The media will never tire of milking this “hook-up culture” phenomenon. Apparently, oral sex is the new goodnight kiss among teenagers. I feel like I’ve heard this story at least three times a year for the past five years. ABC’s Good Morning America warns that “good girls” from affluent suburban families are attending oral sex parties and engaging in prostitution. Renee at Womanist Musings covered the class and racial aspects of the story. That marginalized girls of color have sex is not news. What do you expect from those chicks? BUT YOUR PRETTY WHITE, MAYBE ASIAN, DAUGHTER IS GIVING BLOW JOBS!
Well-to-do families produce sons as well as daughters; do they not? Where are the documentaries about boys who do girls’ homework in exchange for sex? Just as I’d be horrified to learn that my daughter sells her body for designer handbags; I’d be appalled if I found out my son paid his chem lab partner for head. It takes two to tango. But boys are never featured in these sex panic stories. Presumably, people are upset that girls are “degrading themselves” sexually. Degrading themselves. There’s no outrage directed at the boys allegedly doing the degrading (no, I don’t think sex degrades girls inherently). I suppose we can’t prevent our sons from becoming teenage johns. :shrug:
The media doesn’t have any interest in reducing this behavior. If they did, they’d approach the topic by addressing the boys as well as the girls. Instead, they recognize that naughty girls put asses in the seats and unbalanced coverage of teenagers’ sex lives confirms sexist viewers’ prejudices.
Sorry, media. Until people start getting married and having kids at 13 again (preferably while living in sod houses and farming the land), I will NOT be surprised or up in arms.
DANGER!!! WEALTHY, PRETTY PEOPLE DO “BAD” THINGS SOMETIMES!!!!
What came on after this, a special on inner city teen moms on welfare?
These stories always show a fundamental misunderstanding of how adolescent society works. I have no doubt that this sort of behavior is happening at at least one school in the U.S. But that doesn’t translate, at all, to it happening in every clique at every school. Trends come to schools through a few girls and boys who lead some percentage of the student body. To think that anything that one hears of happening at a certain school is happening at every school, with every student, is ludicrous.
It’s pretty sad when the weather is the most insightful part of your show.
What a shit story. Quite apart from the racial erasure (I love that “middle class girls” is secret code for “white”), there is no discussion of consent here.
The girls interviewed talk about boys pressuring girls into sexual activity (that’s the coercion->rape spectrum), but that doesn’t even warrant a mention. The crime is doing it, whether or not you actually want to, and are free NOT to.
And of course, no concern for a culture that begs, wheedles, cajoles and threatens adolescent girls to look (like a gross, pornulated idea of)”sexual” at all times, just pants-pissing when their daughters respond in what really is a logical fashion. “okay, sex and money are what I need to be important or successful…”
Oh for fuck’s sake, this ISN’T in the least bit new! Ohh, the girls are being sexy and sexual, in direct response to our culture’s pressure!
I wish for once, that there would be a huuuge media hoopla over *gasp* BOYS going to oral sex parties and ‘sullying their purity by bad sexual acts’. Then I could respect the media outlets that have been putting this same f’ing story out for at least 9 years. Because I recall a very uncomfortable conversation with my mother over this topic, which she gleaned fear from a news story.
I noticed that the actual stats submitted in the documentary (rather than anecdotal scare tactics) were not that scary or surprising to me. “50% of girls aged 15-19 have had oral sex – maybe more!” Well, okay. That doesn’t sound unreasonable. I was having oral sex at 15, as were probably about half my friends. Some of the stuff attached to that was not so nice (asshole boyfriends, inadvisable drunken hookups), but I never felt like we were too young for the sex itself. High school=sex + drama, I don’t think that’s ever going to change.
My mom is always bemoaning the loss of innocence “these days,” and I never cease to be shocked/amused/grossed out by her inability to think things through. She actually got pregnant in high school — lost the baby, but still was forbidden from walking at the graduation ceremony because of the shame, the shame. But things are worse now? Hmmmm. Clearly, wringing our hands about giving up the pink is the way to go. It was such an effective deterrent back in ’66. Seriously, there is nothing new under the damn sun.