Some Girls Do. Margaret Leroy

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      MARGARET LEROY

      Some Girls Do

      Why Women Do – and Don’t –

       Make the First Move

       Copyright

      HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

      Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 1998

      First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 1997

      Copyright © Margaret Leroy 1997

      The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

      Source ISBN: 9780002555920

      Ebook Edition © MARCH 2012 ISBN: 9780007484942 Version: 2016-06-20

      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

       CHAPTER 4: MEN’S DOUBTS

       CHAPTER 5: MYTHOLOGIES

       CHAPTER 6: LOOKS AND SMILES

       CHAPTER 7: DO WOMEN SAY NO AND MEAN YES?

       CHAPTER 8: MONEY

       CHAPTER 9: DANGER

       CHAPTER 10: HOW TO

       References

       Index

       Acknowledgements

       About the Author

       Also by the Author

       About the Publisher

       CHAPTER 1 COURTSHIP TODAY

      I ASK men out,’ said Emma. ‘I’m doing my bit. I can’t understand why more women don’t do it. It feels so good to go out with somebody you’ve chosen.’

      Emma is a teacher in her early twenties. She’s warm and friendly – but not unusually assertive. She’s pretty – but not particularly confident about her appearance: like so many women, she’s forever struggling to lose weight. She enjoys her sex-life – but she’s not particularly sexually self-assured. In most ways, she’s as full of self-doubt as the rest of us. Yet she asks men out: she finds it easy: and making the first move is a source of real pleasure in her life. She relishes her sense of achievement when she thinks, I chose him.

      My conversation with Emma was the genesis of this book. It set me thinking how extraordinary it is that so few women make this move. Why is it still so difficult? What could help us to change?

      Since talking to Emma, I’ve asked all the women I’ve met if they’ve ever asked a man out. All of them have wanted to – but few have ever done so: most said, ‘I simply couldn’t …’. Some of these women edit glossy magazines or manage social services teams or work in busy casualty departments. They feel strong, autonomous, entitled. In every other area of their lives, they’re in control: they shape what happens to them. But this they wouldn’t do. Unlike Emma, they don’t think it would feel good, and they can understand why more women don’t do it.

      Even women in the age-group where it’s often assumed that sexual patterns are changing most rapidly said the same. Nineteen-year-old Natalie told me: ‘I do leave it up to the lad to make the first move – with telephone calls, the first kiss, everything – and if they don’t do it, well then it’s tough cheese isn’t it?’ Lucy, aged fifteen, said: ‘Girls could, yeah – they don’t though … It’s just that nobody does. I think it would be good but no-one has the courage to.’

      There are a few Emmas in every age group, of course. Most of the men I talked to had been asked out by a woman – but usually only once or twice.

      Women’s reluctance to ask men out does seem amazing. Over the past few decades, so much has changed in our sexual behaviour. Women have been setting limits and drawing lines in the sand. We’ve said no to male sexual violence and attempted to outlaw the darker expressions of male sexual initiative by establishing rape-crisis centres, taking action on child sexual abuse, legislating against sexual harassment. Some women have sought to set the sexual agenda with that effective act of vengeance, the kiss and tell, with its ‘That’s no way to treat a lady’ subtext. And many of us have been exploring our own sexuality – by reading collections of female fantasies, or going to orgasm workshops, or buying ‘Black Lace’ books, or photographing the male nude, or queuing up to scream at the Chippendales.

      Most notably for this book, women have been imposing their own agenda on courtship by highlighting the risk of sexual violence within

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