Coming of Age in Samoa
took the news that a girl had reached puberty, a woman had had a baby, a boat had come from Ofu, or a pig had been killed by a falling boulder with the same insouciance—all bits of diverting gossip; and any girl could give accurate testimony as to the development of any other girl in her neighbourhood or relationship groups. Nor was puberty the immediate forerunner of sex experience. Perhaps a year, two or even three years would pass before a girl's shyness would relax, or her figure appeal to the roving eye of some older boy. To be a virgin's first lover was considered the high point of pleasure and amorous virtuosity, so that a girl's first lover was usually not a boy of her own age, equally shy and inexperienced. The girls in this group were divided into little girls like Lua, and gawky overgrown Tolo, who said frankly that they did not want to go walking with boys, and girls like Pala, who while still virgins, were a little weary of their status and eager for amorous experience. That they remained in this passive untouched state so long was mainly due to the conventions of love-making, for while a youth liked to woo a virgin, he feared ridicule as a cradle-snatcher, while the girls also feared the dreaded accusation of tautala laititi ("presuming above one's age"). The forays of more seasoned middle-aged marauders among these very young girls were frowned upon, and so the adolescent girls were given a valuable interval in which to get accustomed to new work, greater isolation and an unfamiliar physical development.
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