G-Girl ConfidentialThe mating mores and folkways of interns and their congressmen.
Posted Wednesday, July 25, 2001, at 9:00 PM ET
In 1951, two yellow journalists—Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer—published Washington Confidential, their so-called exposé of the raunchy underbelly of the District of Columbia. The book was deliberately sensational and jam-packed with quaint '50s stereotypes: Homosexuals Everywhere! Hanky Panky at the Pentagon! And of course, Insatiable "G-Girls!" G-Girls were voluptuous, promiscuous secretaries, living in boarding houses on Dupont Circle and hanky-pankering with elected officials on Capitol Hill. Lait and Mortimer presented the G-Girl as a sort of perk for hardworking politicians; snuggling on laps in smoke-filled rooms and never, ever, ever saying "no." Whether or not the G-Girl ever really existed, she is still somehow the archetype for the Chandras and Monicas: the loose, liberated, interns who swarm Capitol Hill every year, seducing our elected officials with their sassy MBAs and their shapely calves.
PRINT
DISCUSS
E-MAIL
RSS
RECOMMEND...
Facebook
MySpace
Mixx
Digg
Reddit
del.icio.us
Furl
Ma.gnolia
Sphere
StumbleUponThe latest G-Girl, Chandra Levy, has almost mystically infused the Lait-Mortimer stereotype with new life. Our questions are the same as they were in 1950. Is she a victim? Is she a temptress? Is Washington different? Are internships safe? Is the D.C. intern as loose and voracious an animal as she appears to be? Who are these women and what do they want of our congressmen?
The Capitol Versus the Casting Couch
Washington, D.C., is different than Hollywood, or Manhattan, or any other city in which young girls attach themselves to older, successful men. For one thing, there's the transient nature of interns, who stay only as long as a summer or a semester, rendering the capital the functional equivalent of a vast columnated singles bar. For another thing, the young women who score D.C. internships can be less sexually savvy than the girls who score screen tests and modeling contracts in New York or L.A. There are two types of women who gravitate to D.C.: women whose families send a whole lot of money there, and women so involved in their debate/student government/phone-banking projects that a stint in the capital is an obvious next move. But nothing about debate or student government prepares you for sexual gamesmanship.
Beautiful women learn early on how to parry the advances of powerful males, confidently ignoring the moves of the lecherous lit professor, Dad's groping business associate, and the thinks-he's-suave attorney from Uncle Bill's dinner party. Or, they learn to exploit these overtures to their advantage. Meanwhile, your average-looking smart and ambitious woman, for whom the totality of her prior experience with older men is limited to an encounter with a lecherous history TA in her junior year, arrives in D.C. with less immunity against the multitudes of predatory D.C. power brokers.
The government industry also differs from other industries in degrees of separation. In Hollywood, a script girl can work for years without ever coming across someone legendary. In Washington, it's hard to take six steps without tripping over a senator or congressman or a president. Monica and Chandra made contact quickly and easily with their love objects. Often isolated from female mentors and advice, young women fall for the same I'll-leave-my-wife-only-you-understand-me stuff that TV movies are made of. They don't have time to raise the deflector shields, the way they might in another profession.
"Mentor" Versus "Lover"
The G-Girl, on her arrival in the nation's capital, still hasn't learned the last prevailing double standard in any workplace: That everything you learn about getting ahead in the world—find a mentor, attach yourself to powerful people, schmooze till your molars hurt—works better for men. The same young woman who serenely acted as a teaching assistant or researcher for an avuncular professor in college struggles for the same "face-time" or access as the male interns. The difference is that any close one-on-one relationship between a man and a woman is fraught with a million subtle nuances, which can be difficult to manage. That tension is worth slogging through, if it comes with career advancement. "It was so exciting," says one D.C. journalist, who became involved with a married man shortly after graduating college. "He knew famous people. He knew the president!" Who could say no or back off to a man holding the keys to your professional advancement? Men don't have to say no to their mentors, unless it's "no more yards of beer for me tonight, sir!"
Who Says "No"
Perhaps because each party feels the other will ultimately draw a line in the sand, confusion and ambiguity are allowed to gestate into something more exciting. Flirtation, compliments, promises. Thongs. "People who talk about these things afterward forget how delicious it is," says a now happily married woman and mother, who became involved with a married man when she moved to D.C. "The secrecy, the thrill, the sex ..." The problem with the May-December relationship on the Hill, though, is that no external mechanism exists to force either party to behave responsibly. Politicians are immune from the sexual harassment systems that protect young women in corporate workplaces and academia, where the presumption has become that the older male will say no or face brutal consequences. These kinds of advances would cost your political science professor his job. In an office, it would be sexual harassment. In D.C., it's still 1951, and young girls are still curvy temptresses.
Whether you think it's the boy's job or the girl's job to say no seems to turn on whether you believe that there's a power differential involved in these affairs. Last week, in a piece titled, "What 'Powerful' Men?" the Washington Post's Richard Cohen seemed to be arguing that because elected officials don't actually have superpowers (of the leap-tall-buildings-outrun-speeding-locomotives variety) they are no more powerful than young women with perky breasts. Women mostly disagree. Power to help your career, to open doors, to grant access need not take the form of threats to fire you. The difference in sophistication and understanding may suffice. For the young journalist whose affair with a married man "devastated" her throughout her 20s, a good rule of thumb for congressmen should be that older married men should simply view 24-year-old women with master's degrees like their "13-year-old neighbor girl"—at least for recreational purposes. Says the other woman, now married, who had a similar experience, "Women need to make the decision to actively discourage this behavior."
Generation Gap
Lait and Mortimer popularized the perennially available G-Girl in 1951. That means that for the average 60-something Hill Habitué, the book was practically required reading in high school. Many of these same men were still taking road trips to Smith and Mount Holyoke, viewing women as essentially fungible nookie-units, while their political ideologies were fermenting. Why would one expect them to think differently as busloads of exciting, ambitious sexually liberated young things are dumped on their shiny loafers today? Every day must feel like Christmas on Capitol Hill, and until a few generations of men who were socialized differently have taken their seats, it's hard to really blame them for thinking, as does Richard Cohen, that youth and curviness somehow equal political power.
So, what is the G-Girl thinking today, as she tumbles off that bus and lands on the lap of a man older than her father? She's probably thinking that this is exciting. That the power is glamorous. That she's lonely. That she truly loves him. That she's glad he's not a greasy staffer who lives in a group house in Georgetown. That her man knows everybody. That he is a man of vision and ideals. That sex isn't taboo like it used to be. That this is just like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman and better than Cinderella. That she's human, he's divine, and that it really will work out in the end. It may take her 10 more years to learn that it rarely works out in the end. Chandra may not have the luxury of that lesson.
Most Fast Food Restaurants Thrived During the Recession. Not Arby's.
Did Anti-Communists Really End Communism? Two Historians Say No.
Dear Farhad: How Does Facebook Know I'm Gay?
What Ever Happened to Hood Ornaments?
Are Doctors Allowed To Say They're Sorry?
Hitchens: Let's Not Get Sentimental About Communism
Reader Comments From The Fray:
[Notes from the Fray Editor: Many readers took the same line as Thrasymachus: Ed Wingenbach gave the best counter-argument. Marietta's post, below, is part of an excellent thread (A-Z says sex doesn't answer to "standard economic theory about the way … transactions operate.") Jack, a professor, contrasts academia and politics here after reading Arthur Stock's post. A former DC nanny comments on the social scene here. Epicuria spoke for many: "This one essay sums up more about the male-female relation, and its particular manifestation in DC, than tomes of social science reports."]
This is the year 2001, and women in their 20s are no more or less knowledgeable about "the ways of the world" than their male counterparts, and they're just as unlikely to harbor illusions about the intentions of their paramours, "powerful" or not. Why is it so difficult to imagine that these women (most of whom are bright and ambitious, and pretty much all of whom hold bachelors or graduate degrees) actually know what they're doing?
--Thrasymachus
(To reply, click here.)
To Thasymachus:
I think you're mistaking openness about sexuality and theoretical understanding of the role power plays in sexual relations with actual knowledge and experience. Lithwick's description of the kind of bright, motivated college graduate/grad student who goes out into the more predatory world of business, politics, law, etc. strikes me as dead on. In fact, I think the women mostly think exactly as you do, to their detriment. I come across this all the time with my students (I'm a college professor). They have been protected from predatory sexuality all their lives and associate professionalism with asexual meritocracy. This is not to say they haven't encountered sexual predators at all--lecherous uncles and date-rapist drunk boys are legend--but those experiences are largely relegated in their minds to the realm of the private (family) and the adolescent (frat boys). Professional men, they think, simply don't act that way. And, in the environment in which they live, they don't (both for the punitive reasons Lithwick discusses and the ethical reasons many educators hold precious).
The fact that sexuality is discussed openly, that they usually feel quite comfortable with their own sexuality, and that the problem of power and gender inequality are dealt with in classrooms serves to diminish, not heighten, their defenses. For most of my female students, gender inequality and oppression is seen as a quaint relic of a paranoid past, an intriguing topic for discussion, but no more relevant to their lives than the cold war. This is all to the good. But it doesn't prepare them for the reality of the world outside academia…They will innocently assume that the flirtatious congressman is no different from their engaging professor, and will likely assume that nothing untoward could or will happen (that's ancient history, things those old radical women worried about back in the 80's). They're wrong, of course, but won't learn until too late. The only benefit might be that suddenly the feminist theory they dismissed as a junior becomes suddenly relevant.
--Ed Wingenbach
(To reply, click here.)
Each individual knows what is best for them and has their own individual concept of the good, what's pleasurable and painful, good or bad, moral or immoral... People are degraded when you claim to know what's in their best interests better than they do. In the real world you make decisions as an adult, and bear the consequences, and the only people we protect from their own bad judgment are the mentally impaired and children. I don't think anyone really wants to send the message that this is how an adult female with a masters degree is to be treated--like a child or mentally impaired person. If you do, then why stop there? Why not just let those of us who know better for you make all of your decisions for you?
--Rich
(To reply, click here.)
Women have always shouldered a disproportionate share of sexual responsibility whether the fallout was a fixable broken heart, a pregnancy, a reputation (as my mother would put it), or violence at the hands of the 'beloved.' Even liberated, sexually powerful women find themselves 'victimized' from time to time in ways that are not trivial, and in ways not often suffered by men. I'm all for women of any age recognizing the import of their actions--just as I hold the same view when it comes to our male counterparts.
--Marietta
(To reply, click here.)
Packwood, Livingstone, and Gingrich …can all testify to the "external mechanisms" that make sexual harassment and relationships in Congress substantially more consequential for the older guy than they are in the business or academic world. We call the external mechanisms "voters." In this particular case, Levy didn't intern for Congressman Condit. There was no workplace aspect to their relationship that could possibly trigger sexual harassment statutes. Nor is there even the slightest reason to attribute naiveté to her; even if she had thoroughly investigated Condit before the first date she would have found no evidence of violence or mistreatment of past paramours. Objectively, it's hard to imagine a man more likely to maintain discretion in a relationship, and less likely to cause physical (or career) harm to a young woman, than a married Congressman concerned about his own image and re-election.
--Arthur Stock
(To reply, click here.)
(7/27)