A pragmatic explanation for why dating older boyfriends was deviant was one based on the law: because the law defines these relationships as illegal, they are deviant. Even though most of the girls had only vague understandings of what the actual law was in their state, they all had an awareness that a law existed, and as result, viewed their relationships with older boyfriends as deviant.
Twenty-year-old Amanda told me that, when she was 16, she and her 23-year-old boyfriend, Robby, were so concerned about breaking the law that they looked the statute in the state where they lived:
That’s one of the things that me and Robby were talking about before we got together, was what are people going to think, and is this okay. I went to the library and looked in the law book and saw that it was 15 and 19, you know, a 15-year-old girl/19-year-old boy is the limit. If you have a 15-year-old and a 20-year-old, it’s statutory rape. But once you’re 16, you can go out with someone who’s any age. We made sure of that before we started really going in public and doing whatever.
Because they worked together, their primary concern was that their co-workers would think they were doing something wrong. Before they started officially “going-out,” they discussed the potential problems that might arise: