Going All the Way: Teenage Girls' Tales of Sex, Romance, and Pregnancy

The sexual mores of teenage girls is the subject of this disturbing investigation by feminist writer Thompson (Powers of Desire). With patience and creativity, she became the recipient of 400 teenage girls' stories. We hear in this ``girl talk'' the need of these voluble girls for romance, sometimes called love, translated into sex as a rite of passage. Their sexual histories between the ages of 13 and 17 coincided with the sexual revolution and, as Thompson's reportage supports, ``This tectonic shift in the rules of teenage romance generated an enormous amount of talk about... the complexities of being a sexually active adolescent.'' Thompson dispels some myths about population explosion as a result of their activity and challenges political stances on abortion, contraception and homosexuality. This reporting allows the girls to tell their side of the story, of their adolescence, ``when they know of almost no reason not to have sex.'' It sheds light on discrepancies between what teenage girls know and what they do. (Sept.)