ABSTRACT
‘If you don’t like them they’ll call you a tight bitch. If you do go with them then they’ll call you a slag afterwards.’ …Girls have to develop a feminine identity in line with their cultural ascription, but to become a person in their own right they need to develop an identity in contradiction to this. From the onset of menstruation, girls have to deal with the contradictory messages about their feminine identity. Girls’ identities are fractured by the widespread description of themselves as sex objects, yet indications of sexual desire on their part can render them as ‘whores’, ‘good time girls’, and ‘slags’. Adolescent socialization for girls is fraught with discontinuity and conflict.
