High school girls and shopgirls burst into laughter while recounting love or risqu stories, while talking about their flirtations, meeting men, or seeing lovers kiss; I have known schoolgirls going to lovers' lane in the Luxembourg Gardens just to laugh; and others going to the Turkish baths to make fun of the fat women with sagging stomachs and hanging breasts they saw there; scoffing at the female body, ridiculing men, laughing at love, are ways of disavowing sexuality: this laughter that defies adults is a way of overcoming one's own embarrassment; one plays with images and words to kill the dangerous magic of them: for example, I saw twelve year old students burst out laughing when they saw a Latin text with the word femur.