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Susan Best
 Towelhead is a challenging film about 13-year old Lebanese-American Jasira, entranced and bewildered by her sexual awakening and the dangerous men and careless women that fail to guide her.
Director: Alan Ball
Starring: Summer Bishil, Peter Macdissi, Toni Collette
Rated: MA Adapted by Alan Ball from a novel by Alicia Erian, Towelhead reveals Jasira’s life of quiet desperation after her childish and self-centred mother sends her to live with her abusive father in suburban hell. A lack of authenticity in the adults closest to her means that Jasira has no way of differentiating between her true self, needs, and desires and those that are projected onto her and imposed on her. This is articulated in a scene when Jasira confides in her ally and neighbour Melina (Toni Collette). “I acted like I wanted to even though I didn’t,” she says, of an encounter with a far less trustworthy neighbour, Travis Vuoso. Melina asks why and Jasira replies, “I don’t know. I thought I was supposed to". Towelhead is ambitious tackling everything from the politics of the Gulf War to racism but it specifically raises two key questions. What drives a pubescent girl to offer herself up to those that would exploit her and why are some grown men sexually attracted to young girls? Certainly girls in the bloom of youth are lovely to behold but why do some men appreciate their beauty as they might appreciate a work of art while others indulge an urge to act out at whatever level they manage to justify to themselves or get away with? In the character of Jasira, Towelhead captures the cheap thrill, complexity and confusion of a troubled and attractive girl discovering the currency of her sexual appeal and its power to get her the attention and affirmation she craves. However, the fly in the ointment for such a girl is that even while she goes for the pay-off she registers in some deep strata of her being that she is betraying herself and being betrayed by those around her. As to the question of why some men find young girls so compelling, Travis offers a portrait of a man harbouring self-loathing beneath his confident front. Well beyond what appears to be moral deficiency lurks a deep sense of inadequacy that makes Jasira, inexperienced and unthreatening, so appealing. Jasira’s low self esteem makes her easier to manipulate and more unwitting to the games that an older and wiser woman would refuse. She requires little of substance and is willing to engage in exchanges that promise to bolster the fragile sense of self of both parties even if she doesn’t fully understand the cost. For a man such as Travis, lacking both maturity and integrity, Jasira is irresistible. This sexualising of the innocence, powerlessness and play of a younger other is at the core of paedophilia, a diabolical manover that enables the perpetrator to avoid facing their own sense of impotence, fear of intimacy and spiritual bankruptcy. But it’s not all bleak in Jasira’s universe. Her growing relationship with her black boyfriend offers her a tender if risky connection with an equally entranced and bewildered equal, a girlfriend from school gives her a taste of friendship, and her concerned neighbours Melina and husband Gil show Jasira the kind of love she needs most. In fact Gil stands as the one real man is Jasira’s life. He alone gives us a role-model of masculinity we can respect and admire. He is a man of self-worth who sees Jasira’s vulnerability without the need to eroticise or prey on it. Instead he approaches her with an awareness of his responsibility to protect her. Towelhead is an important and timely film, one that presents pressing issues that sorely need honest discussion and reflection. It reveals a culture in which the objectification and exploitation of women and girls is rampant and too often accepted by both genders in place of an experience of authentic identity and sexual union.
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