Adolescent Sexuality by Dr. Karen Rayne

Wow! I must say, I did not think that SXSW would be what it was. Thanks so much to Wendy for taking the reigns while I was away!

SXSW was:

First: an amazing networking experience. I think my favorite online-sex-blogger connection was with Lux Alptraum. Lux writes Boinkology - a blog all about the science of sex. I highly recommend you check it out.

Second: included some amazing new friends. We danced the night away (or at least closed down the bars) three nights in a row!

Third: taught some lovely little insights into the sordid underworld of sex, blogging, and gossip. I must say, I did not expect this geeky-world to be so full of intrigue and drama.

Needless to say, I had a blast! More later in the week - after I begin to recover five nights of lost sleep!

Generally children under 9-years-old ask questions about (1) things they have heard and seen grown-ups talking about and doing and (2) things their friends have heard and seen grown-ups talking about and doing. So the long and short of it, if the child is asking, as the adult you have to answer because the kid has some personal knowledge they’re trying to work through. But before you jump headlong into an elaborate, wordy explanation of oral sex and mutual pleasure, stop and take a breather. Ask the kiddo some questions to get a clear picture of just exactly what they are asking. It’s probably nothing like what you assumed.

However, if your kid really is asking what you were worried they were asking, you can feel free to say: A man’s sperm meets up with a woman’s egg to make a baby, and then the baby grows in the woman’s tummy. If questioned further, you can even say that the sperm and the egg meet in the woman’s tummy because that’s where the baby grows. Further question can be followed up by saying that the man’s sperm gets to the woman’s tummy by the man’s penis going inside a woman’s vagina and leaving some sperm inside her. That will probably be enough to seriously gross most kids out. Follow that description up by saying that’s an adult thing to do, kind of like driving, voting, and drinking alcohol.

Particularly in this age of visual images, so many of them sexual, bombarding our lives, it is important to address what your kids are seeing around them. Teach them to analyze and criticize hyper-sexual images. Feel free to talk about why it’s inappropriate for children to wear make-up and bikinis, why it’s silly to sell widgets by putting almost-naked women (and occasionally men) on top of said widget, and how girls and boys bodies are different and how they evolve into the differences in men’s and women’s bodies. Feel free to talk about how it’s silly that some people think marriage is only for one man and one woman and that it would make more sense for any two people to be able to be married, whether they’re boys or girls. (Most kids have an innate agreement with this point, because they’re generally focused on same-gender friendships at that age.)

But before I leave off this topic for the moment, I want to impress on you the lightness of most children. They, by and large, haven’t been exposed to much sexuality in other people. They may or may not be enjoying their own sexuality yet. So before they’re 9 or so, they just don’t need much in the way of explanation - just what it is, and whether it’s okay or not. It’s that 9-and-up set that start needing and wanting more explanation and conversation.

Dove has launched a major self-esteem campaign, aimed at reaching 5 million young women by 2010. I’ve posted two of the commercials created by this campaign (Evolution and Onslaught).

The goals of Dove’s campaign are good:

The Dove Self-Esteem Fund (DSEF) was established to raise the self-esteem of girls and young women to make them feel more beautiful and confident every day. The DSEF is part of the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty, a global effort designed to widen today’s stereotypical view of beauty. A global project, the Fund consists of a network of local country initiatives linked in strategy and direction by a global steering group. In each country, the DSEF supports a specific charitable organization to help foster self-esteem.

There are parts of the campaign that I really like, like the commercials. They also have a series called the Dove Reality Diaries. This is a series of videos and blog posts by four teenage girls about the issues they face - mostly focusing on body-image-related issues. These diary entries (written and video) are real and realistic.

I am, mostly, supportive of what Dove is trying to do here. I think these videos and diaries have the potential to really touch many parents and teenage girls. The on-line tools for parents and for teenagers are interesting, and has some good parts to it. (I do wonder about the “cool” factor of the site for teenagers. I mean, how many girls who actually have self-esteem issues go looking for a site that will help boost it?)

But I have one huge, major, ginormous issue with every bit of the website itself. There are no images of teenage girls who are not skinny, clear-skinned beauties. The pictures of mothers are generally of real women. So where are the real teenage girls? I’m not suggesting that the girls in the pictures aren’t actually real, or that their stories are not true. Only that they don’t match up with the majority of teenage girls or the majority of teenage girls’ stories.

(I mean, common. One of the girls in the Diaries site is trying to fend off her mother from making her get a nose job for graduation. Another just moved to further her modeling career, and is morning her loss of friends. A third spends a full hour doing her make-up before she leaves the house every single day. She agonizes over her friends’ boyfriends liking her more than them. While these are all true stories, they are not true for the majority of teenage girls.)

So I hope that Dove continues with it’s campaign. And I hope that, with time, they bring far more realism into their stories and images.

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?

So Jamie Lynn Spears is pregnant. At sixteen. She announced this apparently news-worthy information through OK! Magazine, and everyone from the Huffington Post to MTV feels compelled to weigh in on this one. So, I figured, why not me too? I mean, this is clearly the biggest teenage sex scandal of 2007 (given how close to the end of the year it is, I feel pretty comfortable saying that).

So people are outraged. They are railing against Britney for being a bad role model older sister. They are railing against Jamie Lynn’s mother Lynn Spears for not teaching either of her daughters about birth control or morality (depending on which side of that fence they’re on). They are railing against Jamie Lynn for not making good choices. They are railing against abstinence-only “sex education” for not teaching about birth control. They are railing against comprehensive sex education for not teaching teenagers to wait until marriage to have sex. The list goes on.

But here’s the thing: about 750,000 teenagers get pregnant in the United States every year. About half that number of teenagers give birth every year. Some of those teenagers are actually pre-teenagers, and are as young as 10 or 11. What I’m trying to say is that Jamie Lynn is hardly alone. While I understand that it useful for people to latch on to one emblem of the problem and focus on her, it is inappropriate to do that in this case.

Yelling and screaming our heads off about what a poor mother Lynn Spears is, about what a poor mother and sister Britney Spears is, and how horrible it is that Jamie Lynn Spears is pregnant will do nothing to help the real issue of teenage pregnancy or teenage parenting.

On the other hand, teaching teenagers real information about sex will address the issue at hand.  So let’s spend our energy doing that instead.

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.

Today, I have no voice. Literally. We’re passing a little cold around our house, and it seems to have hit me the worst. (Hence the late post today - sorry about that!) So yesterday afternoon as I was teaching my second class of the day, my voice disintegrated into nothing. I didn’t realize how much I use my voice at home - I have two children, a puppy, and and older dog. I constantly interact verbally with these four small creatures. Not to mention my husband delighting in my silence - it is a very occasional thing around here that he gets the the last word - and even rarer that he gets the only word!

So what, you’re probably asking, does this have to do with teenagers or sex?

Well, because it reminds me of when I was a teenager. I talked a lot then too, but I wasn’t listened to very often. It hurts not to be listened to - either because of your age or your vocal cords.

My brother, 17 years old, is feeling like teenagers are discriminated against. My stepmother tells me that he voices his distress over this loudly and somewhat belligerently - just like I used to do! She said she was actually surprised and impressed that I still am focused on teenagers. When my teenage self that I would make teenagers my life’s work, she didn’t take me seriously.

Teenager’s voices are overlooked, ignored, and not taken seriously. I’m tired of this trend.  It’s one of the reasons I do the work I do.

Late last night my dear partner (you remember, the city planner?) asked if I remembered the doll called something like Betsy Busty - the doll whose arm you twisted and her breasts grew. I admit, I jeered at him. But since we have a fast Internet connection, he was able to prove his point before I had even gotten a good laugh up and running. I give you: Growing Up Skipper and Growing Up Ginger.
You can kind of see the instructions on the Ginger box, but here’s the easier-to-read version: twist Skipper’s or Ginger’s left arm, and her breasts grow larger and she gets taller (her waist lengthens). Apparently there was some controversy at the time (1975), but Skipper still went into production. Then later came Ginger.

I am, I admit, rather stunned by the outrageousness of this. The body image issues. The inappropriate puberty expectations. The bizarre plastic torso. I could go on.

Did you have a Growing Up Skipper/Ginger doll when you were a child? If you didn’t, you probably did have some toy that you would never buy your child - as times change, so do our perception of the appropriateness of toys. So what toy(s) did you have that would be considered inappropriate by today’s standards, either for safety or body image or some other reason?

The Washington Post’s technology columnist recently wrote about a new brand of camera that - you guessed it! - automatically washes away wrinkles and slims the person in the picture. Here’s what he says about the process:

When they work, both can generate a photographic likeness that looks more attractive than the real you — a SuperYou that you can post on Facebook, MySpace, Match.com or any other site.

Nice, huh?

Well, either that or completely over-the-top, feeding into the negative body image, portrayal of a PretendYou. I’m inclined to suggest the latter.

On the slimming mode, you can even choose one of three levels of slimness you would like the camera to impose on this soon-to-be tortured image.

Here’s what the columnist says in the end about these cameras:

Neither of these cameras will make a regular schmo look like a supermodel. That still requires other forms of technological intervention — cosmetics, injections, implants.

But both can cater to people’s vanity at a low cost. That makes them a pretty smart business move for manufacturers. This kind of photo fakery — I’m sorry, embellishment — also fits in with the overall evolution of digital cameras. As easy as some photo-album programs are, people can still be intimidated by the prospect of cleaning up their shots on the computer; some would rather press a button on the camera to have that work done automatically.

So why not build cameras that know more of the editing tricks creative photographers have used on their computers? If a camera can make people look thinner and younger than their physical selves, why not have it also whiten their teeth, dye their hair and blot out their birthmarks?

You will, however, have to know when to stop upgrading your image. At some point, you’ll have to meet people who know you only as a younger, slimmer, blemish-free version of yourself. They could be shocked to see how scruffy you look in real life — unless they’ve been even more aggressive about polishing their own portraits.

Indeed. These camera features sound clunky and not-very-useful in the first place, kind of like a lot of words strung together into-a-meta-word. In the second place, they cater to a kind of image-oriented self-centeredness that I find appalling.

I understand if you want to look your absolute best in your pictures - who doesn’t? But that’s completely different from looking well…completely different in your pictures.