BioMed
Two girls seek status inside a surf culture that gives boys freedom and girls subordinate roles.
Getting into a group does not mean being valued inside it. The girls were taken in and assigned boyfriends, yet to the boys they were sexual objects rather than members. Being inside the circle can still mean holding a lower, set role within it.
To get into a group that holds the status, newcomers may accept rules that shrink their own bodies and needs. In this 1970s surf crowd, girls won a place only by never eating or using the toilet in front of the boys. The price of entry is paid in visible self-denial.
When young teens rank what is cool, the things adults forbid rise to the top just because they are forbidden. Sex, drinking and skipping school get their pull from being off-limits. The appeal comes from the ban more than from the act.
In a tight youth crowd, sex is less a private choice than a part played by the group's rules. Partners are handed out and the boys' wants set the terms, so the girls' own wishes barely count. One of the authors sums up the boys' view: a 'sex drive' meant doing it in the car.
People often stay loyal to a narrow, sexist crowd until its costs land on their own bodies and friends. Only after a sudden miscarriage and heroin spreading through their circle did the girls see the crowd clearly and walk away. Leaving came from damage they lived through, not from argument.
Young people seek out frank stories of their own coming of age, especially the parts adults avoid. One reader recalls 'devouring' the book alone at thirteen with the door shut. Girls felt it showed 'a very raw and true side' of the rituals of growing up.
Stories rarely show young women who neither wait to be rescued by a man nor get punished with violence by the end. One author calls the screen version a novelty because its girls avoided both stock endings. Simply leaving out the rescue and the punishment makes such a story unusual.