Shorter Washington Post Style section: Intrepid writer Laura Sessions Stepp discovers a species of young males known as “players.” Stepp puts her Washington Post expense account to good use by accompanying some teens to their high school dance for some on-the-scene reporting:

“It’s not that these guys play hard to get,” Erin Dall-Silver says at the prom. “It’s just that once someone has ‘em, another girl wants ‘em. Girls want what they can’t have. At least I do.” Dall-Silver is Huston’s date of the evening. Tall and regal in a strapless, tight, white Jessica McClintock gown, she says she and Huston have only been “talking” for three months and that she knew before she asked Huston to the prom that he wouldn’t stick by her side. “I’d be upset if I found out he was kissing someone,” she admits. She spends a lot of time at the prom looking for her escort.

As the prom winds down, a girl Tigney has flirted with more than once wanders over to talk to him again. Her date sees this and walks over as well, placing his right hand over the date’s right breast.

One player signaling to another, perhaps: “This girl is my property.”

This 2,668-word, front-page Style Section article manages to quote poet A.E. Housman, Johnny Depp in Cry Baby, and social psychologist Daniel Kruger in order to expose a startling fact: There are bad boys who attract good girls by treating them like dirt. You heard it here first.

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