Girls Just Want to Be Plugged In -- to Everything

Julia lives in a large, two-story home in Pacific Palisades and attends the private Windward School in Mar Vista, whose Hollywood alums include Jason Schwartzman and Anna Paquin. Her father, Marty, a radiologist, runs the radiology departments in five hospitals, and her mother, Anne, left a career as a jewelry designer to stay at home with Julia and her sister, Robyn, 17. When Julia grows up, she said, she wants to be a trauma surgeon or a dance studio owner.

On a recent afternoon, Julia sat at her desk in her spacious, lavender room, beneath a dangling pair of oversized, red fuzzy dice, the medals she earned on her school's track-and-field team and a certificate from her karate school. She explained that she's not that into fashion and recently canceled her subscription to Elle Girl.

As with a lot of girls of her generation, Julia doesn't really adhere to gender stereotypes. She hangs out with a large group of boys who, she said, quote \o7constantly\f7 from "Wayne's World" and "Wayne's World 2." Thanks to them, she said, she has learned to appreciate the band Sum 41 and Johnny Knoxville's antics on the MTV show "Jackass." She's a black belt in karate and a big fan of sci-fi movies.

The poll showed that, like Julia, today's teens contradict long-held assumptions about gender. For example, the survey found that when it comes to offensive content, 66% of boys and girls ranked disrespecting women at the top of the list. Teen girls are especially facile with technology, in some cases more so than boys their age -- for example, 21% were open to the idea of watching a movie on an iPod, compared with 16% of teen boys.

Julia spoke as she scrolled through hundreds of downloaded songs as varied as the Japanese heavy rock band Dir En Grey to vocalist Josh Groban.

"I have other things that are pop-ish, like Ashley Parker Angel," she said, her speech lilting upward as if each thought were a question. "I think he was part of the band O-Town? But I'm not sure. Also? If I see a movie and I really like the soundtrack? I'll get it? Like 'Underworld: Evolution'? It's all this, like, really, heavy rock stuff? But it's totally cool."

Julia spends hours surfing iTunes and almost never buys CDs. She heard from a friend about H.I.M. but didn't "get hooked" on them until after she pulled up their MySpace.com page and downloaded some of their songs.