American Girls (44 page)

“Nobody knows how to have a relationship anymore,” Matthew said. It was the afternoon when he and his friends were all gathered in Natalie and Ashley's dorm room at Southeast. “How can anybody have a relationship when everything's so out there in public like that, on social media? How can you know what's just for you, and what's for everybody else?” he asked.

Natalie, his girlfriend, looked at him funny.

“Oh my God, yes,” Ashley agreed. “Like I will get a good morning text: it'll be like, Good morning, beautiful, hope you have a wonderful day. And I'll be like, Oh my gosh, that is so sweet. And then I will get on Twitter and see a girl has posted
the same exact words,
like, Look what bae sent; and so obviously he said that to her, too. He mass texted it!”

“That's a fuckboy,” Meredith said.

“That's a dude that cannot have a relationship,” Ashley said. “Like all he wants to do is fuck girls.”

“Self-absorbed,” Meredith said.

“Who cares more what his bros think about a girl than what he thinks about her,” said Ashley. “Who calls girls sluts and whores but does the same thing.”

“And acts like he wants a real relationship but he never really does,” Meredith said.

I asked them what percentage of boys they thought were fuckboys.

“One hundred percent,” said Meredith.

“No, like ninety percent,” said Ashley. “I'm hoping to find the ten percent somewhere. But every boy I've ever met is a fuckboy.”

When real relationships did occur, they said, the partners became “obsessed” with what each other was doing on social media.

“You're tweeting and watching, watching everything someone tweets,” Ashley said, “and you keep going back and forth watching what they post. We call it ‘twatching.' ”

“People play with each other's minds,” Meredith said. “Like, if you wanna piss someone off, they can see who you're talking to, so you'll just start talking to someone to get the other person mad.”

“
They
twatch each other a lot,” Ashley said, pointing her Popsicle at Matthew and Natalie.

Matthew said, “Not true.”

“In your recent searches,” said Ashley, laughing, “you know it says ‘Natalie.' You
subtweet
each other,” meaning to post mean comments that the other couldn't see. “You
fight
on Twitter.”

Natalie and Matthew recounted how they had recently gotten back together after going on a months-long break. During the time of their separation, they admitted, they had “twatched” each other relentlessly on social media.

“She stalked the shit out of him,” Ashley said.

“And he would post pictures of other girls and I would tweet about my experience with guys,” Natalie said. “I acted like I didn't care. Nowadays, if you care, you're dumb.”

“You make yourself look so dumb,” Ashley agreed.

“That's when guys are like, Oh, she
cares
about me,” Natalie said.

“And then they're like, I can do whatever I want, she's always gonna be chasing after me,” said Meredith.

“And if you care too much,” said Natalie, “they're like, Oh, she's psycho, she's in love, she's too attached.”

Matthew said, “For a guy nowadays, it's either you're whipped or you don't give a shit. It's like there's no in between.”

I asked them what they thought was making girls and boys treat each other this way.

“Boys want to have the power,” Natalie said, “and girls don't want to get hurt.”

Matthew countered, “Nobody wants to get hurt.”

But after some time, Matthew and Natalie said, they'd started to miss each other; and they started to be able to admit that they missed each other.

“And we realized we had been taking our relationship for granted and we really like each other,” said Matthew. “We learned if you want to keep the relationship, you have to show the other person how much you value the relationship.”

They were back together now. But still, they said, they were struggling with the effect of social media on their relationship.

“You just have no privacy, no time apart,” Matthew said. “You always know what the other is doing. Like if I see she hasn't tweeted anything for three or four days, then I'm like, What could she be doing for three days that she hasn't posted anything? If she tweets like, I just had McDonald's, then I know she's probably in her dorm eating McDonald's; but if she doesn't say anything, she could be doing anything under the sun.”

“That's some crazy-person stuff,” said Ashley.

“No,” said Matthew, “that's what relationships are like these days. The days of calling your home phone once a night to say good night to your significant other is long gone.”

“If she's not tweeting, it doesn't mean she's fucking someone else,” said Ashley.

“But you wonder what it
does
mean,” Matthew said. “That's what starts to go through your head.”

“And then there's when someone doesn't post about you on Woman Crush Wednesday,” said Natalie, giving him a look.

Apparently Matthew had sometimes failed to post pictures of Natalie on Woman Crush Wednesday. There was also Man Crush Monday, which Natalie faithfully observed, except when Matthew had been remiss in his duties.

“Woman Crush Wednesday is overrated,” Matthew said with a scowl. “Some people in a relationship will do it every single week and if you don't it's like you're in a fight.”

“That's why we're trying not to do Twitter, 'cause it makes everything so much harder,” said Natalie.

“Like, if you favorite something or you tweet something to someone that is not your girlfriend or boyfriend,” Matthew said, “then you're in a war. It looks a lot deeper than it really is, and it brings up a whole new conversation that you don't need to have: Who is she? How do you know her? Do you have her number?”

A few months later, they broke up.

The kids jumped in the water from high up on the rocks. The girls went gingerly over the side, the boys with great running leaps, doing flips in the air. They lolled on their rafts and inner tubes, basking in the sun, chatting languidly with one another. The water was so clear and clean that now and then you could see a big brown bass wiggling past their legs.

Mikayla appeared, upset. She and Jim had had a fight.

“He just said that he could get whatever girl he wanted here,” said Mikayla, fighting back tears. “I guess because all these girls are flocking around because Ethan is rapping and they're handing out shots.” She said she thought Jim was being influenced by the other boys. “Look at Ethan,” she said. “He would not have done that long rap if the boys hadn't been egging him on like, You're so fucking cool.”

“It's bro-chure,” meaning bro culture, Meredith said. “I call it ‘brochure.' It's being with your bros. We also call it Nasty Time.”

Mikayla put on a “bro” voice: “Yeah, fuck 'em, who gives a shit about girls? 'Cause we're the fuckin' man. Fuck you all, we're drunk, we don't give a shit.”

“Bro-chure,” Meredith repeated.

“It sure is,” said Mikayla.

“We don't tolerate it,” Meredith said.

“We may be the one friend group that's just like, I'm not gonna take that,” Mikayla said, referring to how she and her squad were unlike other girls in their refusal to brook sexist behavior. “Meredith's probably the best person I know when it comes to that—she stands for her own. She stands for whatever is right.”

“I fuck wit them,” Meredith said, grinning from behind her shades, meaning she let boys know when they were out of line.

“And she will tell the boys straight as it is,” said Mikayla.

“It's 'cause I'm not dickmatized,” Meredith said, meaning she was not hypnotized by sex. “I never will be dickmatized, never,” she added resolutely.

“She's the most independent person I know,” said Mikayla. “I became friends with Meredith one day and she's the best thing that ever happened to me…She inspires me as a woman.”

Mikayla took a few steps away, rubbing her eyes.

“She always starts crying when she talks about emotional stuff,” Meredith said affectionately.

Meredith was a feminist. I asked her if she thought of herself this way. She shrugged. “Yeah, why not?” she said.

Mikayla came back and I asked her what she was going to do about Jim. She said she wasn't going to have an argument “while we're both drunk.”

“He's bromancing,” Meredith said.

“They're all the same,” said Mikayla.

“But we love them,” Meredith said.

“We do?” asked Mikayla.

They looked over at the cars, where the boys were beating one another with swim noodles, slapping each other with loud cracks.

“Boys are stupid,” said Ashley, coming over. “Mikayla is my girlfriend.”

Mikayla kissed her cheek. They smiled at each other.

Mikayla went and talked to Jim, and when she came back, she was smiling. He followed behind her, holding her hand, looking hangdog. “He said he was sorry and I'm the best, which is right,” she informed us.

“I was raised by a southern granma and I know when I mess up I have to apologize,” said Jim.

They kissed. Mikayla looked happy. Jim looked relieved.

“Look at Cody,” Meredith said, shaking her head. We all looked over at their friend Cody, a tall white boy wearing a lazy grin. He was surrounded by three very young-looking teenage girls who were doubling over, laughing at whatever he said. “Oh my God,
yes,
” “I can't
believe
you!” “You are so
funny
!”

“Three at once,” Mikayla remarked. “Well, Cody is a babe.”

“Bro hos,” said Ashley.

Ashley and Meredith started parodying the girls, flipping their hair and prancing up and down. We watched as Cody typed all three girls' numbers into his phone before they skipped away.

The boys by the cars had all started dancing around to the song “My Girl,” but instead of “My girl,” they sang,
“My thots…Talkin' 'bout my thots!”

“That should be the fuckboy anthem,” said Meredith.

At a party one night in Paige's room, Rebecca passed around a video of herself twerking on spring break. The video had been taken that year in Cancún. It was close-up footage of Rebecca's behind undulating in a pink bikini, shot by someone positioned underneath her in the sand.

“Oh my God, this is me on the beach in slo-mo, isn't that
insane
?” she asked.

“That's awesome,” said a girl named Liza. “That's a nice shot of your butt.”

“Thank you,” Rebecca said.

“That's really impressive,” Liza said.

The girls made margaritas in a blender and drank from pink martini glasses with straws. “So yummy,” they said. Boys sat around the coffee table, smoking blunts.
BEST NIGHT EVER
said the sparkly gold party letters strung on the wall.

There was a boy there named Kevin, tall and handsome, black, age nineteen, with short-cropped hair, in a sweatshirt, Timberlands, and jeans.

They'd been talking about how there was no dating in college anymore. I asked Kevin why boys didn't ask girls out on dates.

“Yeah, Kevin,” Rebecca prodded.

“I guess for the simple reason they don't have to,” Kevin said frankly. “To be honest, we don't have to.” He sipped his beer.

“I got asked out on a date once and I thought it was a joke,” said Sarah. “The guy asked me out, and I was like, Is this real? Is he kidding?”

The girls all laughed, dancing around to Katy Perry.

“You don't have to take a girl on a date in order to hook up with her,” Kevin said. “The mind-set on a college campus—things are quote-unquote ‘easier' at school. I think guys and girls come to college expecting to hook up.”

He said he had not been on a single date since he had been at college. He had taken a girl out to dinner once, he said; “but that was already when we were hooking up. Like, take a girl on three dates, kiss her at the end of the date?” He gave a dry laugh. “No. Guys just don't have to take girls out.”

The talk turned to numbers, numbers of sex partners.

“Over fifty,” said another guy at the party.

“Well, there are sixteen thousand people here,” Kevin said with a laugh.

They all started counting, laughing, remembering hookups.

Rebecca was murmuring something to Kevin off to the side.

“You've been doing what you needed to do,” he told her kindly.

“If you say yours, I'll say mine,” Rebecca told him. “I'm like at ten, and he's like there, around there,” she announced.

“Okay, eleven,” said Kevin.

“Are you really
ten
?” Lally said, catty.

“I mean, I'm not gonna count out loud and say
names,
” Rebecca said, defensive. “They add up fast.”

I asked them about slut-shaming; were girls judged for hooking up?

“Well, it's an obvious double standard,” Kevin said. “That's just how it's always been. Why? I don't know. I'm not an advocate of it.”

I asked him if he ever used the word “slut.”

One of the bros in the room let out a loud
“Burrrrrrp!”

“Uhhhh,” said Kevin, “I don't really want to answer that question. Hmmm.”

“Hahahaha,”
said one of the guys.

“It's disrespectful to call a girl a slut, obviously,” Kevin said. “It demeans someone because they are not part of a social norm. But even girls call each other sluts. It's a universal thing.”

Rebecca looked grim.

“Eight of ten girls have called another girl a slut,” Kevin maintained.

“Ten out of ten,” piped up a girl.

“Girls shit on other girls just as much,” Kevin said.

“More!” said a girl.

“But in different ways,” Rebecca said.

“I hate it,” said a girl.

“Girls will slut-shame, too,” Kevin said. “Girls are called sluts not just because of how many guys they sleep with but because of
why
they sleep with guys.”

“It's fun for guys to have meaningless sex,” Rebecca said, “because they wanna just get it in, they wanna de-stress; but, I mean, we're all human beings, we're all very sexual in our nature. And yet for some reason it's seen as more shameful or unacceptable for girls to go out and have meaningless sex. If girls do that, she's called a slut.

“School's hard,” Rebecca went on. “We have so much work. Our parents are pushing us to get a job. So that's why we drink and, like, a lot of kids, get blacked out, and we just want to leave our problems and—”

“And make mistakes,” Kevin said.

“And make mistakes,” Rebecca concurred. “It's YOLO, it's the YOLO lifestyle.” You only live once.

“And we in this society glorify people that don't show any signs of being stressed out,” Kevin said. “If you look stressed out, it's not a good look. We're encouraged to not express how stressed we are.” It was another aspect of hypermasculinity, the shamefulness of showing emotion.

“Guys are taught to hide their feelings,” Rebecca said. “Sometimes Sarah will come in and be like, I have to de-stress right now! And she'll scream and cry and just get it out.”

“I just need to air it out,” admitted Sarah.

Sarah suddenly remembered that her parents had offered to subsidize all their trips down to spring break that year. The girls cheered. “But they're only putting in for travel, not food,” Sarah advised.

Rebecca shrugged, sipping her drink. “We'll find a bunch of guys on their bachelor trip that just wanna take girls out and sugar daddy us for the week.”

She was joking, I think; but the idea of having a “sugar daddy” isn't inimical to many girls in an era when the dating site Seeking Arrangement claims to have close to three million “sugar babies,” male and female. In 2015, Seeking Arrangement released a list of the top colleges where girls were using the site, the top three being the University of Texas, Arizona State University, and New York University. The exchange between a sugar baby and a sugar daddy who meet on a commercial website isn't legally allowed to involve direct payment for sex, but after the two people meet, there is no monitoring of the relationship.

A sugar baby is provided with an “allowance” for her attentions; the average allowance, according to Seeking Arrangement, is $3,000 monthly. It's a kind of soft prostitution that's become normalized by social media and seems to have become more attractive to some young women in a challenging economy. “There's nothing shameful about it,” said a young woman in New York, twenty-two. “I can't make enough money in an office job to pay my rent, so if I can make five hundred dollars by having dinner with some guy, I'm gonna do it.” Some sugar babies have Amazon Wish Lists where they tell their sugar daddies what they would like to have, everything from jewelry to silverware to furniture to magazine subscriptions.

“It's really common now for girls to say they're ‘using' guys for meals or other stuff,” said Elizabeth, a college student in Florida. “They act like it's no big deal.” A few young women admitted to me that they used dating apps as a way to get free meals. “I call it Tinder food stamps,” one said.

“Bow down bitches, bow bow down bitches—”

The girls of Haines sang along to Beyoncé's “Flawless.”