A First Time For Everything: The Double Standard

When I wrote Firsts, the double standard that exists for males versus females when it comes to sex was one of the themes on the forefront of my mind. When a guy sleeps with more than one girl, he might get a reputation as a player or a bad boy. More than likely, he'll get commended by his friends. Yes, girls may be wary of getting into a relationship with him, but maybe a relationship isn't what he wants anyway. And people are okay with that. He's hooking up, learning what he likes, finding himself. Eventually, he'll settle down and fall in love.

But a girl in the same situation? She doesn't get called a player. She gets called a slut or a whore, one-syllable grenades. She gets called four-letter words that just might end up scrawled on her locker in permanent marker. She hears whispered insults and people talking behind her back. She gets disapproving looks from other girls and leers from boys. She gets lectures. She gets people asking questions about why she's just hooking up instead of trying to find a boyfriend, how she can possibly be with a guy for one night or one week without getting attached. She's the butt of rumors and jokes. Maybe a relationship isn't what she wants anyway either, but people aren't okay with that. Everything she's doing will make it so that nobody will ever take her seriously. Nobody will want her.

This is the attitude I wanted to expose for all of its blazing hypocrisy when I wrote Firsts. From the first page, we find out that Mercedes is a sexually active teenage girl. She doesn't have a boyfriend, nor does she want one. When the truth about what she has been doing with the virgins gets out, she becomes a victim of intense hatred and slut-shaming. But what about the guys who sought her out? They incur their girlfriends' wrath, but nobody is writing on their lockers with permanent marker. Nobody is calling them four-letter words. Nobody is physically assaulting them in the hall at school. Nobody does to them anything close to what happens to Mercedes. It takes two to have sex, but the blame is heaped solely on Mercedes' shoulders.

Yes, some of what Mercedes does is wrong. But the boys are to blame, too. With one exception, they're the ones who sought her out. It was important to me that this book was written from the perspective of a teenage girl who is far from a virgin, a girl for whom sex is a physical act, more science than intimacy. Maybe there was a girl like Mercedes at your high school. Maybe you were or are a girl like Mercedes. Too often, this girl is called that girl, like some kind of warning. I wanted—needed—to give Mercedes her own story. Because she's not that girl. She's a person figuring stuff out, and the only four-letter word she should be called is a girl, plain and simple.

If you're interested in reading Firsts, you can check out the first (no pun intended!) three chapters on my Wattpad profile @LaurieElizabethFlynn. Want to read the whole book? It's sold at bookstores, and should also be available for request at your local library! Check out my website, www.laurieelizabethflynn.com, for more details. 

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