Categories: Books, The Interview

Inside the dangerously empty lives of teenage girls

Impressing each other with sex, booze and Facebook

by Kate Fillion on Monday, May 3, 2010 11:00am - 200 Comments

Q: Why would successful girls do this?
A: Because they haven’t been living, they’ve been performing. The girls themselves tell you, “I cut myself because it’s real, it’s not fake.” It’s not a cry for help: most girls don’t want adults knowing they’re cutting, which is why they cut in places we won’t see, like high up on the inner thigh. And they don’t want to kill themselves. There’s research which is quite astonishing to many people: when girls cut themselves, they are getting a release of endogenous opiates—they’re actually getting high.

Q: You cite research showing that nearly one-quarter of American girls begin drinking before the age of 13. How does girls’ use of alcohol compare to boys’?
A: Forty years ago, in an affluent suburb, it would’ve been very unusual to find a girl abusing alcohol. Today, a girl is at least as likely as her brother to abuse alcohol. That’s unprecedented, a huge change from all previous eras of which we have any record. Boys’ use of alcohol has been pretty flat for decades, but girls’ use has increased and research shows that about 55 per cent of university students being treated for alcohol abuse are female. It appears that females metabolize alcohol differently than males, and as a result, a girl having four drinks is the same as a boy having five drinks, even if their height and weight is exactly the same. Alcohol seems to be more toxic for females, milligram for milligram, than for males.

Q: Why are girls suddenly drinking so much more?
A: I’m sure there are a lot of things going on, but one factor is that alcohol relieves anxiety, at least while you’re drinking, and we’ve got a lot more anxious girls. Another reason is that girls are hungry for an authentic sense of self, and some ﬁnd it in alcohol. This 14-year-old who gets drunk—that becomes, for her, a defining feature. She’s proud that other kids look up to her as the girl who knows how to get booze and who isn’t afraid to drink. It becomes part of her sense of self, and it’s real, it’s genuine, it’s not something she photoshopped.

Q: What are parents doing wrong?
A: Parents have this 1980s mindset that you should give your child autonomy and independence, let your children make their own mistakes. One father said to me, “I don’t think it’s any of my business what my daughter’s doing on her Facebook page.” That ’80s mindset is wildly inappropriate in the 21st century. Parents need to understand it’s a dangerous world these teenagers have created. The story of Phoebe Prince, the girl in Massachusetts who recently committed suicide after cyberbullying, is just one more particularly dramatic illustration that 15-year-olds are not adults, they’re not competent to police themselves, and that’s why they need adults to be engaged in their world.

Q: But many parents feel they just can’t do anything about their kids’ use of the Internet. Realistically, how do you regulate your daughter’s online life?
A: Set limits: “No more than 30 minutes on school nights.” Monitor: there’s software that allows you to know what your daughter’s doing online. And she should not have the computer in her bedroom, it has to be in a public space. She has to know that you know what she’s doing with her email, what kinds of pictures she’s sending and receiving on her cellphone, and her friends need to know that you are keeping tabs. At the very least, take away her cellphone from 10 at night until six in the morning. There are so many girls who take the cellphone to bed with them, and they’re getting a text at two in the morning: “Oh my God, Justin, your so-called boyfriend, was with another girl at the party tonight.” Now the girl is frantically texting back, she won’t be going to sleep anytime soon, so when she stumbles into school the next morning she will look like a girl with ADD, because sleep deprivation perfectly mimics attention deficit.

Q: That’s one thing if she’s 12. But what if she’s 16 and has had a cell and computer in her room for years?
A: I don’t have any easy tips for that situation. The major battles happen when you try to change rules that have been in place for years, which is why I advise parents to start as early as possible. A 16-year-old may well say, “I hate you, you’re totally ruining my life.” But your job as a parent is to keep your child safe, that’s number one. Your child’s anger is something you have to be willing to accept.

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Tags: facebook, Leonard Sax, Sex Public Education, Top

http://meltingdolls.com bunny mcintosh

How cruel is this world that fetishizes little girls and then acts annoyed when little girls try to figure out how to be sexy. Teenage girls aren't vapid- they're just desperately introspective and still trying to get to the bottom of their own sexuality, which is an important and incredibly difficult phase to go through.

To call this empty is trivializing a very big part of life. The evidence that girls go through this more brutally than boys may be true, but the arguments in this piece are anecdotal at best.
Kwadwo Adu

As an 18 year old young man I find it very insulting and disturbing that boys are being portrayed so one dimensionally. Sax makes it seem that young males aren't only shallow, but that we're too unintelligent and emotionally numb to care. Somehow young women have gained a level of emotional sensitivity that their counterparts keep at bay by eating entire pizza's, playing video games and watching porn.
While there are a large number of adolescent and teenage boys who are superficially content with their gaming abilities, social status, and body image defining their entire identity, I argue that there are still a significant amount of young males who are striving to define who they really are outside of all those facets. Boy's have just as much trouble trying to realize their identities as girls. If their are specific environments, issues, and situations in which girls are lacking control and a sense of self, then males should be facing equivalents in other aspects of their lives.
If this is an issue of dangerously empty lives teenage girls, then it's an issue of all dangerously empty teenagers period.
:)

I don't drink, smoke, party etc. I'm a teenager and I don't hate my dad at all, I love him. However, i'm more strict than both my parents combined. I am a minority in that sense.
zmizz

I saw this on the cover of MacLean's and was interested because. . .well, it's good for my job to know these things. After reading it, I'm not so sure.

The guy strikes me as a total alarmist douche who makes blanket statements based on information he hauls completely out of his a$$. "girls i've spoken with" =/= quantifiable data, asshole!

Helicopter parents eat this stereotypical crap up, pay his bills, and he laughs all the way to the bank. It reeks of Dr. Phil. The issue here shouldn't be teenage girls. it should be helicopter parents who would rather be their kid's "cool" friend than their parent. The ones who are more concerned with their child's "cool"ness and popularity and appearance when they are young, than whether or not their child is developing a realistic sense of self and self-esteem. Little girls don't buy their own age-inappropriate clothes, they don't buy their own cell phones, they don't buy their own computers. . .

But he doesn't take these parents to task because they are the very ones who will OMGZPANIC!!!111!! and buy his book.

It'll be interesting to see his next "research" paper. I'm guessing he'll go after babies next. Keep an eye out for Maclean's June 2011 issue: "Inside the Dangerously Sexualized World of Babies
mizz

I saw this on the cover of MacLean's and was interested because. . .well, it's good for my job to know these things. After reading it, I'm not so sure.

The guy strikes me as a total alarmist douche who makes blanket statements based on information he hauls completely out of his ass. "girls i've spoken with" =/= quantifiable data, asshole!

Helicopter parents eat this stereotypical shit up, pay his bills, and he laughs all the way to the bank. It reeks of Dr. Phil. The issue here shouldn't be teenage girls. it should be asshat helicopter parents who would rather be their kid's "cool" friend than their parent. The ones who are more concerned with their child's "cool"ness and popularity and appearance when they are young, than whether or not their child is developing a realistic sense of self and self-esteem. Little girls don't buy their own age-inappropriate clothes, they don't buy their own cell phones, they don't buy their own computers. . .

But he doesn't take these parents to task because they are the very ones who will OMGZPANIC!!!111!! and buy his book.

It'll be interesting to see his next "research" paper. I'm guessing he'll go after babies next. Keep an eye out for Maclean's June 2011 issue: "Inside the Dangerously Sexualized World of Babies
mike

Who cares! They look great in bikini's.

Stephen

Only if they workout a bit and not have such gross skinny, scrawny, stick figure bodies.

http://intensedebate.com/people/FSBT FSBT

Here's a more honest headline for this cover story (!): "Author Writes New Book About Girls' Self-Esteem" and the sub-heading, "We interview him!"
Stephen

Just curious; Is it not striking to anyone that this so-called gender expert so ludicrislously downplays and disagrees that male anxiety and depression is nothing to worry about—how truly worrying! A so-called gender expert!

Just look at the literature, he says, 1 in 4 girls binge drinking. Right, and how many boys binge drink, take drugs etc?

With all this focus on girls and their anxiety and depression, I have one extremely crucial item to bring up that is often not addressed as it should be. There is a very good reason why women so consistently show higher rates of depression, use of anti-depressants compared to men:

Suicide
Stephen

Boys overwhelmingly compared to girls kill themselves—often not making it to the point of, or seeing it as a viable option to, talk to someone about it, report it, or take drugs for it. They just kill themselves before they do. Adolescent boys kill themselves at 4 times the rate of girls—where’s the discussion over this? Would such a high rate of suicide not cause some academics like Sax to maybe stop and think that since they kill themselves at such a higher rate that they might be, oh, I don’t know, just a tad anxious, depressed, stressed etc? Where are the brains here? For every Phoebe Prince who kills herself there are four boys who kill themselves who face similar pressures stemming from their expectations as boys (only because they’re boys and no one cares about their health—women’s health is funded 13 times more than men’s health—they don’t get their pictures on magazines. It isn’t a story if just another boy kills himself, where’s the interest in that? It’s so commonplace it’s too boring a news item I suppose).
Stephen

Can you imagine if girls were killing themselves at the rate of boys and the outcry there would be (hell there’s a cover story on girls because they are just cutting themselves)? About the unfair pressures girls face during adolescence, the high stress, etc. Well, is this not to be considered when the reality is that this is what’s happening to boys? Higher rates of stress and depression correlate with higher rates of suicide. Any peer reviewed sociological/psychological/anthropological/medical journal will show you this, even though researchers directly asking boys how they feel may not.

Which brings me to an extremely important factor not being considered here: boys are trained like monkeys from the day they’re born to suppress admissions of all kinds of vulnerability (including depression, anxiety, etc). This TRAGIC socialization they are still forced to go through is going to be reflected when the surveys and such come around and merely ask them how they feel.
Stephen

I resent the tone of this guy Sax when he comes around to describing young males. I refuse to acknowledge someone as a “gender expert” when they give such an insulting and derisive summary of young men who are “goofballs” who eat a whole pizza supposedly without a second thought (well perhaps he eats a whole pizza because he feels too skinny, which is a body image issue for many boys), watch porn on the internet and so on. I hate to say it, but he sounds more like a stupid jerk than a gender expert. I also can’t abide by his hasty dismissal of boys’ anxiety: “Boy’s aren’t anxious” Answer: “No.” Aahhh, huh? Is it because, Dr. Sax, they just kill themselves before they get around to breaking through their programmed artificial toughness and invulnerability and actually admitting it?

Do you really think you will gauge an accurate picture of teenage boys just by asking them are they feeling anxious, depressed?
Stephen

Of course most are going to say they feel fine, because that’s exactly what they’re trained and programmed to do, and girls select for boys who appear stronger while the boys that do express their more tender emotions are ostracized as “wimps”, “wussies”, or “fags”. So called experts like Sax should know this and account for it somehow, someway. And yes, with all that in mind also keep in mind that boys are performing worse (at least in the humanities side of things), going to university less, dropping out of school more, more likely to be forced into situations of violence (ie, assaulted), face the same social pressures in different guises that girls face—and barely anyone is treating it seriously, which is yet only another indication of just how dire the situation is: a bad situation and no one cares. What? Boys will be boys? You got to be kidding me.

It is truly disheartening to see how unconscious a “gender expert” is to the true extent and depth of problems with boys and young men, not to mention how blind everyone here is to it as well.
Kasey

this is accurate IT IS NOT AN EXAGGERATION. as a 17 year old in a school of only 400 and a town of 26000 i see this more prevalent then ever. thre is businesss in my town known just for the fact that every kid working their has scars and cut on their arm and there are people even friends of mine that went from nobody to someone with 100 friends because they have began partying every weekend and not eating to save room for the alcohol. girls who have made bets to lose their virginity or take someone elses because being drunk and flirty makes you well known and having different people to hang out with and having 7 guys trying to get with you at a party iswhat matter most to people in my school. and as a senior i have seen the change in grade 8s from when i was in that age as there are some who proudly talk about the sex they had at a bush party on the weekend to me when i've met them only ten minutes ago. sex and drinking do raise social status and if the problems are this prevelant in a small town i can't imagine how obvious they are in big cities.
JAMES

C is butthurt because the Doctor hit home on every point, and she knows it. It bothers her that she's been so easily figured out – so easily unmasked as another photoshopped faker, like every other stupid teenage girl.
shroom

…I love how the world is increasingly revolving around females.

and to buddy before with the quote it goes like this;
"if a key opens many locks then it is a master key,
if i lock is oppened by many keys, its a shitty lock"
http://intensedebate.com/people/leonardissexist leonardissexist

Inside the dangerously empty lives of teenage girls
By. Leonard “sexist” Sax

I DO NOT agree with anything written in this article, first off, teenage girls lives are not “dangerously empty”. Everything that has been said in this article is extremly exaggerated and most is not true! He starts off the Q & A with giving stats that more than 1 in 5 girls “is cutting herself and/or burning herself with matches” these stats were made up, this is not realistic in anyway, I attend highschool and am 100% positve that those stats are wrong. A more realistic number would be 1 in 20. He continues to say that girls “corner” guys into oral sex, not true! If anything it is the other way around. He says that he interviews many boys to believe this is true…but realisticaly what boy would say it isnt true.
http://intensedebate.com/people/leonardissexist leonardissexist

Saying that girls are more concerned about their weight than guys is true but in what way is that dangerous, whats wrong with eating healthy and going on a run every once in a while. There are girls that do have anerexia problems but not in the way or the amount that he mentions. Maybe he should write another article about “Inside the dangerously empty lives of teenage boys” because this Q & A would be 10 pages long instead of 3, men have an obsession of working out, that is 100 times worse than girls, all they care about is working out, which also means there are taking some sort of suppliment to get them this buff.
http://intensedebate.com/people/leonardissexist leonardissexist

In the empty lives of teenage boys you could talk about their workout habits, there addiction to sex, their obsession to gaming, body image conflicts, immaturity and their own self esteem problems that are just as likely to be as bad as girls. Girls are into gossiping, guys are into gaming, its just the way it is, and the way its always been, but in no way is this “dangerous” its just natural. Sax is just sexist, because everyone out their has problems and there is and equal amout of boys as there is girls going through them, so for him to single out girls saying that they are dangerously empty is wrong, because everyone goes through problems. He talks about individuals that go through these problems mentioned and makes it seem as though it is ALL girls going through this (or a large amount of girls), when in fact they ALL don’t. Guys are going through problems too and they are likely not the same issues that girls are going through, maybe he could mention both sides and also mention some good things on girls. His stats are made up and he has eggagerated everything to make it seem like teenage girls are a lost cause which is wrong.
Leonard is an ASS
http://intensedebate.com/profiles/superficialreality superficialreality

I, unlike the majority of teens posting here, agree almost completely with Dr. Sax. I think this is because I have seen firsthand the cutting, binge drinking and anorexia teen girls are facing today. Perhaps the reason so many teens are denying this is because they refuse to see the truth about our generation.

As to all the comments regarding it being the parents' fault, I disagree to an extent. I knew a girl who had the nicest parents one could ever hope for, and she still cut herself. Cutting is a sign of depression, and depression cannot necessarily always be blamed on the people around you. However, it CAN be a factor, and this is why I condone 'harsh parenting'. A parent who chooses to yell at their child instead of talking to them and getting to the root of the problem should not be a parent in the first place.

Yes, this doctor is getting his research from numbers and statistics, but he is also interviewing teenage girls, and taking that into account. Teen girls today face tremendous pressure and stress, and we should not be so quick to dismiss his claims.
Stephen

Why would girls want to still be anorexic? With the increase in women's fitness and muscle magazines, website, products, and female celbrities sporting chiseled biceps and shoulders, more girls are working out their muscles than ever before, hardly wanting to looks skinny.

I think males need to become a little bit more selective than choosing the scrawnly, unattractive skinny girls with no shape or curve (whether more fatty or more muscular) to their bodies.

So chin up everyone! Anorexia is going to be a thing of the past as more women choose some muscle instead of some skin and bone
whatsoverthere

Glad that you wrote this article. I am a teacher who has shared this article with many others in the field. This is what the girls battle….in grade 7 and 8. I kid you not. I shared this article with a friend of mine who had just learned that the daughter whom she thought had great self esteem, star athlete (best year yet this year) had been cutting herself. Over Christmas holidays I managed to read "The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of entitlement," by Jean Twenge who is quoted in this article. That book really helped me understand the kids I teach and the parents in todays culture who continue to agree with allowing grade 2 students unsupervised access to the Internet and absolutely no parent feedback to help them re-frame what they see so that they do not become the next casualties in our thoughtless media. Girls signing up with professional photographers for boudoir shots for facebook…and parents allowing them. It's ridiculous. I'd rather see them enjoy being a girl rather than a degraded version of womanhood. Looking forward to more insights from these authors.
ckj

Watch the movie Mean Girls. It`s just a movie, but it comes pretty close to the reality of girls in today`s society.
Leanna

The next time Maclean's publishes an article like this (and this is one of many before it) I would like to see statistics, facts, and research that has been proven across the board.

The generalizations made in this article are incrediblely exaggerated and nothing short of embarrassing for the man interviewed and the author. Any person that has spent a good deal of time around teenagers today will tell you that yes, although all of this does happen, it happens to a select few individuals who struggle with low self esteem, stress, anixety, and possiblely a mental disorders.

As for it just happening with teenage girls, that is nothing short of a complete farce. Teenage boys binge drink, cut, have low self esteem, and sleep around as well- however they tend to be less willing to share their feelings.