Deborah Tolman's Dilemmas Of Desire

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Deborah Tolman author of “Dilemmas of Desire” dwells on uncovering a wealth of feelings about sexuality from teenage girls who are faced with a lot of struggles in developing sexual identity and detached from their sexuality. One of her main argument is centered on the juxtaposition of media representations of girls as highly sexualized objects. For instance, “the urban girl is viewed as the overly sexual young jezebel. Latinas are often eroticized as exotic, sexually alluring and available.” (Tolman, pg.170). I agree with this statement due to simple fact that we are living in a highly sexualized cultural milieu and evidence of sexualization is seen through mainstream culture. Images such as Sarah Bartman depict African American/ urban portrayal of sexual imagery formed socio-historical …show more content…

In addition, historically Latina women have been viewed as hot blooded and black women as animistic. As a result, young women reached barriers to their own desire, choices and experiences that prevented them from being able to express their sexuality or acknowledge them. The voices she used to show the juxtaposition was adolescent women. These voices were important as they offered different perspectives and showed the discourses between the urban and suburban girl. It was very interesting to me see the intersectionality and discourses that despite the over sexualization of girls and girls being portrayed as comfortable with their sexuality. Nearly all the girls who were interviewed articulated that they were worried about being branded as sluts and many grappled with the pressure of being sexual objects. Furthermore, I believe social location plays an important role in the development of sexual identity. For instance, based on the study urban girls felt vulnerable with their sexuality due to negative messages about their sexuality. However, urban girls faced contradictory messages about their sexuality. (Tolman,

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