On of the most enduring stereotypes about young women is that of the so-called Bad Girl. Based purely on sex - or the suggestion of sex - a teenage girl can ruin her reputation while conversely, for identical, a teenage boy can cement his. It is a troubling double standard that permeates our society and can result in everything from shunning to, in its most dire circumstance, death.

Just because you dare to do it, or even worse perhaps, dare to like it.

In very nearly every teenage heart there beats a desire to fit in. And in many others there beats a wish to remain invisible, or to dominate, or to win or hurt those who have hurt you. All those beating hearts, all wanting so many things, all so certain they will die without them. And in the middle of it all is the ever present reminder of what they can not have, should not do, are forbidden. From staying up to staying out to sleeping over there are so many rules to so many games with so many standards. Sex is the simplest part of these many equations, and conversely the most complicated. The easy answer is every boy wants it and every girl shouldn't. But we all know what a big lie that is, even when we judge (involuntarily or otherwise) the girls who do.

Nothing is cut and dried about sex, never has been, never will be. But that doesn't stop us all from trying to simplify it. This month the panel discusses just what good and bad have to do with sex and the teenage girl, why we persist in labeling girls so much more harshly than boys and books that help readers navigate these ever present and always turbulent teen waters.

Neesha Meminger: "Many years ago, when I was young and single and carousing the streets with wilder folks than I, a dear friend dragged me to the Strand Bookstore in New York City. She dove into the shelves for several minutes, then triumphantly emerged with a striking hardcover: Woman: An Intimate Geography, by Natalie Angier. I've never been all that big on reading non-fiction for fun, and I had never before then read a book of science writing. But the moment I picked up this book, I swear I could NOT put it down. I took it into the bathroom with me. Even at work.

Ms. Angier is a scientist and writes in clear, fresh, absorbing prose. Her book is a series of case studies of both human and animal subjects, on the topic of female sexuality. What's stunningly clear as you read the book is that humans have been the only species to stifle female sexuality throughout the ages--in the myriad ways we have. From confining the body by shoving it into clothing items not designed for actual, life-sized females, to shaming women for expressing natural sexual urges, to publicly humiliating women (or worse, putting them to death) for adultery while their husbands openly took lovers, we--as a human race--have suppressed female sexuality beyond recognition. And I mean that literally. Most women wouldn't recognize our own natural, unfettered sexuality if we sat on it.

The second book this question brings to mind is Audre Lorde's Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power. I read this one before Angier's, and then again after. Lorde dares us to look at the erotic as a powerful force to be channeled, not for purposes of destruction, but for *creation*--as it is meant to be. She suggests that female sexuality has been bound, both literally and figuratively, out of a patriarchal need to control and harness this power. It's an honest and powerful book full of fascinating, insightful essays. I highly recommend it for anyone who is interested in this topic.

Now that my carousing days are behind me and I have two girls, my partner and I have taken great pains to raise them with a sense of curiosity, wonder and delight around their sexuality and their changing bodies. They have a level of comfort with all their natural bodily functions that I did not have as a young girl. They take up space loosely, freely, without shrinking, hunching, or cringing. Then I watch them absorb and process the messages they receive at school -- about what is appropriate for girls and what is okay for boys. About what a young, unmarried woman's role is in the world and what a young, unmarried man's rights are. They listen to songs like "All the Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)", and hear about Rihanna and Chris Brown, and watch Disney movies with pining princesses waiting for princes to wake them up. And already, they are figuring out what it means to be desired by males, what kinds of women are considered attractive, and what the consequences are of falling somewhere outside of those clearly defined and culturally enforced boundaries.

For so long, women have been taught to ignore our sexuality, confine it, avoid it, tame it, punish it, sell it, barter with it, emphasize it, and so on. Simply acknowledging and recognizing our sexuality, without judgment, without interference, and without fear--as a larger life force that flows through us, connecting us to all of Nature and all that came before us...that is rarely offered as an option for young girls. In ANY culture."

Sara Ryan: "One of the many subplots in Tales of the Madman Underground by John Barnes (a book I love unreservedly, btw), which I won't describe in detail because it happens fairly far into the novel, concerns a girl who's caught in bed with a guy who's not her boyfriend.

Until two female friends of the girl in question raise the issue, it doesn't occur to the protagonist that for the girl, the incident has huge potential to be reputation-ruining. Or rather, reputation-creating, in the negative sense.

The protagonist, Karl, is in many ways a great guy -- very smart, funny, and even fairly sensitive. But the problem that could consign a good friend to Slut Hell for the rest of high school? It has to be explained to him that it's a problem. Karl is initially -- and realistically -- oblivious because it doesn't immediately affect him. His privilege as a guy protects him.

In Jumping Off Swings by Jo Knowles, Ellie already has a reputation when the book begins, and she knows it. She sees the guys laughing and smelling Josh's hand after she and Josh have sex at a party. She knows what they say about her. And yet, she keeps hoping:

"I can't. I can't explain. I just…when I'm with them, I feel…like they care about me. I feel special. I feel like they want me. Not just my body but me. Like they could love me. But…I'm always wrong. No one wants me. No one will ever love me."

Ellie -- also realistically -- wants someone to care about her, but thinks her body is the only part of her a guy would want.

So how can writers both acknowledge the continuing existence of the stud/slut double standard and help to undermine it? I think one answer is deceptively simple: through characters. Characters like Caleb's mom in Jumping Off Swings, who casually asks questions like "Since when does having sex make someone less special?" And like the Madmen of the Madman Underground, whose own lives are complex and difficult enough that they're not quick to judge or condemn.

I said "deceptively" simple, because of course the danger for any writer in trying to express strongly-held beliefs (such as the one that there should not be a sexual double standard) through the actions of characters is to suddenly find yourself wielding a Giant Didactic Hammer. Knowles and Barnes avoid the hammer because their characters are three-dimensional; the sexual double standard exists in their characters' worlds, but some of them figure out how to see beyond it."

Beth Kephart: "Another very interesting, very pointed question from you—an issue that I've been struggling with as I finish (ten years later!) the last pages of a novel that is about, in part, a pregnant teen who is sent to Spain to live out the final months of her pregnancy. I've never, in all of this time, thought of my character as bad—only as endangered, forced to make a decision that, no matter what, will change her life and her perception of herself. Her mother sees her as "bad." Her mother is worried that Society will. But as I write, I see my character as wounded and unlucky and suddenly rushed toward adulthood.

That, then, is how I see this issue: that there is so much more at stake for the teen girl having sex than the teen guy. Perhaps our rush to label these sexually active teens "bad" is in some ways catalyzed by a societal fear, for them, of the consequences. That said, I think Sara Zarr's brave and important Story of a Girl is a must read on the labeling legacy, a book that drives home the consequences of that kind of cruelty."

Laurel Snyder: "Okay, so as a middle grade author I know less about the current climate for sex/girls/morality, but two books immediately spring to mind.

The first is Pure, by Terra Mcvoy (who is--full disclosure-- a friend of mine, and awesome, btw). I think it's an interesting book, because while it's about friends who take a vow of celibacy together, and so approach sex as initially 'bad," the story follows a character who is herself debating these issues-- a kind of watcher, who sees her friends with extreme positions on the issue, as they have sex (or don't).

As a Jew and an unapologetic "bad" girl myself, who never thought carefully about sex like this when I was young, it was a strange book for me to read. But I really appreciated that Terra focused on the middle rather than not the extremes. On a character who wasn't defending a position. I liked the blurry lines, and that it was attached to religion, but in a voice I could relate to. It is a fence-sitting book, with regards to both sex and faith, which I found surprising!

The other book that comes to mind is Jandy Nelson's The Sky is Everywhere, which I just read. With this one I was sucked in and catapulted back to high school, to the kid I was back then. It reminded me that sex is SO EXCITING for young people. This big frontier. Sex is not bad in this book. It is at once the most thrilling experience in the world, also intimidating. Not to mention a way that people use each other in unhealthy ways, to deal with body image, loss, grief, etc. But it's all addressed and carefully thought out."

Lorie Ann Grover: "Colleen, I think the sexual standard is evidence that our society was built by a people whose beliefs included sexual abstinence outside of marriage. We live in a culture deeply rooted in single partners.

Yet, why the double standard for blame? Why is the girl labeled the offender? Why has she always been? Does the female blame scenario disempower women sexually? Shouldn’t teen girls have the right to choose their sexual stance according to their own convictions and held system of beliefs? Yet, between the blame and the media’s degradation of females, can we empower our girls?

The American Academy of Pediatrics claims that "U.S. teens rank the media second only to school sex education programs as a leading source of information about sex." Lynn Ponton, a psychiatry professor says, "The media and the Internet continually feed teenage boys the idea that girls are sexual objects at their disposal." Media activist Jean Kilbourne claims sex is trivialized in the media. ”We are offered a pseudo-sexuality that makes it far more difficult to discover our own unique and authentic sexuality."

Maybe in the midst of this chaos, teens are beginning to see truth. Here is a quote on the double standard by "Rebecca" published by The Boston Magazine.

"Once a girl does it with more than one guy, she's a 'ho,'" she says, using popular-culture shorthand for whore. "But these days, when you think about it, everyone is a ho. Because if a dude is messing around, he's considered a player and he gets all kinds of high-fives. But if a girl plays, then she's a ho. But the truth is, everybody's having casual sex and pretty much everybody's doing it with multiple partners. So, really, everybody is a ho."

Exaggerated, but point taken. All teens aren’t sexually active, nor are all teens buying into the media’s portrayal of sex. Setting aside the blame game and its effect of weakening a societal group, let’s hope today’s teen girls find power to make life choices suited to their beliefs for their own health."

Zetta Elliott: "I think it’s understood that a girl who’s in control of her own sexuality is much more difficult to control. So adults—and even other teens—use shame as a way of keeping girls under control. I so admired Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders who tried to have masturbation taught in sex education classes—yet she was figured as some kind of weirdo, as if teaching kids about self-pleasure was obscene, even worse than teaching them about intercourse. So many girls learn early on that sex is about pleasing your partner, and the emphasis on virginity leads even young girls to engage in oral sex and other practices for which they are not ready. I think girls understand early on that sex is about power, but they don’t know how to exist as a sexual being so that they are empowered and not used, abused, or shamed.

As for books, I can’t really think of any I’ve read recently that handled teen sexuality well. I was surprised to see in Tyrell a young man willing to perform oral sex on his girlfriend—but it was an effort to persuade her to “go all the way” with him. She regularly performed oral sex on him, and he was getting hand jobs from another girl at the same time, but there wasn’t a lot of emotional intimacy to accompany this sexual activity. I wish more teens understood that sex can be enhanced by emotional closeness, security, trust, affection, tenderness, etc. My favorite sex scene is probably the first time Tish and Fonny have sex in James Baldwin’s YA novel, If Beale Street Could Talk. "