They are growing up in a country in which independence is applauded, teenage dating is unremarkable, and hanging out is a high school ritual. And they relish those freedoms.
Yet they also belong to a culture in which a family's honor and standing in the community rest squarely on the daughters. The slightest breach of a rigid decorum - a "lapse" as minor as sitting on a front stoop chatting with a boy - can bring disgrace not just on the girl, but on her entire family.
Teenagers intent on dating must negotiate elaborate ground rules with their parents to protect female honor while accommodating adolescent necessity. Some Cambodian families brook no such compromise and try to remove their daughters from temptation by sending them to live with relatives outside the city.
For Cambodian American girls growing up in Philadelphia, home to one of the country's largest Cambodian communities, these dueling demands translate into an identity that cleaves sharply in two.
"We know we're Cambodian. We try to go by Cambodian traditions, but we're in America, too," said Sophorn Loth, 17, a lissome, raven-haired girl from South Philadelphia who wears a gold necklace bearing her name. "Sometimes I wish we could go back. It would be easier for me there."
In Cambodia, she said, she would have to obey only one culture. Here, she and her friends must navigate two.
Like the Apsara, they must strike a precarious balance. And as they do, they have much more at stake than their male counterparts.
According to Cambodian tradition, a girl is like white wool, a boy like a gem. Wool, once dirtied, can never be completely cleansed. A gem can always be polished even brighter.
"We ask ourselves, 'Why can't we be American and still Cambodian?' " asked Chandy Tin, 16, a sophomore at Central High School. "There's no answer, only a question."
