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debra newell
In cotton candy seasons of popsicles and sand boxes,
little boys and girls play together, take baths together,
and bea>me friends, naturally. Like kittens and
puppies raised in the same basket, they are not yet
aware of the innate differences which will come bet
ween them for the rest of their lives.
School bells ring and children once allowed to run
free are taught to walk, to conform. Boys are given
footballs and baseballs and told to win, play hard and
tough, win.
Girls are dressed in confining frills that rip or soil if
they run or roll in the dirt. They are given dolls and tea
sets and taught to mother and play house, to engage in
quiet, retiring pastimes
These are the first programs fed into the tiny
humans. Antagonism grows because of the man-made
differences.
“Ugh! Girls are sissies! Let’s put a frog on her...”
“Boys are big and dumb!”
So the children segregate themselves and wage
unspoke wars.
With budding bosoms and acne, an initiation begins.
The two forces long encouraged in their separateness
are then expected to miraculously come together.
They’ve got to learn to like each other, for the changes
in their adolescent bodies are a sign that mating, anew
program, is to be fulfilled. Unfortunately, they don’t
even feel comfortable together.
Girls are given boxes of powder and tweezers, tools
of the trade they must now learn - catching the boys’
attention.
The boys, caught in their circle of peers, are allowed
no moments of indecision or doubt. They must appear
in control, always aloof, showing no signs of tenderness
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that unfortunate tug of war between sexes
or suffering. Any mistakes are met with ridicule.
Once the first barriers are broken, the tug-of-war
intensifies. Boys, told to “go out and sow some wild
oats,” are looking for a conquest. Girls, filled with
horror stories about what happens to girls who give in,
are struggling to remain pure, “marketable.”
The love-hate battle rages amid drippy love songs
and disapproving parents, the same ones who were so
delighted when little Tommy took little Alice to her
first recital, are doing their best to come between any
relationship of long standing.
Fathers rant about boyfriends who bring their
daughters home late and mothers find fault with girl
friends. They cannot accept that they are being
replaced, their children are becoming adults.
In the midst, the participants struggle with
diametrically opposed aims. Someone has to lose.
Caps and gowns and graduation come with the spring
and the new class adults pack up their dreams and go
away from home, parents, and supervision, to college,
where there is no one to call curfew or tell an unruly
date to go home. The only counsel comes from peers.
Suddenly, the rules, a comfort in their restriction,
are removed. Girls find the virginity they fought so
hard to preserve in the back seat of Jeff’s Camaro is a
liability rather than an asset. The girls who have
steady boyfriends have sex with them and the sweet
innocents are surrounded by a heady environment of
stories of ecstacy, gossip, and confidences. They are
excluded.
Boys, told by their peers that the free availability is
what to expect, are mg at all receptive to the sweet
innocent and they waste little time with them.
Filled with unreal expectations perpetrated in
romance stories and songs, the girls and boys venture
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into that which has so long been forbidden.
Once again, diametrically opposed aims conflict.
Boys, long encouraged in freedom, are hard put to
relinquish it. Girls, taught to seek homes and families,
fight equally hard for this aim. Boys’ wandering eyes
are called “variety.” A girl’s wandering eye or sexual
enjoyment brands her a slut. Both sexes accept these
narrow views which applied personally, make them
hate each other, much like the many other times their
differing aims made enimosity grow.
Only this time the stakes are higher. There is an
overwhelming need involved which makes grade school
segregation unbearable.
John Updike once wrote, “The trouble with this
decade is that there is just enough of the old morality to
torment us, but not enough to hold us in.”
In the fifties, the rules were clearly established and
everyone followed them. Along came the sixties and
the rules were abandoned. Now, we have all the fears
but none of the security of the fifties and although in
tellectually we are trying to live free and easy, we are
still, deep inside, hearing the warnings our mothers
gave us.
Sadly enough, with all the fighting the friendship that
was so warm and alive in the cotton candy season dies.
We’re all looking for a means of touching across the
separateness, bridging the aloneness. Humanity gave
us a means. First we can come in terms with some of
the diametrically opposed aims, and forget some of the
programs we have had running in our systems. If we
can become friends again, perhaps the love that
follows won’t be akin to hate.
Couldn’t we start over, become friends again first,
and then see what happens?
by Alan Kuykendall
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