everyone puts those people on a pedestal.”

“It's so insane,” Sarah agreed.

“The way that girls talk about you,” Lally said, “you can't even have a true girlfriend, because she's a bitch. She's just a
bitch.
But not these girls,” she said.

“I used to
hate
being a girl more than anything,” Lally went on, “but then I fell into the right group. I wanted to be a guy because I don't want to deal with drama, I don't want to have to deal with who's gonna be my friend today—are they gonna be mad at me again? About like stuff that's so stupid and petty to think about. You don't have to think about that stuff with these girls.”

“That's why when we found each other it was so great,” Ariel said, “ 'cause it was like, Yo, you're basically a
dude.
We can hang out and not be catty, not give a shit about what that person wore last night.”

The impulse to act “girlie” could come up in texting, they said, and the way it made girls anxious about how to respond to guys. “Like, when I'm texting a boy,” Sarah said, “the first thing I do is to type out a paragraph—well, guys don't give a fuck about eighty percent of what I'm trying to say. I have a lot going on in my head and I know that a lot of it is complete
nonsense.
But I have people here who will point that out to me. Being a girlie girl is being someone who's gonna get really tightly wound and not realize that.”

Hearing them talk made me think of Bethany Mota, YouTube sensation and self-proclaimed girlie girl. For the girls of Haines, defining themselves against the stereotype of the girlie girl seemed like a brand of feminism: they saw themselves as the opposite of such girls, girls who fulfilled undermining stereotypes. But in defining themselves against one stereotype, were they only becoming entangled in another, one based on male approval? Semantically, in their self-definition, guys' girls belonged to guys. They were “cool girls,” it seemed, because guys thought they were cool.

“And also,” Rebecca said, “look at this house. It's not, like, a girlie place. We're all really dressed up right now, 'cause we're going out and we wanna look good, but we're not always in makeup. We'll be in our sweatpants. Free the nipple!”

She was referring to the Free the Nipple movement, dedicated to desexualizing women's bodies, particularly breasts, and exposing the double standard of how male versus female bodies are viewed.

Somehow this set off the Miley Discussion.

“She Instagrams like it's Snapchat,” said Eve. She meant that Miley's Instagrams were as personal and intimate as Snapchats.

They talked about Miley's infamous performance at the MTV VMA Awards in 2013.

“I thought it was hilarious,” Sarah said. “The foam finger? Like, What the fuck is happening?”

“She was making a name for herself,” said Rebecca.

“She was doing whatever the fuck she wants,” said Eve. “And we just made her more famous and more rich and more popular and more known—and guess what? That's awesome—
she's
awesome.”

“It was the best business move ever,” Rebecca agreed.

“She has a great team behind her,” said Sarah.

I asked them if they thought Miley was a guys' girl or a girlie girl. “Oh, a guys' girl,
definitely.
”