Those blazers. They know exactly what they're doing...
I first saw the dimpled Carey Mulligan in the creepy Doctor Who episode Blink. The next time I saw her, it was in the creepy film based on Lynn Barber's memoir An Education in which she plays a 16 year old seduced by a much older man, for whom she gives up her actual education for the education he can provide. Of the slightly seedy yet glamorous kind.
What is odd in the film is how totally OK the young Jenny Mellor's parents are with their teenage daughter being taken out and about (overnight, overnight!) by a grown man. My, perhaps prudish, little mind went into overdrive trying to work out why this was apparently acceptable in 1961. Nikki McWatters might believe that the reason is clear – Mellor was a predatory teenage girl.
What is odd in the film is how totally OK the young Jenny Mellor's parents are with their teenage daughter being taken out and about (overnight, overnight!) by a grown man. My, perhaps prudish, little mind went into overdrive trying to work out why this was apparently acceptable in 1961. Nikki McWatters might believe that the reason is clear – Mellor was a predatory teenage girl.
Only a teacher, Miss Stubbs, in the film suggests the scenario might be a little iffy to Mulligan's Mellor, but her intervention comes too late. It is Jenny's desire to be treated like a grown-up that causes her to fall for the increasingly obvious lies of her older seducer. She is still herself enough to announce how underwhelmed she is on the loss of her virginity to him: “all that poetry and all those songs about something that lasts no time at all.”
In this film Mellor, and indeed in life Barber I suppose, was not predatory so much as dazzled. An Education can be summed up thus: teen girl gets bored, gets dazzled, mistakes a broken hymen for adulthood. Jenny Mellor rather thinks she might be scandalously grown-up, as she says to her former headmistress: “I suppose you think I'm a ruined woman.” “You're not a woman.”
On Friday in the HuffPost lifestyle blog McWatters was thinking about the spate of media coverage of teenage girls and older men this year. In light of the Savile stories, Megan Stammers and her 30 year old teacher and the case of Rochdale services failing a group of teenage girls, it seems fair to say we have a problem. “These men are animals. Right? Perverts with no moral sense at all. Right? Paedophiles. Right? The girls, innocent victims with no way of knowing that they were being taken advantage of. Right?”
But are we addressing the right problem wonders McWatters. Might McWatters go as far as to play devil's advocate (always a good way to acknowledge what you're about to announce is quite horrible – but you take no responsibility for it) here and, mining purely from her own experience as a teenage girl, “I know that I was fantasizing about sex from about the age of thirteen.” Fantasising and doing are very different things.
In this film Mellor, and indeed in life Barber I suppose, was not predatory so much as dazzled. An Education can be summed up thus: teen girl gets bored, gets dazzled, mistakes a broken hymen for adulthood. Jenny Mellor rather thinks she might be scandalously grown-up, as she says to her former headmistress: “I suppose you think I'm a ruined woman.” “You're not a woman.”
On Friday in the HuffPost lifestyle blog McWatters was thinking about the spate of media coverage of teenage girls and older men this year. In light of the Savile stories, Megan Stammers and her 30 year old teacher and the case of Rochdale services failing a group of teenage girls, it seems fair to say we have a problem. “These men are animals. Right? Perverts with no moral sense at all. Right? Paedophiles. Right? The girls, innocent victims with no way of knowing that they were being taken advantage of. Right?”
But are we addressing the right problem wonders McWatters. Might McWatters go as far as to play devil's advocate (always a good way to acknowledge what you're about to announce is quite horrible – but you take no responsibility for it) here and, mining purely from her own experience as a teenage girl, “I know that I was fantasizing about sex from about the age of thirteen.” Fantasising and doing are very different things.
| Perhaps we aren't asking the right questions. The fact that the age of consent varies rather wildly across the globe (it doesn't take a 16 year old to tell you a 13 year old is very different) is neither here nor there. It would probably be helpful to everyone if we threw the discussion of virginity out the window. The discussion topics are surely consent, coercion and confidence. | What is not fine is to associate a change in measurements with a change in availability, maturity or knowledge. |
I know at school from year 8 onwards some of my peers were being picked up at the school gates by boyfriends in cars, for an afternoon of alcohol, cigarettes and drugs. The myth of girls and boys maturing at different rates would be angrily brought up when I questioned the oddity of 21 year olds wishing to spend time with 13 year olds outside any kind of mentor scheme. I was simply not grown up or mature enough to grasp such a thing according to these girls. And no doubt they have few regrets, if any, of their after school adventures. Personally I am undecided if that is the point.
As McWatters notes “Some girls do develop a sexual identity before others and it doesn't always fit nicely with the current legislation that controls that area of her life.” And that's fine, nobody knows better than the flat chested teen girl, or the squeaky teen boy that we all develop at different rates. At whatever rate that is, it is the wrong rate. There is no Goldilocks rule to puberty; only too fast or too slow, never just right.
What is not fine is to associate a change in measurements with a change in availability, maturity or knowledge. Which is why I am so very uncomfortable with this assertion by McWatters: “There is a world of difference between a paedophile who grooms and targets young children for sexual abuse and a young man who is seduced by a young girl with casual sex on her mind. And it is an important distinction to make; a shade of grey that needs to be understood.”
Because the idea of who is and who isn't the 'seducer' is important. The word in this context is synonymous with who is to blame. A man, a grown man might be attracted to a teenage girl, but he is not helpless before her. A grown man (or woman – I know but McWatters is dealing only in the realm of hetero teenage girls and therefore so will I, because I too was one once) is not on the list of vulnerable human beings. A teenage girl is. Considering in the Western world grown women rarely appear to be in control, how is a teenage girl ever supposed to know if she is truly in control?
Squeamish Kate
Related Posts
Sexing the Cherry
I'm a Teen! Ask me how
As McWatters notes “Some girls do develop a sexual identity before others and it doesn't always fit nicely with the current legislation that controls that area of her life.” And that's fine, nobody knows better than the flat chested teen girl, or the squeaky teen boy that we all develop at different rates. At whatever rate that is, it is the wrong rate. There is no Goldilocks rule to puberty; only too fast or too slow, never just right.
What is not fine is to associate a change in measurements with a change in availability, maturity or knowledge. Which is why I am so very uncomfortable with this assertion by McWatters: “There is a world of difference between a paedophile who grooms and targets young children for sexual abuse and a young man who is seduced by a young girl with casual sex on her mind. And it is an important distinction to make; a shade of grey that needs to be understood.”
Because the idea of who is and who isn't the 'seducer' is important. The word in this context is synonymous with who is to blame. A man, a grown man might be attracted to a teenage girl, but he is not helpless before her. A grown man (or woman – I know but McWatters is dealing only in the realm of hetero teenage girls and therefore so will I, because I too was one once) is not on the list of vulnerable human beings. A teenage girl is. Considering in the Western world grown women rarely appear to be in control, how is a teenage girl ever supposed to know if she is truly in control?
Squeamish Kate
Related Posts
Sexing the Cherry
I'm a Teen! Ask me how
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