Adolescent Sexuality by Dr. Karen Rayne

Another of the on-going and always-funny comparisons between sex-ed and drivers-ed. Because, as we all know, everyone ends up with a lisence at the end of both. And of course I love Zits.

After Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, I am ready for something on a lighter note. I recently ran across a fun comic called the Invisible Life of Poet by Christopher Wilson. Below is the one I found first - although many of the others are worth browsing through too.

Germans take sex education far more seriously than Americans. That is to say, they go ahead and bite the bullet and do real sex education rather than stuffing their fingers in their ears and humming loudly whenever anyone brings up the issue. This was made loud and clear to me in my recent time in Germany.

I spent the majority of my time on vacation in small, quaint German villages. Here’s a view of one of them from the window of a ruined castle.

And here’s another view that I saw posted everywhere through the same small, quaint village.

The top center means something along the lines of “Safety makes it more fun!,” in the lower right “Make it with it,” and in the lower left “Don’t give AIDS a chance.”

Now, not only do we almost never see condom advertisements in public in the US, we certainly never see them posted all over small towns. I’m delighted by this open conversation, and supported by humor! (I mean, really, condoms are supposed to go on bananas, not lemons, yes?)

And, as a fun side note, I found this image while searching for a good reproduction of the advertisement above and just had to include it. Gotta love that pubic hair!

I loved Juno.  I thought it was a smart, interesting, and real portrayal of teenage pregnancy.  What struck me as surprising was that Juno is really a movie for adults about a teenager.  It’s more common to see movies about teenagers for teenagers.

There are plenty of positive, even rave reviews of Juno.  Mostly the praise centers around fully-formed portrayals of smart teenagers (mostly of Juno and her boyfriend Paulie).  Other aspects worthy of praise are the portrayals of the relationship between the adopting parents, the discussion of the difficulties of adoption, and the portrayal of the parent/teen relationship between Juno and her parents.

The negative reviews of Juno - although there are few of them - mostly remark on the “unrealistic” nature of Juno’s wit, that is that the character has an adult’s wit rather than a teenager’s wit.  While I sympathize with this critic (particularly the first 15 to 20 minutes seem like one sarcastic, well-timed comment after another), I disagree with it.  Almost all of the characters in this movie are particularly witty and sarcastic, and Juno does not seem to be more able in this area than her family and friends.  This is probably true of most real teenagers as well - their sarcasm and wit are generally similar to the people who they are surrounded with.

The sarcasm and wit, interestingly, extend to everyone except for Vanessa, the woman who Juno has chosen to be her baby’s adoptive mother.  Vanessa is also portrayed as the one most capable parent for the baby - not to say that all of the other characters wouldn’t be passable parents, just not as good as Vanessa.  I haven’t heard much discussion about this particular point, and I wonder if the screenwriter, Diablo Cody, meant anything by it?

A friend has a teenage son. She was trying to figure out something to make him for Christmas. Of course, this is a very individual thing, and different teenagers like different kinds of things. But here are some ideas of things to make for teenagers:

• food (cookies, especially sugar cookies cut and decorated to look like a dinosaur eating Santa)
• hats, scarfs, mittens, etc.
• blankets/quilts/pillow covers
• poetry or an illustrated story book (again, it can be digitally created, so long as it’s fun and funny)
• cell phone/MP3 cases
• light switch plate covers (just get an image they like, glue it on to a plain white one, cover with clear contact paper, and cut out the little hole for the switch to poke through - ta da!)
• Christmas decorations
• socks/slippers
• posters (created digitally and then framed, of course)

Because here’s the thing: all of these things can be made (a) black, with a skull and crossbones on them, (b) pastel with lots of ruffles, and (c) everything in between.

The point is that teenagers are just people too. And like most people, they tend to like things that are made with them in mind. So figure out what it is that you feel like you can make, then get into your teenager’s head. Connect what you can make with what the teenager in question is into. Then just do it. If it’s a total flop, well, tell them that your second choice was to choreograph and perform an interpretive dance of their potty training experience. I guarantee your present will start looking better immediately.

Okay, so this is really, truly funny. I’m very impressed with the writing, the truthfulness, and the humor. of the ones I’ve watched so far, my favorite is #5 The First Time. It’s honest, it’s funny, it’s effective. I’d highly recommend it to teenagers. However, there are others that I’m not so fond of–like the most recent one, #10 Dating. This episode is all tongue-in-check, but for someone who doesn’t recognize that, it has some potentially hurtful images and suggestions.

But regardless of whether you recommend the show to your teenagers or not, you should watch them yourself. They give an opening into how teenagers talk about and joke about sex that has the potential to be eye-opening and enlightening.

They post new episodes twice a month.

I have introduced several of my readers to the fabulous comic strip Zits about a 15-year-old boy and his family and friends. It’s a great strip. Now I’d like to introduce you to a lesser-known comic strip called Preteena (or PreTeena). It’s about a 10-year-old girl and her family and friends. What I like most about it is probably that it’s a funny strip that just happens to have young people as the focus. Recently Teena and her friend Stick have been talking about re-naming Thanksgiving to Givethanksing, because that makes more sense.

Here is today’s strip:

Happy Givethanksing, folks! I’ll be back on Monday.

You’ve gotta love this. Talk about taking wearing a condom to a whole new level!

These are all images taken during a fashion show at the Fourth Annual China Reproductive Health New Technologies & Products Expo. It was, rather unimaginatively, sponsored by Guilin Latex Factory, China’s largest condom manufacturer. But honestly, I can forgive a large amount of crass mass marketing when it results in wedding dresses made out of condoms.

Send some of these pictures to your teenager - and get started talking about how wearing a condom is both practical and stylish!

For Better Or For Worse is a great comic strip. The author, Lynn Johnston, is in partial retirement, so some of the strips that are running now are from the early years of the strip. This is one of those early strips (it also ran yesterday).

What a lovely image of how not to talk with kids about sex! You always need to find out just what they’re asking before you start answering - and then do so in as simple terms as possible!

Good morning, folks, and TGIF! I’m all worn out from the week, so I’ll let Mr. Scott and Mr. Borgman do the heavy-lifting for me.

Yesterday’s Zits strip (8/25/07) was a great example of a parent sharing too much personal information - and a legitimate response from their teenager. While in this example is about body hair, the same thing applies for sex and sexuality. Let’s just put it this way: teenagers generally think their parent’s intimate body hair and sexual engagements are about equal amounts of gross.