Monday, December 31, 2018

THE WOLVES: A Play | "What's Up Sluts"| A Raunchy Teen Soccer Team


Sarah DeLappe's The Wolves, among other accolades, was a finalist for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The play was originally produced at The Duke on 42nd Street before it moved to the Lincoln Center.

Here's part of Wikipedia's synopsis:
“The Wolves” is set in an indoor soccer facility. Each scene depicts the nine teenage girls that make up the Wolves, a soccer team, warming up before their game each week.

The first scene opens with discussion of a Cambodian murderer, and conversations stem from there. Overlapping dialogue illustrates an atmosphere where each group of girls have their own, specific conversations while still chiming in on the main topic. These spin-offs include period gossip, talk of boyfriends [...]
Note: An action from the script informs the reader that the coeds are 16: "the giggle like only 16-year-olds can."


Wikipedia's reference to period gossip is referring to #7, #8, and #14 encouraging, with sexual overtones, #2 to switch to tampons:
#2. (terrified) what if like my pad falls out?
#7. you still use those?
#14. you gotta get off of those [...] you want a ? cause I can get you one
#2. no | thank you
#8. it's not so hard | you just like | pop! [...]
#7. (with the super plus)
#14. (oh my god yes)
#7. little perv
#14. hahaha | hahaha | hahaha
Wikipedia's reference to "talk of boyfriends" is in reference to when #7 and #14 met Dan, #7's boyfriend and Dan's friend, "some college guy", during Dan's Thanksgiving break from college:
#7. "I am so fucking pumped [...] we're going to my dad's ski house | and that asshole won't be there | and he has like a fully stocked bar" 

But #14 was upset after #7 left her alone with the "college guy": #14. yeah but you just like | you abandoned me | to go FUCK your stupid FUCKING boyfriend!! | so / very LOUDLY!
The cast of The Wolves from the Theatre Royal | Stratford East Production

A 16-year-old high school student having loud sex with a college student is a smaller age-gap than say a high school student's attraction to a former professional European soccer player or a middle-aged A-List actor. (Of course, IRL, unless the play was set in one of the 31 states where the age of consent is 16, that college student could have served jail time while #7 would have been counseled by a consoling counselor.)


In reference to Coach Mikhail, who played professional soccer in Croatia or Czech Republic, #14 opined: 
#14. I think he's sorta sexy
#8. he's like 45!!
#14. so's Jude Law
Interestingly, like in Slut: The Play#7 had a preference for referring to her teammates as sluts. For example, after #14 shared that she forgot her bikini, she said, while flashing her sports bra: guess I'll just have to SKINNY DIP. #7 replied: (with love and delight) you total fucking slut. 


And in another scene, #7 greeted her teen teammates with: what's up sluts. Thus, unsurprisingly, in reference to teen oral sex, #7 opined: it was just a fucking b / lowjob.

In the end, possibly the most interesting item from the script is the Gertrude Stein quote: "We are always the same age inside."

The Wolves is a New York Times Critics' Pick and Ben Brantley wrote in his review of the teen play:
"The scary, exhilarating brightness of raw adolescence emanates from every scene of this uncannily assured first play by Sarah DeLappe...some of the most exciting and affecting ensemble work on a New York stage." [Emphasis added]

And Time Out concluded:

"Sarah DeLappe's extremely skillful debut...maps the bruising terrain of the nine teens' lives."

Monday, December 24, 2018

Famous Teleiophile & Teen Lipstick Lesbian: Holly Golightly



I wrote in The Allure of Nymphets that in Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Holly Golightly married a much older man at the age of thirteen, she lived with a college jock at the age of fifteen, and at the age of eighteen she stated,“I can’t get excited by a man until he’s at least forty-two.” Now that's a teleiophile!


But I was really shocked when a teen lipstick lesbian on the MTV's Skins (S01E02) masturbated to a picture of Golightly (Audrey Hepburn) from the film adaptation of the novella.



Interestingly, Rebecca Renner wrote in The Paris Review post "Was Holly Golightly Bisexual?": 
"The name Holly Golightly is synonymous with sex and sophistication, but viewers may not know as much about her as they think." You can write that again. 
Renner shared this Golightly quote from the novella: 
“Of course people couldn’t help but think I must be a bit of a dyke myself. And of course I am [...] So what? That never discouraged a man yet, in fact it seems to goad them on.”
And this excerpt from a 1968 Truman Capote Playboy interview:
[...] the interviewer asked Capote, “Was Holly a Lesbian?”
“Of course, there’s a Lesbian component in every woman, but what intrigues me is the heterosexual male’s fascination with Lesbians,” Capote answered. 
Thus, just like there is an allure of nymphets, there is also an allure of (nymphet) lipstick lesbians

Sunday, December 16, 2018

SLUT: A PLAY | Teens (Re)Claim Slut Status


On the cover of the book Slut: A Play and Guidebook for Combating Sexism and Sexual Violence, which was published by the Feminist Press of my alma mater, The City College of New York, Gloria Steinem opined: “SLUT is truthful, raw, and immediate! Experience this play and witness what American young women live with every day.

Playwright Katie Cappiello and Meg McInerney wrote in the book that during the sessions to develop the play at The Arts Effect All-Girl Theater Company in New York City, the word slut kept coming out of the mouths of the twenty East Coast high school students. For example: “I feel like a slut.”, “I was dressed all slutty.”, and “Haha. Oh my [G]od, you’re a dirty little slut!” 

Cappiello and McInerney wrote: “There’s an attempt being made by girls and young women across the country to reclaim the word. Being a “slut” means you’re sexy, fun, experimental, willing, popular, wanted, “fuckable” [...]”

Cappiello and McInerney shared that Slut: The Play is: “[...] authentic, nuanced, and hard-hitting.” And that: “[...] everything in this play is inspired by real events.”

(During the sessions about seven of the nymphets admitted that they had experienced sexual assault, which is probably inaccurate, because most victims of sexual assault don’t share their experiences. However, Cappiello and McInerney referenced a study that found that: “Eighty-one percent of kids and teens experience sexual harassment during middle school or high school years.”)


In the play, Joey (Winnifred Bonjean Alpart), a sixteen-year-old, was forcibly “fingered” in the back of a cab. “Luke is grabbing my other leg … Pulling my leg to the side, so my, um, legs would be more open [...] Then George all of a sudden really aggressively pulls my underwear to the side and jammed two of his fingers inside me [...] Then he (Luke) put two of his fingers in his mouth [...] and then he stuck his wet fingers in my vagina” 

However, Joey is “slut-shamed” for the incident, because an online picture of Joey suggested that she was giving George a lap dance in the back of the cab and a picture of her tasting fruit flavored condoms implied that she planned to give George and Luke “blow jobs”. Joey defended her raunchy behavior by proclaiming, “And we aren’t afraid to be sexual. If all that makes us sluts, then I guess we’re sluts.” 


Some motifs in the play, that’s set on the Upper East Side, are: cursing (e.g., “Ugh - fucking nasty.”), drinking (e.g., vodka), name-calling (e.g., “You don’t let a guy hook up with you when you have your period. Is she [thirteen-year-old Nadia Boyd] retarded? [...] Is she mentally challenged?”), raunchy teen behavior (e.g.,“[...] George once followed me into the bathroom and locked the door and wouldn’t let me out until I gave him a hand job. True story. I didn’t tell anyone. We ended up going out for, like, five months....”), rape (e.g., While visiting her brother, a college junior, Sylvie, a sixteen-year-old high school junior and virgin, shared, "The second night I was there, I was raped [...] College parties are fucking ridiculous, okay.”



The actual text of Cappiello’s Slut: The Play wasn’t as revealing as some of the submissions in the chapter “Reality Check From Young Voices”. For example, Sonia, a fifteen-year-old sophomore from a small town in Pennsylvania shared: “We [My boyfriend and I] had been dating for a little over a month, when I asked him what he wanted for this sixteenth birthday. All he wanted from me was a blow job. [...] “Fine! I’ll give my boyfriend head because I’d rather that than him yell at me again.”

Fred, a thirteen-year-old, shared: “I started watching porn halfway through fifth grade. I had just begun middle school, and befriended a lot of kids in the seventh and eighth grade. Sometimes when I hung out with them they would make jokes about the porn they watched, referencing certain sites.”


Sixteen-year-old Clare wrote that her doorman “grabbed” her, “pulled” her into him, and “grabbed” her breast before he said, “I want a piece of this.” However, her neighbors paid his legal fees and opined that Clare was “[...] leading him on, or teasing him, or trying to ruin his life.”

And seventeen-year-old Danielle related: “I go to this typical Jewish summer camp, where promiscuous behavior is practically encouraged and cultivated [...] with no parental supervision, there are lots of sexual firsts for everyone [...] There is one girl in particular, Georgia, who is really petite and very pretty [...] Josh and another boy coerced - basically forced - Georgia to give them blow jobs, while others filmed it on their phones.”