I recently read Live Nude Girl: my life as an object by Kathleen Rooney.  The book chronicles Rooney’s experiences in being a live nude model, discusses the history of nude modeling, and delves into the psychology of nudity in general.  I quite enjoyed the book.

What I felt was missing completely, and quite a glaring oversight I thought, was a conversation about how nudity, nakedness, being without clothing, grows and changes as we age.  How, when, and where our parents and our teachers and our friends and perfect strangers direct us towards being clothed rather than not.

Babies start out not really caring what they’re wearing.  Oh, they might have opinions if their clothing is too tight or too hot or too cold, but really, that’s about it.  Being naked is fine, so long as they’re comfortable.  At some point in the following years, children learn to be shy about people seeing their unclothed bodies.

Some of that is good, of course, because we are expected to be clothed in public.  Even little babies are expected to be clothed in public.  When my daughter was just a week or two old, my husband took her up to his office to meet his coworkers.  It was the height of summer, and she was wearing just a diaper with optional blanket.  A woman walked by, and told my husband what a cute son he had and asked the baby’s name.  My husband thanked her, and said her name was Julia.  The woman was obviously horrified as soon as she learned she was looking at a female baby’s chest rather than a male baby’s chest.  She said, in utter repulsion, “But she’s naked!  Can you DO that?”  Thus began my daughter’s inexorable march towards clothing.

By the time they are teenagers, of course, young people are rarely naked outside of the home.*  (I want to be clear: I have nothing against nudity, in fact I think nudity is good for people.  But the majority of places in our American culture are not clothing-optional, but clothing-required, and it is this overwhelming trend that I am discussing.)  In fact, by the time they are teenagers, many young people are not even naked in their homes other than in the bathroom or their private bedrooms.  Plenty of parents become uncomfortable with their children’s evolving puberty and either ask or shame them into covering up in the home.  Of course plenty of children also cover up of their own accord, even amongst parents who continue to be perfectly comfortable with nudity.

The issue with nudity in the home, and how parents react to it, is that the beginning of many young people’s comfort and awareness of their bodies and their body image comes from their immediate family.  Of course a substantial portion comes from peers, but the family can impact young people far in excess of what parents are fully aware of.  Those little side comments that many parents don’t really think about, like “Oh, look at those!” and “You’re beautiful even though you’re tall,” and “I shouldn’t see that!” can have life-long effects on the way young people feel about their body and their nudity all the way through adulthood.

We are at our most vulnerable when we are naked, and a parent having any sort of negative reaction or surprise to their child’s nudity can have huge impacts.  Instead, parents who feel additional guidance about modesty is needed, should wait to have those conversations until a time when their child or teenager is fully dressed, and the conversation needs to be on a cognitive level rather than an emotional one.  In fact, any reaction to an young person’s nudity or evolving puberty that is spoken by the parent as soon as they feel it is probably poorly conveyed and has the potential for causing a lifetime of hurt.

B0dy shape, size, and development is a particularly touchy subject - often for both young person and parent.  So take some time with it, and let the conversation develop slowly over time rather than rushing into it.  There is plenty of time.

*Naturists aside, of course.

Today is the last in this semester’s series of my college students’ Sexuality in the Media projects.  We’ve had three so far (body shapes, teen parents, and LGBTQQIA).  But today’s project is easily my favorite of the semester.  The beauty of both the image and the message are both stunning.  Melissa Hernandez created this image with the assistance and cameras from her friend, photographer Kat Bevel.

These images are, of course, riffs on the well-known shot from the movie American Beauty:

Thank you, Melissa, for your beautiful creativity.

Today we are continuing on the fabulous media images my students created this semester.  Earlier this week I posted images about teen parents about LGBTQQIA in media.

Today’s student, Faith Jaschke, was looking at representations of body shapes and sizes in advertising.  She found over the semester that there is a substantial amount of unhealthy uniformity in media images, so for her project she created advertising for known brands using her personal friends.  Many of my students focus on body shape and size in their media projects, but I was particularly impressed with Faith’s final projects’ artistry and composition.  In addition to showing real bodies, the pictures are both interesting and engaging to look at.

(The prior two projects used already existing images, Faith’s project and the one I will post tomorrow are original photography.)

Yesterday I showed you the first of this semester’s Sex in the Media projects - and now here is the second!

As part of their Sex in the Media project, my students often investigate how teen parents are represented in the media.  It’s a mixed bag, frankly, with sometimes glassy-eyed-approval of the beauty and sweetness of teen pregnancy, as with Jamie Lynn Spears, mixed in with dreadful don’t-get-pregnant-or-your-life-will-be-over stories.  Neither of these allow for the far more common and far more complicated mixed-bag that is parenting (particularly unplanned parenting) for anyone of any age.  So when a student wants to analyze teen parenting, I talk with them about what a positive media image of teen parenting might look like.  It’s not the happy-go-lucky, everything-is-coming-up-roses view that we often get from celebrity teen parents, because even though that is positive, it’s also unrealistic.  But teenagers have the capacity to be good parents, particularly when they are offered the level of support that any new parent needs - which is a whole lot.

Alexis Garcia took my words to heart this semester when she was creating her final project.  She did a really amazing job of creating images for a public service campaign that, while acknowledging the hardship of teen parenting, tries to point the parents of those teen parents in the right direction.

For those of you who have been reading my blog for some time, you may remember that about this time last year I posted three projects from my college students that were positive representations of sexuality in the media (Avant Garde Bodies, condom/bubble gum print ads, and True Beauty).  I have four more student projects to show you this year, and I am very excited about them!

My community college students spend their semester looking at and analyzing media representations of sex and sexuality.  The majority of the ones they turn up are pretty negative.  As an attempt to counter-act this societal tendency towards sexualization, gender stereotypes, and more, I ask the students to create their own media image in the form of an advertisement, a music video, a billboard spread, a blog or website, or whatever other medium they are personally drawn to.  These four students were thoughtful and creative in their approach to sexuality in the media, and I appreciate their time and dedication in creating these images.

Today’s project is by a student who prefers to stay anonymous, so I’ll just call her L.  She focused on representations of LGBTQQIA individuals in the media.  One of the things she noticed, which really bugged her, was that these representations were segregated into special categories - they were only pictured representing themselves rather than the standard or generic family.  So, for her project, L created generic advertising campaigns that used gay families where strait families might typically be pictured.  Two of her images are below:

I deeply appreciate L’s vision of a world where the families as they are shown here are considered “normal” enough to be included in standard-issue advertising.

One of my best friends is named Alice.  She is an amazingly strong, beautiful woman.  Years ago - just out of college - she was in an abusive relationship.  Part of Alice’s healing process has included ongoing writing about her experience.  The following is something she wrote recently, and gave me permission to post here.

___________________________________________________

I remember we were not watching The Elephant Man.

I had just returned from a weekend away, and my boyfriend and I were reuniting by lounging around his house watching a movie about actors acting in The Elephant Man. Watching actors act as actors was a nice enough way to spend the evening, but when my boyfriend reached for me, I cringed, knowing what was coming. I cringed, he pulled me closer, and in a split second I made the decision to stop resisting.

I didn’t want to have sex with my boyfriend because I knew it was going to hurt, because it always hurt, sometimes just a little, sometimes worse than any other pain I had ever experienced. The pain scared me, made my body involuntarily tense, my face frozen in terror. Sometimes I rolled to the other side of the bed, trembling with fear. This, he ignored. Sometimes I tried a little indirect verbal resistance. “I’m not in the mood,” I would say, or, “Maybe later?” This did not stop him, either, just added humiliation to the pain when he did it to me anyway.

I was afraid to outright refuse, because the few times I did say “No!” or “Stop!” he flew into a rage that was worse for me than the pain. Mostly, he tapped into my natural fear of displeasing a loved one, yelled at me for making him feel bad, told me I was mean and selfish. “Sexual criticism hurts me very deeply,” he once explained. Since refusing to have sex with him or even asking him to do it in a less painful way counted as criticism, I had no choices.

This is a catch-22 of an abusive relationship: Your partner intends to have sex with you even though you don’t want to. You could choose not to fight back, in which case he will rape you, and if you report the rape, you will be told that it isn’t really rape, since you didn’t fight back. Or, you could choose to fight back, in which case you might stop him from raping you, but you will be charged with domestic violence for hitting someone who had not hit nor threatened to hit you. Maybe you fight back and he rapes you anyway and then you’re raped AND beaten and maybe then the authorities will believe you, but isn’t that a high price to pay for belief?

It didn’t happen quite exactly like that for me, since the thought of hitting him never crossed my mind; he was my BOYFRIEND, besides being TWICE MY SIZE, I mean HELLO, I’m not STUPID. Besides, I didn’t realize that what he was doing was abuse, because I was one of those people who believed that abuse means hitting. And I was afraid to tell anyone what was happening, because I assumed it was my fault for having sex outside of marriage.

It’s sort of like if someone took a wooden kitchen spoon that still had splinters on it, set it on fire, and shoved it really hard up your nose over and over again while laughing at your screams of pain, and you’re afraid to tell anyone, because you have it in your head that your entire worth as a person depends on your never having had a spoon in your nose.

If you are in a situation like this, please, please, PLEASE tell someone. If there is no one in your life you can trust, call RAINN at 1-800-656-HOPE and you will be connected with someone you can talk to. It is abuse, even if he isn’t hitting you. It is rape, even if you aren’t hitting him. It is not your fault, even if you’ve also done it with him consensually. Telling is the first step in helping things be okay. Good luck, and I wish you much love in your life.

My community college sex ed classes ended today.  My students took a test on Tuesday and, among other more content-related questions, I asked them about their experiences in the class.  I asked for high points and low points and I asked them to be specific.  I always ask the question, as an extra-credit question, on my last tests of the semester.  I like to incorporate their thoughts and reactions into my curriculum for the following semesters.

One point has always interested me, though.  There are always a large percentage of the students who list the more troubling content like STDs and sexual coercion as the low points in class.

On the one hand, I get this.  Most of the content is fun and engaging.  It’s interesting, it relates to their lives in good ways, and even when there are potential negatives, there are almost always potential positives too.  With a few topics, there really aren’t potential positives.  So I understand that my students, who are use to leaving my class with good humor, leave in a very low place instead and consider that to be a low point of the class.

On the other hand, these topics are integral to the study of human sexuality.  Sitting in the balance of the good and the bad is hard.  Very hard.  But we can’t have a serious conversation about human sexuality without it.

I heard a critique of my class today: That I bring up too much controversy.  At least, it was intended to be a critique.  I took it as a compliment, though.  There is a lot of controversy around human sexuality in the real world, and that’s what I’m trying to prepare my students to participate in rather than a sterile, academic context.

For college students, part of that means really considering the implications of what it means to continue sleeping with an ex-boyfriend in exchange for free room and board and coming to terms with whether or not you might actually accept that offer.  Part of that means talking about rape and looking at pictures of genital warts.

For middle and high school students, figuring out human sexuality in the midst of the messy, controversial, real world involves other questions, like how to access contraception and condoms when you need them, how to listen to your heart in the cacophony of other noises around you, and learning to see or even to acknowledge the extremes of both good and bad that sexuality can bring.

Sitting with your own and other people’s pain can be so hard to do.  But so very important.

A friend of mine with a 7th grade daughter and I were just talking on the phone, and as we were saying goodbye, she mentioned that her friends with 7th grade children have disparate views on what prevention means.  She didn’t have time to into what she meant, but wanted to save the conversation for a time when we could really get into the nitty-gritty of it.  But it got me thinking, and so here I am writing.

First I want to point out what a negative view it is to always be working to prevent something - although this is still the predominant perspective.  I understood exactly what my friend meant when she said “prevention.”  She was without a doubt referring to those Issues that parents of teenagers stress about - sex, drugs, alcohol, lying.  Generally parents try to keep their kids from these things out of concern about rape, STDs, unplanned pregnancy, emotional turmoil, addiction, legal ramifications, and an intrinsic desire for their children to do what they say.  But there is rarely real analysis on an individual level.

(Because, of course, it’s what I tend to focus on, I’m going to narrow this conversation about prevention to sex.)

An example of individual analysis: My husband has a friend who has a 17 year old daughter.  Let’s call the friend Dave.  Dave was freaking out about his daughter being 17, going on and on about how much sex he had at 17, saying he just knew that his daughter was having just as much sex and wasn’t telling him.  After listening to Dave go on at some length, my husband finally interrupted and asked, “Well, was it ultimately a bad thing for you that you had all that sex at 17?”  Dave stopped and thought: “Well, no.”  And my husband continued: “Was it bad for your girlfriend?”  Dave: “Well, no.”  Hmm.

Sometimes lots of sex at 17 is bad, and sometimes it’s not bad.  But one of the factors about whether the sex will be bad or not is whether the young person has a trusted adult to help access pregnancy and STD prevention methods and to provide emotional support.  A lack of these very necessary things can lead very quickly to sex that ends up being bad for the individuals involved.

Another example: Several adults I know, including both friends and students, have said that they looked over a lot of their pain during their early sexual encounters because they didn’t know what sex was supposed to look or feel like.  They didn’t know what a sexual relationship was supposed to be, and so they stayed in relationships that were bad for them, emotionally and sexually.  All of these people have said that they wished they had had an adult they could talk with about sex, so they could have learned that their relationships were not normal, were not what a sexual connection must (or even should) look like.

And one last example: When I was a young teenager, I had an adult friend who would whisper “Don’t have sex” to me all the time.  We lived together, so we’d be passing each other in the hallway and she’d say it, so quietly as to be beyond hearing.  We’d be cooking dinner, and she’d say it in the middle of another sentence while chopping onions.  I wasn’t have sex at the time, so following her command wasn’t really a problem.  But when I did start having sex, there was no way that she would have been someone I would have gone to for help.  Looking back, I’m sure that she meant the best for me, and knowing her as an adult I suspect that if I had gone to her for access to birth control or condoms or even advice, I’m sure she would have been thoughtful, supportive, and a generally all-around fabulous help.  But from my perspective as a teenager, I wrote her off because I didn’t see any variation or well-rounded-ness in her approach to me and sex.

But really, I hear you asking, what does this have to do with prevention?  Isn’t prevention about keeping our children from having sex?  Not figuring out how to guide them if they are having sex, because that’s Plan B, assuming that Plan A (them not having sex at all) fails?

Well, let’s start by looking again at what we’re trying to prevent:

Rape.  The decision to have sex or not does not impact the possibility of being raped.  This is a complete and utter fallacy.

STDs.  There are two very effective ways of preventing the transmission of STDs: education and condoms.  You need heavy doses of both of them, before being faced with a situation where they’re needed.  Abstinence from all sexual activity is, of course, the best method prevention, but the failure rate is far higher than that of condoms.

Unplanned pregnancy.  See STDs.

Emotional turmoil.  This is one of the biggest.  When parents are talking about preventing the other three things, I find that this one is generally what they’re actually getting at, but are either unclear or uncomfortable actually saying so.  But the reality is that we just can’t do it.  Our children will be hurt, whether they have sex or not.

All that said, I would like to turn the understanding of what prevention means on its head.  Rather than try and prevent these four things (two of which we can’t really prevent anyway and two of which are prevented quite nicely with condoms and education), I’d like to re-frame what we’re trying to prevent.

Let’s try to prevent teenagers from feeling alone and without support from their families.  Let’s try to prevent teenagers from being without information and condoms when they need them most.  Let’s try to prevent teenagers from staying in a relationship because they don’t know what a normal, healthy relationship looks like.

We have far more influence over these things, although we never have control.

P.S. Confidential to A:  While it is true that the best method of rape prevention would be for people not to commit rape, simply stating this is hardly an effective way of preventing rape.

Rape is one topic that I have a harder time covering than most.  Part of the issue is that I’m never quite sure how the class is going to react.  Here are two extreme examples from my college classes:

• Last semester one of my college classes on rape was dramatic and emotional.  Every single woman in the class ended up sharing either a personal story or a story of a close friend who had been raped.  Everyone left the class in tears.
• This semester the students in my college class on rape were completely unemotional about the topic.  They talked in abstract terms about the pain that comes from experiencing rape but no one cried and no one told a personal story.

I brought the exact same activities to both classes, but the reactions were starkly different.  My college students write me journals every week, and I have learned through the journals from this semester that the women in my class have experienced rape just as much - if not more - than my students from last semester, they just choose not to talk about it in class.

In one of her journal entries, a current student talked about her disappointment in the way the book presented the topic (she had strep throat and was not able to come to class so couldn’t comment on the class activity).  She said she didn’t feel that the way she had experienced rape - in the form of child abuse by a relative - was acknowledged or talked about.  Another student talked about being very badly beaten and then raped by a boyfriend, and pointed out that her experience wasn’t talked about either.

It’s true - our book is pretty sterile in its presentation on rape.  I am constantly on the market for a new textbook, so hopefully the one I’m using in the fall will present the topic better.

But the thing about rape is that how it impacts the person who has been raped varies hugely, and a lot of that is dependent on the age, gender, relationship with the rapist, duration of the abuse, and so much more.  One chapter and one class period is hardly sufficient to discuss all of the many potential ramifications, particularly considering the significant trust that needs to be in place for people to have a fully honest discussion.

So this is one class period where I bring activities and materials to fill our time, but I will let the students take the class in a different direction.  It is when I talk about rape that I feel that, while I am experienced and good at my work, I still have so much to learn about the craft of teaching sex education, and I am eager to learn it.

My students seem to bring me things when I am ready to receive them.  Last semester I was ready to hold and respond to a classroom of emotional students speaking from the perspective of rape survivor.  This semester a student has brought the topic to me from the perspective of the rapist.  Supporting these young people in moving forward with their lives and their sexuality in consensual, loving ways is an honor, and I feel honored that they trust me enough to let me help them.

I’ve been asked to break down these various initials recently by a number of friends and students, so I thought I’d write a bit on them.  LGB is a group of initials that most people are familiar with to one degree or another:

• Lesbian (women who are attracted to women)
• Gay (often referring to men who are attracted to men, but can also refer to lesbians)
• Bisexual (people who are attracted to both men and women)

At some point, this grouping was expanded to include:

• Transgender (an individual who does not feel that they fit well into the biological sex assigned to their physical manifestation, includes transsexuals who feel that they were born the wrong sex, people who identify as a third gender, and more)

More recently this group of four was expanded to include either one or two Q’s, which stand in for:

• Queer (this is a very category that can include anyone who doesn’t feel that they fit within the binary categories of male/female or who doesn’t feel that they fit within the binary categories of strait/gay - this is typically considered a self-identified title and is very broad)
• Questioning (an individual who is examining their sexual orientation and gender orientation before claiming, claiming anew, or deciding not to claim a category)

And just in the past several months have I seen these two included in this list of initials.  I’ve included links for more information on both of these because they are typically less well known and less understood than the previous ones.

• Intersex (a person who was born with genitalia that is considered ambiguous or non-standard for male or female, find out more at the Intersex Society of North America)
• Asexual (a person who does not experience sexual attraction, find out more at the Asexuality Visibility and Education Network)

And there we have it!  The depth and breadth of sexual orientation and gender orientation are fascinating topics to dig into, and offer a wealth of good conversation topics between parents and young people.  Take the list above and use it as a way to open a conversation on these topics - does everyone in your family know someone who identifies themselves in each of these categories?  Maybe - but it’s less likely that you’ll know for certain, because particularly the last three groups listed aren’t topics that are typically talked about openly.

Come back and tell me how your conversations go!  Were the teenagers you were talking with surprised by any of these categories?  Did they refute their existence?  Did they identify themselves within any of the groups?  Did they think any groups were omitted from these categories that should be included?