(DIR) Home what are the consequences? (HTM) Source ---------------------------------------------------------------------- These boys were from a respectable private school where nice middle- class parents sent their nice sons. We girls were from a similarly respectable school for nice daughters. At the time, I thought our friendships were proof that girls and boys really could be just friends. We went to school dances together, wrote each other inane notes about our days and traded them after school in the food court. We'd make each other laugh and drink Midori stolen from our parents' liquor cabinets and not make out. It all felt so innocent and so fun, until it didn't. Loading I knew that if I got upset or, worse, got mad, it would only further reduce my chances that one day - assuming I would be lucky enough to have the kind of ugly duckling glow-up that was the plot line for most teen movies of the era - one of them might see me as something more than just the ugly friend with straight teeth. So, instead of telling them where to go, I did what most girls do. I turned inwards, made a mental list of all the categories I didn't make the cut in and got to work punishing myself for my deficits. And that's the problem. That's what these seemingly unintentionally brutal games and lists do to girls. They create burning shame and hurt that festers. They make them believe that when someone does actually think they're beautiful, they're being set up to be the butt of another cruel joke. Two decades on, even when all of that has been unlearned, and you realise that what a couple of teenagers with developing prefrontal cortices thought of you isn't true and doesn't matter, it's still there. All that hurt and shame and uncertainty has metastasised and evolved. But now it's an instantaneous, unbridled rage that breaks through to the surface when we find out that another generation of girls are being labelled "mid" or "get out" or "unrapable". Twenty years of social change, conversations and what feels like real progress. Yet somehow, after all that, teenage boys can still crush girls' self- esteem with a single list. **Katy Hall is deputy opinion editor.** **Support is available from the** **National Sexual Assault, Domestic Family Violence Counselling Service** **at 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732).** ** _The Opinion newsletter is a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own._** ** _Sign up here_** ** _._** ______________________________________________________________________ Served by Flask-Gopher/2.2.1