Jackie Jarrard recalls being sexualized by teenage boys at age two in a grocery store, compared to Madonna. She traces how early, incomprehensible attention shaped her relationship with men and her reading of Joyce Carol Oates' Blonde.
There's a story that my mom tells. I don't remember this because I was too young. I think I was 2 years old, and she had me in a stroller in the grocery store. She said there was, like, this group of teenage, kind of ish boys. And they were like, your little girl is so pretty. She looks like Madonna, who at the time was a full grown, very sexual woman. And my mom's like, this is a two year old. But I feel like it's emblematic at a very young age, being given some strange attention that there's no way that I could comprehend or ask for and even process. And then that just continued the older that I got.
And so how does that affect your view of men?
It's a complicated question.
This whole. This whole conversation.
Is complicated.
