Susan Minot’s story titled Lust is written in first-person perspective and it revolves around the adolescent life of a 15-year-old girl as she lives in boarding school. The narrator is the girl herself, unnamed and anonymous in terms of characterization; very accurately depicting someone with low self-esteem.
The story opens right away with the character introducing the boys she’s met during her time at boarding school but goes no more into depth about them than mentioning the sexual experiences they have had, such as seeing one naked for the first time or French kissing another. The readers get little, if any, description of the male characters beyond their names. Furthermore, the narrator herself is steeped in such anonymity that the …show more content…
She mentions that she is good at math and sports, “but the second a boy put his arm around me, I forgot about wanting to do anything else.” This is common in girls with low confidence who often indulge in sexual relations because it can make them feel more attractive or more worthy of affection: “…if you don’t feel confident, it means you can’t say no and the vicious circle begins. You end up making bad decisions because you don’t feel good about yourself. That’s why you might have sex when you don’t really want to: you want to be liked but, as you probably know already, that’s not the best reason to have sex” (Dattani, Meera, Sex and Self-esteem, …show more content…
Heidi Lyons in her article Identity, Peer Relationships, and Adolescent Girls’ Sexual Behavior: An Exploration of the Contemporary Double Standard states:
Maccoby (1998), for example, suggested that teenage boys who gain considerable sexual experience do not run the same risk of being labeled deviant as do their female counterparts. More specifically, young women who had a high number of sex partners were socially reprimanded for their behaviors, and young men were rewarded
(Milhausen & Herold,
The story opens right away with the character introducing the boys she’s met during her time at boarding school but goes no more into depth about them than mentioning the sexual experiences they have had, such as seeing one naked for the first time or French kissing another. The readers get little, if any, description of the male characters beyond their names. Furthermore, the narrator herself is steeped in such anonymity that the …show more content…
She mentions that she is good at math and sports, “but the second a boy put his arm around me, I forgot about wanting to do anything else.” This is common in girls with low confidence who often indulge in sexual relations because it can make them feel more attractive or more worthy of affection: “…if you don’t feel confident, it means you can’t say no and the vicious circle begins. You end up making bad decisions because you don’t feel good about yourself. That’s why you might have sex when you don’t really want to: you want to be liked but, as you probably know already, that’s not the best reason to have sex” (Dattani, Meera, Sex and Self-esteem, …show more content…
Heidi Lyons in her article Identity, Peer Relationships, and Adolescent Girls’ Sexual Behavior: An Exploration of the Contemporary Double Standard states:
Maccoby (1998), for example, suggested that teenage boys who gain considerable sexual experience do not run the same risk of being labeled deviant as do their female counterparts. More specifically, young women who had a high number of sex partners were socially reprimanded for their behaviors, and young men were rewarded
(Milhausen & Herold,