Live girl-on-girl action!

Girls making out with each other to turn on guys is the latest craze at high school and college parties. Is this sexual liberation, or regression?

By Whitney Joiner

Read more: Sex, Lesbians, Girls, Teenagers, Life

June 20, 2006 | Julie was a freshman at Northeastern University in Boston when she first saw two straight girls making out. The Norfolk, Mass., native had just arrived on campus for the start of the school year, and she was at a frat party. "Some guys were flirting with a girl, saying to her, 'You should make out with your friend,'" says Julie, now 20. (Like the other young women quoted in this article, she asked that her last name not be used.) "The girl said, 'Oh, no, I don't want to.' Then she looked at her friend and smiled, like maybe it wouldn't be so bad. They pecked on the lips, but the guys kept egging them on, so they ended up French-kissing. Me and my girlfriends looked at each other and said, 'I can't believe they're doing that!'"

After two months at Northeastern, the "girl-on-girl" make-out session had become inevitable at parties, but Julie still hadn't kissed a woman herself. Then she and a female friend showed up at a party without the $5 cover charge, and she suddenly realized that girl-on-girl action could be a form of currency. "I said to the guy, 'What if we make out? Will you let us in for free?' He said, 'Yep, do it.' I knew it'd be something that [the guys] were into which would get us what we wanted -- to save $10."

Kissing girls started earlier for Alexandra, a 16-year-old high school junior in Bellingham, Wash., a town close to the Canadian border. In ninth grade, she says, at a party where the beer was scarce, two of her friends made out with each other for a beer. "The guys were cheering it on and encouraging it," she says. "I thought it was cool that [the girls] got all the attention, and the guys obviously liked it. I went up to them and was like, 'Wow, that was crazy!' They were like, 'Oh yeah, you've never done that before?'"

She hadn't -- but a year later, she joined the club. She and a friend were drinking at a party, and some guys dared them to kiss ... so they did. "It was like, look, I'm the center of attention! Everyone's looking at me and cheering me on. It felt good being in the spotlight," she says. Then she adds, "And the kissing itself didn't really bug me. From then on it became a normal thing to do."

While same-sex hooking up among teens has been in the news lately -- kids who consider themselves questioning and talk about their sexuality as fluid have been splashed across the pages of major magazines and newspapers -- Alexandra (who has kissed six girls) and Julie (who has kissed 10), and the countless other young women like them, don't think of themselves as bisexual, or even "bi-curious." They're firmly straight, they say, but they'll kiss their friends as a performance for guys -- either for material gain, like free entry or alcohol, or to advertise that they're sexually open and adventurous. "A lot of the time, you're doing it to show off to the guy you like," says Alexandra. "They like it, so they're going to like you if you do it."

These women say it's no big deal to kiss another woman -- especially if alcohol has loosened inhibitions all around. Same-sex behavior is more accepted, particularly on campus, and proving that you're "cool enough" to kiss another girl without worrying that your peers will question your sexuality is an example of how open our sexual culture has become. But is this staged bisexuality really a testament to a type of hypersexualized girl power -- or a statement on how far gals will go to please a generation of guys weaned on online porn? And what does it mean to girls who are actually coming out as queer to see straight girls playing bi for male pleasure?

"When girls talk to me about kissing each other at parties, it's invariably in the context of boys chanting "Kiss, kiss!" says Sabrina Weill, former editor in chief of Seventeen and author of "The Real Truth About Teens and Sex." "There's no formal research that asks girls whether it's happening more now. However, anecdotally, it does seem to be talked about more." Precise numbers may not be available, but a well-publicized National Center for Health Statistics study released in September 2005 found that 10.6 percent of girls age 15-19 had had same-sex sexual experiences; the survey did not ask whether the conduct was a result of actual desire, though. In any event, girl-on-girl action seems to be no big deal for high school and college students, who shrug it off as standard party behavior. Alexandra says she sees it at "75 to 85 percent" of the parties she attends. Jay, a 17-year-old senior at a Manhattan high school, says he sees it at "every other party." Alexandra's friend Mikey, 19, also in Bellingham, says such action has been a party staple since he was 14. "Just about every party I go to or have, I see girls making out with each other," he says.

"It's definitely a good, well-worn, tried-and-true route to hooking up with a guy that you want," Julie says. "It's not giving him a lap dance and stripping on a pole for him, but it's showing him that you can be open, and if that's what he likes, that's what you'll do. Which makes him think you're better to sleep with than the 100 other girls in the room with you."

"It gives you confidence," says Nina, a 20-year-old friend and classmate of Julie's who has kissed five of her friends, including Julie, most more than once. "It makes you feel more attractive -- you're turning on a guy, and he thinks it's cool."

"I think it's empowering to these girls," Jay says. "Immediately after, guys come up and are like, Do you want to do that with me? It's a quick fix to get a guy's attention."

But if young women who hook up with other young women aren't expressing their own desires -- Am I attracted to females? Would I like kissing a female? Would I want to do more? -- and are only simulating desire to market themselves to guys, how empowering can it be?

"By nature, something that is empowering makes girls feel strong," says Weill. "Girls don't express to me that they feel strong after [hooking up with other girls]. 'Empowering' is scoring the lead in a school play or winning a spelling bee. Being sexually manipulative is not empowering."

Next page: "The motivations aren't about your own desires, they're about getting guys excited and looking hot"