Ever since teenagers discovered sex, they've hardly been able to think about anything else, and that has had a major effect on the psychic life of girls. For them, it's been one long downhill skid for their sense of self-worth.

This anguished view of adolescence emerges from the mouths of babes themselves, and Cornell University social historian Joan Jacobs Brumberg has been listening to them, studying the diaries girls have written over the last 150 years.

In bygone days, girls routinely revealed rich inner lives with talk about spirituality, books, intellectual and creative activities, and the pursuit of arts and games. A typical teen of 1890 confided to her diary her dance and calisthenics activities, her elaborate plans for nature walks to collect botany specimens--a passion she shared with her friends--and long talks with female teachers who served as mentors.

Today, inner life has been overtaken by the quest for boys' attention, and with beauty and grooming. It's strictly "Joey told Suzie that David loves Linda." No provocative ideas. No interest in creative activities. Girls first began to cut loose in the Roaring Twenties, and being attractive to the opposite sex has since become the top teen interest.

Adolescent girls today are "overwhelmed with insidious feelings of unworthiness and low self-esteem as they obsess about boys and body image at the expense of more fruitful activities," says Brumberg, who calls it a national tragedy, since it occurs at a time when all kinds of new opportunities and freedoms are open to young women. Girls today wind up tense, uneasy, and vulnerable to a variety of behavioral problems and diseases, including eating disorders and sexually transmitted diseases.

Not that she would even consider putting the genie back in the bottle. She'd keep sexual liberalism but give it feminist footing, and she'd pay the creative efforts of young women some higher compliment than "I love your shoes."

Well, that's all for now. I got to go. Later, I real entry. Later