Growing up as a girl, there are contradictory rulebooks: you want to be as cool, as pretty, and as powerful as the Mean Girl (or at least enough to be on her good side), but you also don’t want to step outside the bounds of what’s sexually acceptable before you even understand your sexuality. I have distinct memories of girl assemblies that felt like UN negotiations: How and when is it appropriate to “lose it”? How long, how many dates, who with, what prerequisites do they needed to fulfill? The pressure, we’re told, is life defining—and it’s compounded by the self-fulfilling prophecy of pop
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