What's a Girl Gotta Do? Read Free Page A

you at lunch. And, well, you look upset about something.”
    I sighed again and opened my mouth to tell her – but just as I did, Evie coughed to signal the start of the meeting.
    â€œHey, everyone.” Her voice squeaked with nerves. She coughed and started again. “Hi, everyone.”
    The girls, all sitting in rows facing us, quietened respectfully.
    â€œThanks for coming.” Evie’s hands shook but her voice got stronger with every word. “So, in the last meeting, we decided we wanted to campaign for something. You’ve all put forward some ideas, and I thought today we could run through them and see if we could get a shortlist to vote on? There’s a lot here we could really get our teeth into… Can someone at the back dim the lights, please?”
    Someone scuttled to the light switch and plunged us into gloom. Evie clicked a laptop and the big white screen behind her lit up.
    â€œTrust Evie to make it all super-organized,” Amber whispered to me. “I bet you ten pounds she gets out a special pointy stick.”
    I smiled in the darkness. “When I hosted the last meeting, the only prep I did was sing ‘Eye of the Tiger’ to myself into the mirror,” I whispered back.
    â€œThink what would happen if we combined the pointy stick with ‘Eye of the Tiger’. I reckon you’ve just come up with an excellent strategy for taking over the world.”
    Just as we started laughing, Evie gestured to the screen behind her.
    â€œOkay, girls, here’s the first entry. Sonia put this forward.” Sonia, a short girl with incredibly long, blonde hair, nodded and smiled. “It’s a new aftershave advert that Sonia thinks we should campaign against. Hang on…” Evie fiddled with the mouse to click play. “Right, here it is.” She pointed to it with the handle of her umbrella, which was almost a pointy stick. I would’ve giggled if the video Evie was pointing at wasn’t so completely distressing.
    Loud edgy music blasted out as a girl and boy – both insanely good-looking – rolled around on a bed with exposed brickwork in the background. Then the boy flipped himself on top and started pinning the girl’s arms down as he kissed her more aggressively. She laughed, but tried to fight him off. My heartbeat had already quickened and I felt my insides turn in on themselves. This wasn’t good…this so wasn’t good. Then the boy reached into his jeans pocket and got out some of the aftershave, sprayed it on, and the girl stopped resisting. She started gasping and groaning as the guy kissed her neck and then it faded to black.
    There was a stunned silence. A cough the only thing punctuating it as the room digested what we’d just seen.
    â€œUmm, Sonia?” Evie asked. “Do you want to stand up and explain why you think we should use this as a starting point for a campaign?”
    She nodded, and stood, tucking some hair behind her ear.
    â€œYeah, so…I saw this on TV last night and, well, I think we can all agree it’s worrying. I mean it’s essentially normalizing force in regards to sex, even romanticizing abuse and rape in relationships…”
    And that’s all I heard before I saw Megan, a new member, stand up quietly and practically run out of the room. Her face was all red and pinched, like she was trying hard not to cry.
    I stood up too. Not many people seemed to have noticed, most were listening to Sonia.
    â€œI mean, I’m sure you all know that statistically, girls are more likely to get raped by someone they know – like a boyfriend or an ex. This advert is practically encouraging that. It’s basically saying ‘Buy our aftershave and it will help you abuse your girlfriend – she won’t even mind! She’ll like you pinning her down!’”
    Evie had noticed though, and silently nodded at me, encouraging me to follow Megan. So I stood