Ariel Levy seems to focus her chapter, Pigs in Training, on high school students and teenagers. But the truth is, we have this exact same problem at Colgate. Girls are having sex, just for attention. Girls are dressing provocatively to get the attention of the boys in our school. Just head to the jug on a Saturday night and it becomes more than obvious: high school never ends. There are girls in their twenties doing the exact same thing at Colgate. And at this point in time, these girls have received sexual education. So if we were to impose proper sexual education on high schoolers (not just abstinence) would things change. I think Levy does make a good point, US teenage pregnancy rates are much higher because of lack of contraceptives. Why is that? Girls in the US should be able to afford it, being one of the wealthiest countries in the world. It is because the system refuses to acknowledge that times have changed. Money shouldn't be spend promoting abstinence in schools, but rather telling young girls how to be safe and saving it for the right person, regardless if you are married. I think Levy makes some good arguments, however, she tends to group all high school girls together. She makes it seem like every girl in high school is like this, and that is no where near true.
I think Walker's idea is hopeful, yet unrealistic. I have heard of many cases where women, very capable women, are attacked and freeze. It has nothing to do with athletic ability, but rather with fear. Many women can't even scream when they are being raped. Also, Walker's whole idea of self defense is naive. Many women can't even afford to put dinner on the table for their children, let alone take some karate classes. Many women have absolutely no time to spare, and all their free time is spent taking care of their children. In fact, single mothers, the women who probably need it the most probably would find it the most difficult to take these self-defense classes. It's great that it worked out for Walker, unfortunately that isn't the case for most women.
As for Morgan, I don't really have much to say. What happened to her was awful and by no means will I try to imagine what she went through.
I agree with Logan that we absolutely see this "Pigs in Training" that Levy describes as a problem at the high school problem continuing throughout college. As usual, however, Levy goes to the extreme, and, as Logan says, makes it seem like these are the values of EVERY teenage girl. There ARE girls who are empowered by excelling in academics, athletics, the arts, etc. rather than getting the starting quarterback's attention.
ReplyDeleteI think that Walker is doing a positive thing by encouraging women to learn self defense, but I do not see it as a solution to the problem. Like Logan points out, many women freeze up and it's just not realistic to assume that women will be able to act out what they have learned in the face of fear. Mace, rape whistles, etc., which Walker seems to look down upon, may be very useful in many situations.
Levy goes to some high school on the upper east side, I'm just going to go ahead and guess that it is not like my high school. I have never witnessed a high school girl snap her thong at another individual during the school day. Though i cannot help but agree with Levy about how reality television and media in general heavily influences and has changed the people think. When she compared the "summer of love" to today, i found that stats quite surprising,
ReplyDeleteI think that Walker's story about learning self defense is very good for her state of mind, but i think she is only creating the illusion safety. I could throw out meaningless and improbable examples but that would be useless. In my opinion, the true message of her story is about finding a way to deal with a past ordeal and good for her.
Logan is right; apparently a lot of us are still in high school. However, not every single girl at Colgate is a “pig in training,” nor is every single girl in high school. Levy time and again falls into the same trap of making sweeping generalizations (usually only sampling the white middle class) in order to emphasize her point. She makes “pigs in training” seem as though it is an epidemic sweeping the nation, some girls do not participate in this culture and that should be acknowledged. However, Levy does have a point something should be done about the current accepted sexual norms. While this is not something we can change over night, immediately we can help by making sure sex education is not limited to abstinence. I think it has been pretty well proven that abstinence only education doesn’t work. As Logan highlights Levy mentions we can lower the number of unwanted teen pregnancies with contraceptives and more effective sex education.
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