"Sixteen Candles" inspires a reflection

Today is one of the darkest days in sports:  baseball is on the all-star break; there is no football, basketball (NBA or WNBA), or hockey.  The Tour de France is on a rest day.  The Gold Cup of soccer is taking a day off.   No golf.  No major track meets.  No auto racing. This is,as far as I can tell, the single worst day of 2005 to be a sports fan.  Fortunately, I have all my college football preview magazines with which to amuse myself!

Anyhow...

My fiancee and I watched Sixteen Candles on television last night.  It's one of those films ("Breakfast Club" and "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" are others) that helped define what it meant to be a high school student in the early-to-mid-1980s.    I had a fleeting crush on Molly Ringwald, as did half the boys I knew.  (I ought to use Google to find out what has become of her).

The film seems dated to me now; certain themes (ranging from racism to date rape) would be nearly impossible to portray in the same way in 2005.  That's probably a good thing, overall.  But I found myself shifting uncomfortably during the scenes with actors Anthony Michael Hall and John Cusack (long before the latter was a major star.)  The two portray "geeky freshmen" obsessed with sex; last night for whatever reason, their depiction of fourteen and fifteen year-old nerds really resonated with me.

This will no doubt come as no surprise to any regular or occasional readers of this blog, but I was a very nerdy high school boy! (Click the link for an embarrassing photo.)  My clothes came from Sears (Tuffskins jeans, of course); I was nearsighted, slightly overweight, shaggy-haired and nonathletic.  Mind you, I didn't have the miserable high school experience that so many self-proclaimed "geeks" seem to have had.  I had a small circle of friends who shared my interests in books, music, and politics.  (There were two kinds of brainy, nerdy kids in my school: the ones whose primary interest was in math and science, and the ones who were drawn to English Lit, drama, and government.  I was definitely in the latter group.  I'm not sure if we were any less nerdy merely because we carried around copies of the Federalist Papers rather than a slide rule.)  I became friends with many teachers, and was twice president of our little chapter of the very-nerdy Model UN.  (Junior year, we were Zaire; senior year, we were Peru at the state Model UN convention in Berkeley.)  But though I can say with all honesty that I enjoyed high school, it was not without its humiliations and disappointments.   And last night, for whatever reason, many of those unpleasant memories came back to me as I watched the film with my beloved.  I'm not sure why these memories are coming up now, though it is possible that my 20th high school reunion in October has something to do with it! 

My fiancee and I talked a bit last night about our very different high school experiences.  I always protect her privacy on this blog, but I will say that she and I did not travel in the same sort of high school circles.   She was a popular girl in high school; she was drill team captain and an accomplished club soccer player.  She was -- and of course I'm biased -- gorgeous as a teenager (and still is).   Before last night, we'd never spent much time talking about what sort of  cliques we belonged to in high school, and it was an enlightening conversation.

When I was in my late twenties, I went through a brief and rather nasty period where I quite consciously thought of myself as getting "revenge" for what had happened to me in high school.   When I was 29, I was in a brief relationship with a gal simply because she was a dead ringer for the most popular girl in my high school, a girl on whom I had had a mad crush but who had never given me the time of day.  I confess that nine years ago, I was quite a jerk.  I dated a former prom queen largely because she had been just that; I was consciously living out a fantasy from my adolescence, and this twenty-somethin' gal was more or less a victim of that fantasy.  We broke up after a few intense weeks, and I'm pleased to say that years later, I was able to make amends to her for having intentionally "used" her.  To my surprise, when I told her about this, she laughed and laughed and said, "Hugo, after the way I behaved in high school, I probably had it coming!" 

Obviously, I'm well past the stage where I feel the need to prove that I'm not the chubby, awkward "nerd" that I was nearly a quarter-century ago.  But it hit me last night that so many of the young folks with whom I work at All Saints are going through the same sorts of insecurities that I went through.  Before I went to sleep, I brought into my mind about two dozen faces from my youth group: boys and girls; frosh and sophs, junior and seniors.  Some of "my kids" are, from what I can tell, very popular.  Others are on the fringes of high school life.  I began to wonder, and still am wondering, if I do a good-enough job paying attention to those kids who are more "nerdy", or more alienated.  I try very hard to spend an equal amount of time with each kid in the group each week (a daunting task sometimes).  But I wonder if my own life experiences affect how I interact with the seemingly "cool" and "uncool" kids.

I remember one night a few years ago when I was first leading a discussion on sex,  that the conversation quickly became dominated by a small group of older, popular teens.   Without always labeling themselves as such, these were the "experienced" kids.   I had opened up the room to open discussion about feelings and experiences, not realizing that the most sexually precocious kids in the room would quickly take over.   Too late, I noticed that many of the younger kids, as well as the less outgoing and popular ones, were dead silent.  A couple of animated, talkative senior girls had hijacked the conversation -- and I had allowed it to happen.  Someone overhearing what we talked about in the lounge that night might well have assumed that all of our kids were sexually experienced and eager to share about it!   I forgot that in that room, there were as many teens who had "never been kissed" as there were teens who had already had sex.    A week later, during a follow-up discussion, I made a gentle and oblique apology to everyone for allowing so many of our young people to be left out.

Now, I'm not saying that it's accurate to describe high school as a place where "popular=sexually active."  There are plenty of exceptions; some popular and attractive kids are proud virgins; some kids who are on the margins of high school society are quite experienced.  But I have noticed that my teens perceive that equation to be real, just as teens in my era (and in "Sixteen Candles") did as well.  For my generation of high school boys, losing one's virginity before graduation was seen as the Holy Grail that would guarantee us admission into a "cool" clique of those who had "done it."  There was no more effective way to disprove one's geekiness than to find a girl willing to have sex with you!  The homosocial desire for approval and acceptance was as much a driving force towards premature sexual activity as biological lust. For too many kids, perhaps boys in particular, the "popular=sexually active" equation is an unquestioned truth in secular high schools.

It took me many years (more than a decade, frankly) to come to terms with the humiliations and disappointments I experienced in high school.  Indeed, one of the reasons I wanted to work with high school youth was that I knew first-hand how unhappy a time it can be in the lives of American teens.  But I realize that I still have work to do. I must be vigilant about not giving more attention to the cool and the popular kids than to the awkward ones.  It's a genuine effort sometimes to treat all kids the same; even youth group leaders pushing forty can be affected by subconscious messages that suggest that the pretty, the handsome, the athletic,and the articulate are more deserving of time and attention.  I know I do a pretty good job of dividing that attention equally, but there is still more I can do, and I resolve to do it next year.

Comments

[ScottM]

I'm surprised that the opposite problem didn't crop up-- that you'd pay more attention to "people like you", the nerdy kind. Is it possible you're overcompensating the other way?

On the greater subject, yeah, there's quite a bit of esteem reserved for guys who have "made it". (Only guys, of course.) Ironically, friends considered me "not quite adult" through my twenties... despite joking that I was more responsible that my father (or anyone else they knew, etc.)

Having "made it", I wonder why they felt the experience so crucial to adulthood. I suspect it's because of other factors that coincide in time, not that experience alone.

[Stephanie]

Well, I did like Sixteen Candles as a kid but the Long Duck Dong scenes always rubbed me the wrong way. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I'm part Asian and the stereotypes just infuriate me. I also hated the fact that those two guys conspired to trick the popular girl into sleeping with the nerdly one. Date rape? Yep.

I guess I was a bit more experienced as a kid so I was quickly labeled "slut" in high school. It would have been difficult for me to have discussed such issues in a room full of my peers at that age ... so, maybe on the bright side, it's nice to see that these more experienced girls aren't being ridiculed out of the room.

[Hugo]

That's where it's so hard, Stephanie and Scott; striking a balance so that neither those who have had the chance (or made the choice) to experiment, nor those who have not had the chance (or who have turned down the chance) feel shamed or excluded.

[Jeff]

The film seems dated to me now; certain themes (ranging from racism to date rape) would be nearly impossible to portray in the same way in 2005. That's probably a good thing, overall.

It is a shame that the film had scenes like Jake "giving" his girlfriend to Ted, or characters like Gedde Watanabe's "Long Duk Dong" in it in the first place, as they really mar the movie. (I feel much the same way about Breakfast at Tiffany's.) But it is good that we generally recognize that that's no longer acceptable.

For my generation of high school boys, losing one's virginity before graduation was seen as the Holy Grail that would guarantee us admission into a "cool" clique of those who had "done it." There was no more effective way to disprove one's geekiness than to find a girl willing to have sex with you! The homosocial desire for approval and acceptance was as much a driving force towards premature sexual activity as biological lust.

To be honest, I didn't see it quite like that. There was, of course, a big deal about who had "done it" and who hadn't (which lasted until freshman year of college, at which point drug use replaced sex as the barometer of "experience"), but American Pie aside, dating was more the indicator of popularity than sex. (The unwritten logic being, I presume, that dating involved an ongoing public acknowledgement of one's worth that couldn't be faked, whereas anyone could lie about a sexual experience (or "get lucky" once). Dating still had that homosocial element, though - I definitely remember ignoring the "people like me" in favor of chasing after the homecoming queen, because dating another loner wouldn't get me invited to parties and would only prove that I wasn't able to date somebody more popular.

There's also quite a bit of male privilege behind this phenomenon - we were told that if we liked someone enough, and were persistent enough, and weren't too horrible a person, then anyone we liked would of course want to date us. Dating someone who wasn't at the pinnacle of teenage popularity was seen as "settling" and acknowledging that we weren't good enough to date anyone more popular.

[Miriam]

Hugo, I don't think that it's "your generation" at all--my father, who went to high school in the mid-50s, tells me that the atmosphere in the boys' locker room was exactly the same.

[Hugo]

You may be right, Miriam; sometimes, I wonder if the cultural changes since the 1980s aren't at least as significant as the ones from the 50s to the 80s.

[Anne]

Well, count me among the "geeky, unpopular kids" from high school. Part of the problem may have been age (I was as much as two years younger than most of my classmates) but part of it was simply being painfully shy.

Mostly I'm posting to ask you to be sure and not ignore those of us who are younger, or simply more emotionally immature, regardless of calendar age. We're faced with the same "peer pressure" but can be even less equipped to handle it than the "average" student.

I continue to admire your courage and honesty in dealing with these youngsters. They're lucky to have a safe place to discuss such topics.

[Steve]

Great post, Hugo.

Molly Ringwald is back acting again - she was recently in a show in London's West End, which i really wanted to see, though as I too had a major crush on her as a teenager (her, and Mary Stewart Masterson in Some King Of Wonderful, who has also been in the West End of late), I thought it was dredge up memories probably best left buried... :)

[Emily H.]

I think you're right about the homosocial aspect... I experienced a definite mix of "Hm, weird..." and "Aaaagh! I'm going to die a virgin!" when I became the last virgin in my group of friends from high school--which certainly had more to do with the experience differential between my friends and me, than actually wanting to have sex.

[Lynn Gazis-Sax]

I had a few friends in high school who were sexually experienced, but as far as I could tell, most of the girls I knew were virgins, and I certainly felt that I was expected to still be a virgin. I was surprised, my senior year, when a friend told me that half of all girls graduating high school were no longer seniors; I would have guessed, from the talk in my own crowd, that the percentage would have been a lot lower. (FWIW, the time was the seventies, and the crowd was mainly the most studious girls.)

[Hugo]

Lynn, do you mean "a friend told me that half of all girls graduating high school were no longer VIRGINS"? Or do you mean seniors?

[bmmg39]

"My fiancee and I watched Sixteen Candles on television last night. It's one of those films ("Breakfast Club" and "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" are others) that helped define what it meant to be a high school student in the early-to-mid-1980s."

Excuse me for a minute...

John Hughes, burn in hell! BURN IN HELL!

[ahem] Sorry. I had to get that out.

Anyway, God/cosmos/Allah/the Fates help us all if any of these 80s movies represent "what it meant to be a high school student" in that or any other era. I remember being on bus trips and being subjected to many of those pieces of crap, and I remember having nothing but antipathy for the teenage characters. My idea of an 80s movie is AMADEUS or GANDHI.

[Hugo]

Um, bmmg? Where are the high school students in the films you cite? I'm not saying that Hughes' films are better works of art than Amadeus or Gandhi, simply that for millions of American high school students, they resonated with our doubts and fears and hopes in a powerful way.

[bmmg39]

"I think you're right about the homosocial aspect... I experienced a definite mix of "Hm, weird..." and "Aaaagh! I'm going to die a virgin!" when I became the last virgin in my group of friends from high school--which certainly had more to do with the experience differential between my friends and me, than actually wanting to have sex."

This is what I don't get. Not only was I (and still am) a virgin when I was in high school, but I don't remember any conversations among my friends about who had "done it" and who hadn't. I can't recall any of the other guys (nor my female friends) mentioning this stuff, which is not to say none of them were S/A, for all I know. But it wasn't discussed around me at all.

[Mr. Bad]

Hugo, I think that "softdog" at Amanda's site has you most accurately pegged:

(Referring to Hugo's self-indulgent tale of conquest)"WHAT LIKELY HAPPENED: Guy dates hot girl. At some point, he thinks (or boasts) she's the type he wanted in high school. Then unconscious past insecurities and assumptions about girls "like that" come up. Guy acts like asshole, perhaps gets dumped for it. He feels guilty and thinks about it enough to gain insight: he's a jerk in an adult interactin due IN PART to immature mindset lingering from high school at age 29. This is humilating, so it is transformed into a narrative of control and redemption - a knowing act of evening the score which is later justified by the helpless pawn in the game."

This also fits with your admitted past history of exploiting your female students for sex.

Damn Hugoboy, s/he's got your number!

[Aegis]

I haven't seen the movie, but thanks for sharing your experience, Hugo. Unlike Mr. Bad, I don't see your post as a self-indulgent tale of conquest, or if it is, I don't see anything wrong with that. I think it is difficult enough for guys to talk about their experiences with sexuality/romance without worry about being seen as geek/nerd on one hand, or a creep/jerk/womanizer on the other.

Like bmmg39, I didn't really hear talk about losing virginity that much in highschool. Though that doesn't mean there wasn't pressure, or that it wasn't being talked about at all. I was one of the artsy kids, so virginity might have been a bigger deal in more popular circles.

I was also painfully shy, up until senior year when I got fed up and learned social skills from scratch. Up until then, I had never been on a date or kissed a girl (only gotten various forms of "you're so sweet, but I don't see you that way"), so I was pretty unhappy. I wonder how much of this was homosocial pressure, how much of it was cultural pressure, and how much of it was my personal unhappiness about not having experienced something I wanted to experience, or simply being lonely. Anyway, once I learned social skills, I suddenly stopped being invisible to women, and I had my first relationship with a woman two years older than me who went to a nearby art college.

At university, which I have just finished freshman year of, virginity became a slightly bigger deal. It wasn't like you were automatically uncool if you were a virgin, or cool if you weren't, but there would often be great late night conversations where people would talk about life, sex, relationships, etc... people who were less sexually experienced would end up left out of those conversations, or they would never gravitate towards them.

I'm definitely glad that I didn't come to university a virgin. If I had, it would have been a lot more difficult to get used to the environment here. It was difficult enough for me to get used to the drinking and partying at first. If I wasn't a virgin, I would probably have felt a lot more pressure to go to parties, drink, and try to hook up.

[Michael]

I thought Hugos story about “revenge” was indicative of another aspect of the High School pecking order that most of us went through, but hasn’t been discussed much. And that is how much is affects us later in our life. How much it affects our relationships with our partners and prospective partners.

That time in our lives, adolescence, it such a sensitive time. Things like cruelty and rejection impact those kids in such a powerful way. This is a time in kids lives where their individual attitudes about self esteem, gender relationships, and homosocial relationships develop.

Negative experiences affect self esteem and personal relationships for the rest of their lives. They foster misogyny and misandry and other antisocial behavior. It can in turn make us cruel and make that cruelty easy to justify to ourselves. It’s a vicious cycle.

Briefly, after Columbine, there was some interest by school administrators to more actively fight the bullying and intimidation that is common on high school campuses, but I don’t think much became of it. And to be honest, other than talking to your kids, what can you do, as parents, to fight it?

I think you are on the right track in discussing the negative aspects of cruelty and bullying with your group.

[Stephen]

Mr. Bad:

We often focus so intently on the perceived character flaws in others in an effort to avoid any serious self-reflection. So the adage, "We hate most in others what is most true of ourselves." Your posts are consistently unkind almost gleeful at how really schmucky Hugo is. You may be right. Nevertheless, none of us would stand up under the scruity that he allows in posting. Worst case motives would ascribe to him a masturbatory effort at self-disclosure that passes as virtue these days. Best case scenario is that this process is Redemptive for him. Regardless, he has more balls and decency than you -- you would do well to learn from him.

Your points on most topic are lost in your barely contained vitrol which leads me to conclude that your efforts at debate are onanistic at best. Too bad you can't get out of the way of your points.

Take a deep breath and practice the virtue of grace. You may disagree with Hugo on particulars but you can certainly learn from him on approach.

Stephen

[Cynical Mom]

I never felt a pressing need to have sex for the purposes of having sex in high school, but my best friend in high school went out and lost her virginity around age 16 just to "get it over with". She found a male friend who was willing, hooked up with him for a couple of hours one night, and felt much better as a result. (side note: I wonder how that conversation started? Would have been interesting to be a fly on the wall)

At the time, I was shocked and I think a little grossed out - I remember that I was a bit of a prude at the time (one of those "I'm going to wait until I'm married to have sex, because I bet sleeping together is so fulfilling that I'd be able to wait anyway" because at the time there was no chance I was going to have sex anyway). But I can imagine that so many guys we knew then felt the same way.

I remember my own "revenge" for being the hot chick's fat friend who guys would only get to know so that they could talk to her friend... later in high school I somehow got to know (online, which was rare at the time) the most gorgeous kid I had ever known, a year older. He was also incredibly shallow and vapid, worked out two hours a day to keep his figure, etc etc. And for some reason he kept leading me on and indicating he was interested in me, and like a little fish I stayed on that hook for a few months basking in the glow of his beauty whenever he was near me. To this day I still get a twinge of "wow, a hot guy liked me" when I think of him even though I now assume it was more of a game to him. How weird.

As it ends up, I married a guy who was, like me, a shy geek in high school, but he later came into his own. The first time I met him in person at a party I surreptitiously took pictures of him because I thought he was so stinkin' adorable. It blew my mind that he made the next move.

These days, I actually have self esteem :-) But it's fun to romp through the past.