American Girls (8 page)

The Boca girls said there were “nice boys” in their school—“I have a guy best friend and he's so nice and he would never screenshot a girl,” Julie declared—but that there was also a popular “style” for boys, which they called “savage,” meaning sexually overt, crass, and disrespectful.

“When boys say it, it's a compliment,” Cassy said. “They make their Instagram names like ‘Savage Young Boy.' ”

“They try and be gangster,” Maggie said. “So many thirteen-year-old boys are smoking weed. They'll go on Snapchat and Instagram and post pictures of them smoking.”

“They have house parties and they post like, ‘Bring the alcohol, bring the weed, don't come if you're a prude,' ” said Cassy.

“One of my sister's friends, she was having a hard time,” Julie said. “She was acting out. She's a senior in high school and she was caught giving head to a boy—it was at a party and somebody walked in and took a picture and it went all over social media. And so many people were hating on her in the school and she literally had no friends left except my sister. She was being called a slut and it got to her really badly, 'cause she suffers from anxiety and depression, and she wanted to kill herself. But luckily she gave hints to my sister and my sister drove over to her house when she was about to take pills.”

I asked what happened to the guy in the picture, the one who had gotten the blowjob.

“Nothing happened to him,” Julie said.

“He's a player,” Cassy said with a frown.

“A guy will ask you to do it,” or give oral sex, Maggie said, “and if you say no, then you're a prude, but then when you actually do it you're a slut.”

I asked what effect they thought all this was having on girls—the hypersexualization of girls, and boys, and the double standard which seemed exacerbated by the public nature of social media.

“It stresses me out, honestly,” Julie said. “I suffer from anxiety. I've been suffering for so long now. I go to a therapist and I do take medicine for it. It started in my fourth-grade class. I was with a mean group of girls and they all, like, went off on everybody and would tell them their flaws.”

“Yeah, they did that at our school, too,” Cassy sympathized.

“I think social media made it worse,” Julie said. “All people are caring about now is, How do I look on social media?”

“It makes girls feel like they have to try so hard constantly to get people to like them,” Cassy said. “And some people feel bad if they don't get enough likes and comments.”

“We know a girl whose mom buys her followers!” Julie exclaimed. She was referring to companies, accessible online, from which you could buy fake followers for social media accounts.

“And because of social media you can edit yourself, like how you
want
to be, with Photoshop and apps,” Maggie said. “Like I want to be like
her,
I'm gonna make myself look like
her.
”

Like who? I asked.

“Kylie Jenner!”
they all said at once, referring to the eighteen-year-old sister of Kim Kardashian.

“And all the Kardashians,” said Cassy.

“Everybody wants to take a selfie as good as the Kardashians,” Maggie said. “Some girls do their makeup just to take a selfie. They spend
hours.
”

“Everyone wants everyone to like them,” Julie said. “And everyone wants to be perfect. But to be perfectly honest, it's not possible to be perfect. Everyone's gonna have something wrong. But I just wish everyone could just look past that and look at the personality and the person on the inside rather than the outside.”

“What do you think the answer is?” I asked.

“I think the parents literally need to knock some sense into their kids and watch what their kids are doing,” Julie said, “ 'cause I feel like a lot of kids are sneaking it behind their parents' backs.”

“They don't want their parents to know what's really going on,” said Cassy, “ 'cause they're afraid they'll take away their phones.”

Valley Road runs through the center of Upper Montclair, the tonier section of town. The buildings there are quaint and small, many of them in the Tudor style familiar to suburbs of New York. The Dunkin' Donuts is like any other in the chain, with a logoed pink-and-orange sign showing a steaming cup of coffee. Through the window, on a Friday afternoon, you could see the place was teeming with middle-school-age kids, some standing on a couch by the window, bouncing and gesticulating.

Riley, Sophia, and Victoria approached the doughnut store tentatively.

“I'm not going in, I can't go in,” Riley said, moving against the wall of the building so she would not be seen by anyone inside.

“Really?” said Sophia. “It's okay. It's all dying down.”

“No, it isn't,” Riley said. She was suddenly breathing rapidly. “I feel like I'm having an anxiety attack. Is this an anxiety attack?” she asked, her voice becoming high and thin.

Sophia and Victoria stared at her with concern, not knowing what to do.

“I know someone who gets them,” Sophia said helpfully. “She takes medicine.”

Later Riley's mother told me Riley suffered from an anxiety disorder and was being treated with medication. “Sometimes I wonder whether that is why they attack her,” her mother said, “because they know she's fragile.”

“You go in first,” Riley said. “What if Danny's in there? What if Zack's in there? What if they take pictures of me?” And then: “Get me a strawberry doughnut with sprinkles.”

Sophia and Victoria ventured inside the store. They didn't often go in the Dunkin' Donuts on a Friday afternoon. That was when the popular kids—“the cliquey kids and thotty,” or slutty, “girls in the shortest shorts”—congregated to “try and act cool,” said Sophia.

Victoria and Sophia were not part of this crowd, as Riley was, or perhaps once had been. In fact, Sophia said that Riley had “shunned” her at times during that school year. “She gets influenced by other kids,” Sophia said. “But she's my friend, so I'm going to stick by her. With social media it's really hard to know who your true friends are, and this is how you know, how someone treats you when everyone hates you.”

Inside the store, there were around twenty kids, and all of them seemed to be screaming. They sat on the brown-and-orange vinyl booths in front of half-empty boxes of doughnuts; they stood in clusters in the aisles, talking close up in one another's faces. There were boys in sweatpants and T-shirts, long shorts and sports jerseys, powdered sugar on their cheeks and lips; there were girls in short shorts and tank tops and crop tops, hands on hips.

There were three girls taking a selfie together, all doing the duckface, smizing—a word coined by former Victoria's Secret supermodel Tyra Banks for “smiling with your eyes.”

They vamped for the camera, then peered into the screen, checking the photo.

“Oh, we look hot!” one of them exclaimed. “Post it!”

Kids were talking, yelling:

“Oh my God, she's so fake.”

“
So
fake.”

“I love your Instagram. You have good feed.”

“I know.”

“She gets like three hundred likes on every picture. I'm like, Stop it.”

“Did you see Kim Kardashian's selfie book?”

“Oh my God. Who would buy a book of selfies?”

“My mom has it.”

Giggles.

“Kim is only famous because she did a sex tape.”

“I know. The only one I like is Kendall.” That was Kendall Jenner, the twenty-year-old sister of Kim, a model. She has more than 42 million followers on Instagram.

“Seriously, Kendall is my lover.”

“I like Kylie the best.”

“Kylie looks gorgeous in pictures, but she's ugly in person.” Kylie Jenner has 35 million Instagram followers.

“Totally. Her head is square.”

“This girl at Renaissance [Middle School] did the Kylie Jenner Challenge”—a trend where girls were sucking on the inside of shot glasses in order to create a bee-stung lip effect similar to Kylie Jenner's exaggerated lip fillers look—“and she had a hickey around her mouth for like a week.”

“Hahahahaha.”

“Oh my God, I did that, too.” Embarrassed laugh. “I looked so ratchet.”

“What's in the book?”

“It's just, like, pictures of selfies. And her boobs and butt.”

“I like the boobs. I like the butt,” said a boy in a snapback hat. “I like 'em big.”

“Her booty is
too
big,” said another boy, who wore a Bob Marley T-shirt.

“Faggot,” said the boy with the snapback hat.

“I can't believe you just said that,” said a girl.

“Your mom's a faggot,” said the boy in the Bob Marley shirt. “You're a one-inch wonder.”

A young man in a Dunkin' Donuts uniform working behind the counter looked over at the kids and shook his head.

“Shut up,” said the boy in the snapback hat. “I'll take a BJ from all the Kardashians. Except for Khloé. Khloé is the ugly one.”

Khloé Kardashian has more than 36 million followers on Instagram.

“Scott definitely cheats on Khloé,” the other boy agreed.

The boys laughed, high-fived.

“Totally, bro. She looks like she's thirty,” the first boy said.

“Scott is married to
Kourtney,
” a girl informed the boy.

Kourtney Kardashian, then the partner of former model Scott Disick (they have since separated), has more than 29 million followers on Instagram.

“And seriously, like Kim Kardashian would give you a blowjob.”

“What, are you on your period?” said the boy in the snapback hat.

“Kim is
married,
” said the girl.

“To Kanye. So?” said the boy. “Kanye is gay.”

“You're gay,” said the second boy.

“Your mom is gay,” the first boy said, laughing. And, rubbing his chest: “I'm a sexy beast, yo.”

“You're a savage,” said the girl. “You're a fuckboy!”

“Hahahahaha.”

“Oooh.”

The boy leaned into the girl, whispering something in her ear.

“This afternoon?” said the girl, shoving him away. “Who else is coming?”

Sophia and Victoria bought some doughnuts and hurried out of the store. No one spoke to them.

“Savages” and “fuckboys,” two words in use among American girls, describe a strain of boys who seem to have reared their snapback-hat-wearing heads a lot in recent years. “Fuckboy” is generally believed to have first appeared in a 2002 Cam'ron song, “Boy, Boy”; in hip-hop, it came to be a put-down for a kind of loser. Some black writers have argued that using the word in any other context is appropriating and disrespectful. But words are like fuckboys—they get around—and sometimes their meanings expand. To understand the life of American girls, it's useful to know what they mean when they utter this slur.

It was in 2015 that “fuckboy” became a topic of discussion on websites and blogs, having gained attention from its prevalence in posts on social media. There were #fuckboy hashtags on Twitter and Instagram and other sites, with girls of all races using it. “Ladies please don't ever feel the need to lower your standards for a fuckboy,” tweeted @ZuleymaaSerrato. “Don't let a fuck boy stress you out,” tweeted @dxmnjocelyn. “Don't settle for a fuckboy just 'cause you lonely baby girl. Know your worth,” tweeted @RainaRushil. “When you meet a fuckboy,” girls posted again and again, with pictures of girls doing the “Resting Bitch Face” and Kendall Jenner giving the symbol for “peace out.”

In 2015,
The Huffington Post
defined the term as “something akin to the ‘man whore' label” with “a light-to-heavy sprinkling of misogyny.” “Primarily, fuckboys do not respect women,”
Bustle
said, while the Urban Dictionary posted a new definition: “A player. A guy who will lie to a girl to make them hook up with them or send pics.”

Dozens of “What's a fuckboy?” YouTube videos appeared in 2015, many by young women decrying the behavior of fuckboys, and others by young men warning how to spot them. One of my favorites was by the unself-consciously feminist YouTuber Damian Alonso, also known as WorldDamian, a teenage boy in Hawaii.

Alonso, who has big brown eyes and wears a T-shirt with a scene of the sun rising over waves, jumps around breathlessly as he educates viewers in his fast-paced patter: “Fuckboys are mostly heterosexual young men who use sexist language, throw around homophobic slurs, think all girls are either sluts or objects…and embody ignorance on every level…Girls, if a fuckboy asks you out and you reject him, he'll then call you a slut but still tell all his friends that he banged you…

“Fuckboys only communicate through text messaging or through Kik,” he says. Mimicking a fuckboy texting a girl, Alonso says with a sly look: “ ‘Wanna play truth or dare? Only
dare
though.'

“ ‘Smash or pass,' ” he says, pretending to check out pictures of girls on his phone. “ ‘Look, I
know
I said I loved you yesterday,' ” he whines satirically, “ ‘but once I found out you wouldn't put out…I'm not ready for a
relationship
'…‘Do you send nudes?'…

“ ‘Surprise dick pic!' ” he says, pointing his phone camera toward his groin. “ ‘What size are your boobs?'…‘Dude, I totally
banged
her.'

“Fuckboys have been around for years,” Alonso concludes, jokingly putting a knife to his throat. Which is true; there have always been sexist and homophobic men and boys. But new words, or new spins on existing words, rarely arise unless there's something that speakers feel a pressing need to express.

What's different about this variation on “womanizer,” “ladykiller,” and “philanderer” is that it refers to a type of caddish male who has access to social media. A “fuckboy” is a boy or man who uses social media to mistreat and degrade girls and women. All the definitions of “fuckboy” that have appeared in pop culture mention the fuckboy's behavior online: “He sends you unsolicited dick pics,” said
Bustle.
“He's constantly begging for nudes,” Thought Catalog said. “He blows off your plans to hang but slides into your DMs”—known as a way of hitting up a girl for sex without asking her out on an actual date.

A fuckboy is a “sexist pig” for the age of social media. The word isn't really equivalent to “slut.” For the problem with the fuckboy isn't that he has sex; it's how he treats the people he has sex with. And the word is being used by girls as a kind of feminism.