Safe and Sexy

by Sarah Hughes

Amalia Tweedie, 13
Halifax

I think that competitive swimming has really helped how I think of myself. I’ve become a lot more confident because I think I’m better at swimming than I was at school. It makes me feel like I can actually do something.If I’m going somewhere I’m not sure about, I try not to wear shoes I can’t run in, and I think about whether I’m going to come across as a person who’s easy to manipulate — I don’t want to look overly sexual.Some of the boys don’t notice us. When they do, the girls treat it as a big deal and the guys get kind of embarrassed, and, you know, it’s that sort of cycle. In grade six we started to get more into it. I find that most of my girlfriends will wait for a guy to approach them.Of course, I have the usual fears about men — that I will be taken advantage of — but I think I’m most scared that they won’t find me attractive and that I’ll get to some point in my life where nobody finds me attractive.

Comments (2 comments)

Shannon: Hello,
I'm not sure where or who gets this note, but if
possible, would you tell Griselda that I also love the way she dresses and the scent of Patchouli oil on her neck. Thanks, macyaka@auracom.com May 20, 2008 20:45 EST

Charles Tysoe: How very trendy. Just what we need from Canada's newest, best and most progressive mag for all of who "get it". Artistic license and all, but why don't you grow up, please. Exploiting a 13 year old girl (does this girl have a mom and dad? Or a guardian with some sort of a brain?) to talk about her sexual anxieties in a location any Haligonian will recognize — OK maybe the two or three who can read, and who might chance upon the magazine. In an age of hellishly clever sexual predators (some of them probably classmates or social acquaintances of poor Amelia), what can you be thinking of? Other than "I am ARTIST. Affirm me!"

It's just art, right? No sexual predator would dare take seriously these plaintive musings. I'm sure if that was the case, Mr. Alexander and all the bright lights around him would have thought of it.

A young girl needs adult role models, security and affirmation in a healthy environment, where she can have her femininity nourished and protected.

You have just made her into human graffiti ; I suppose because there just aren't enough women and girls around willing to display themselves in any degrading fashion for a little fame or lots of money and we can never get enough of it.

Or perhaps you think this is real innovation?

What a disgrace to humanity you are for conceiving and carrying out, using your positions of inflence and power as "reputable journalists", this literary and visual grope of a young woman.

- A subscriber - August 06, 2008 11:41 EST

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