Haunted by memories of the way her high school classmates had treated Anna "Wanna" Thomas, the school's designated "slut," former Seattle Stranger
editor White decided to investigate the near-universal American myths of the "fast girl" and the actual women behind those myths. She contacted over 150 mostly white women and girls between ages 13 and 55. Typical of them is 25-year-old Madeline, who was rumored in high school to have crabs, AIDS and herpes; had "whore" written in lipstick on her locker; and was beaten up at a party by other girls. White uses the recollections of these women to piece together what she calls the American slut archetype: a girl whose body matures early, who is said to have sex with teams of boys and who is frequently a victim of childhood sexual abuse. White often—and sometimes gratuitously—cites Foucault, de Beauvoir, Jung, Elaine Showalter and other scholars as she examines why these labels are ever present in the adolescent social universe, and what they reveal about Americans' conflicted attitudes toward female sexuality. Though her tone is accessible to general readers, White's book is a bit more academic than recent titles on similar subjects, such as Leora Tanenbaum's Slut! Growing Up Female with a Bad Reputation
and Naomi Wolf's Promiscuities: The Secret Struggle for Womanhood. The stories of White's interviewees paint a textured, harrowing picture of high school life, and readers will wish she had devoted more space to these powerful testimonies and less to the broader cultural analysis. Agent, Bill Clegg. (Mar.)
