Maggie Franke

Communications - Media Studies

Book Report Number Two: American Girls
Tuesday, December 5, 2017
Classmate Proofreader: Mara Hockerman
Proofreader signature: __________________________

Social Media and Spice and Everything Not Nice

A riveting book for any American teenage girl to read, American Girls: Social Media and

the Secret Lives of Teenagers opened my eyes to the reality of growing up in the era of social

media. Nancy Jo Sales organized her book based upon the age of teen she followed when writing

that portion of her book, and this revealed how quickly American girls “grow up.” The modern

movement of feminism is revealed in this book to have increased the sexualization of the female

body and remove the humanity of her existence. Sales divides her book into seven different

chapters which each explore the lives of girls from the ages of thirteen through nineteen. As I

read each chapter, I reflected upon my experiences when I was that age.

The first chapter described the stories of some thirteen-year-old girls living in Upper

Montclair, New Jersey. This story entailed the “nude dealing” that occurred in their area. Middle

school boys would get nudes from middle school girls in order to get liquor from high school

boys. Reading this story deeply troubled me, but it did not surprise me all that much. At my

middle school there were pretty, popular girls who hooked up with boys whenever they wanted,

and the entire school was so intrigued by their sexual activity. What is confusing to me is that

middle school girls are still developing physically, and most of them barely even have breasts

yet. I was called “too traditional” or “aww you’re so cute and innocent” in middle school

because of my internal disconnect with this hyper-sexualized culture so early on in my life. On

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page 47, a girl named Maggie told Sales, “A lot of people on social media, like, Oh my God,

she’s so flat, if she doesn’t have boobs.” For obvious reasons, this comment stood out to me

because people have told me this nearly my entire life, but when I was thirteen it did not really

matter. I did not wear a “real bra” until I was a freshman in high school because there would just

be nothing to fill one. To think that thirteen-year-old girls are expected to have big boobs, hips,

and a sexy ass and to freely offer all of those up to her male peers for their own sexual enjoyment

is heartbreaking. This chapter sent all these thoughts whirling through my head, and, just like

that, the American girl was another year older.

At age fourteen, Sales described the truth about makeup tutorials and revealed a major

truth about modern feminism. Although the makeup tutorial analysis was intriguing, I did not

connect with that chapter as much. I wear mascara most days, but besides that, I do not wear

much makeup. As many of my peers have told me and continue to tell me, “your eyelids are not

a good canvas for eyeliner… your eyebrows are too pale for makeup… your hair is too thin for

that Youtube style.” I ignore those beauty therapy videos because they just emphasize my own

insecurities. Sales wrote about beauty guru Michelle Phan, and Phan said that she is not a

feminist because, “I love the idea that women should be celebrated, but I also believe that men

should be, too.” At first, this comment made me very angry because that is not what feminism,

by definition is, but Sales illuminated it’s actual truth, “In a popular notion of feminism, a

woman is a feminist simply if she is successful in her career.” For some reason, this sentence just

clicked in my head, and I realized why I could never fully back feminism despite seeing and

experiencing the disrespect that women face from men so often. Feminism seems to belittle the

“domestic” woman who wants to have kids, raise a family, and find her significance there. On

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the other side, many right-wing women criticize women who do not want to have kids or do not

get married. Instead of banding together and appreciating each woman for her own strengths,

each side is deeply divided by a woman’s ability to either have a job or have a family instead of

the spiritual meaning that a woman finds in her own way through her own personal relationship

with Christ.

In the chapter titled “Fifteen,” Sales’ inclusion of Nicholas and Erika Christakis’ story stood out

to me. As Sales wrote, “... their [the Christakis’ social media critics] refusal to engage in dialogue

with Christakis is troubling, as is their readiness to attack him when he does seem to be trying to

talk to them respectfully.” The day that I read this passage, I had talked with an astronomy

professor here at Wheaton about the difficult conversations that she had with her coworkers and

her students after the Is Genesis History? showing. Science professors were quick to get angry

and harsh about their criticism of its contents, and some of her students were short-tempered on

the subject as well. Fighting for what you believe in has become a merciless battle where people

refuse to see another person’s perspective.

Alanna McArdle’s story of webcamming boys and stripping in front of the camera was

included in the following chapter titled “Sixteen” even though McArdle was thirteen when she

webcammed. With this as her “foundation,” McArdle moved forward with her life and “began to

self-harm and developed the body dysmorphia that planted the seeds of disordered eating in my

late teens.” I was sixteen when I went on my first date; on my birthday my dad took me out to a

really nice seafood place. Before this moment, dating was strictly forbidden in my house, but that

made sense to me. I could not drive, and I did not have any money to spend on a boyfriend. I

grew up without the need to be with a guy emotionally or sexually. The way McArdle and many

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girls grow up now creates a reliance upon boys to give them sexual affirmation through

compliments or sexual encounters instead; beauty is defined by how sexy a guy sees you and

how badly he wants to get into your pants. I looked in the mirror when I was sixteen and saw a

daughter loved by her parents, a sister loved by her best friend, and a beloved child of God. The

contrast between my reflection then, and the reflection that girls see now is astounding.

Lisa Wade did a study, now six years ago, on the hookup culture of college. Sales

includes this in the “Seventeen” chapter because it has become a cultural norm to have sex by the

end of high school. Wade told Sales that, “... many of our female respondents felt disempowered

instead of empowered by sexual encounters. They didn’t feel like equals on the sexual

playground, more like jungle gyms.” There are many women I know that would call this

statement “sexist,” but it really is the truth. All of my girl friends that were sexually active just

for the sake of it in high school became more and more insecure and needed more affirmation

and attention from guys just to feel good about themselves.

Although I read to the very end of this book, a passage in the chapter entitled “Eighteen”

represented the culmination of all the thoughts I had throughout this reading. Essena O’Neill’s

decision to delete all social media, and voice how she truly felt about the whole social media

culture spoke to me at a personal level. I came to realize that I was holding myself to society’s

standards of cool, pretty, and fun instead of doing what I actually wanted to do, dressing the way

I want to, and being the person God truly wants me to be. O’Neill received a massive amount of

backlash from social media stars, but the fact is that there is no way that someone’s social media

account can be one-hundred percent genuine and honest. A picture tells a thousand words, but

life is full of millions, billions, and trillions of words that no amount of pictures could ever fully

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encompass. Every social media account is a partial picture, and almost every girl posts only

happy, pretty, positive snapshots of her life on social media.

After reading American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers, I became

aware of the true effect that social media is having on my life. I kept denying it because I thought

I was not as bad as other girls, but I really do have a problem. I was looking at my life through

the lens of my phone instead of seeing my life the way that God wants me to see it. A man made

my iPhone, but God shaped me and continues to shape me everyday. I am going to remove social

media from my life until I can fully renew my relationship with God. By removing God from my

everyday life, I left a massive hole in my heart. I tried to convince everyone on my Instagram

that I was happy about who I was and that I had a perfect relationship. The truth of what

happened is that I became more and more empty inside, and I forced my friends and my

boyfriend to try to fill that hole. Instead, God could have been filling me up all along.

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