From Turkey Trot to Twitter: Policing Puberty, Purity, and Sex-Positivity

This article, written by Mae C. Quinn and published in the N.Y.U. Review of Law and Social Change, examines the “various ways in which youthful online actions and interactions, like pubescent urban activities from decades before, are being prohibited by emerging laws and orders.” Further the article looks at our country’s “obsession of policing puberty”, particularly among female adolescent identity development, recognizing that history and its reformers “have pressed for legal prohibition of everything from doing the Turkey Trot to using Twitter, dancing the Fox Trot to “friending” on Facebook.

This article argues that “supposedly benevolent legal interventions too frequently reflect fears about the breakdown of American society, its borders and boundaries, and the place of adults in its hierarchies. The state has been trying to hold the line around categories by regulating purity, prosecuting female puberty, and punishing sex-positivity—all without engagement with, or input from, youth themselves. Instead of providing a sense of security for young girls, punitive actions often have sent mixed messages about intimacy and sexuality, discounted youthful and female agency, and impeded both the evolution of youthful personhood and modern norms more generally.”