Hot on the heels of the fashion mavens who tell us that skin is not in - something concerned parents always knew - come the worried experts telling us something else that concerned parents always knew - girls who take pride in promiscuity face myriad dangers:
Heather, a 16-year-old with sandy blond hair, remembers how it felt the time she had sex on the same day with two different boys. Neither was her boyfriend. "I felt like I was in control," said the Neenah, Wis., native, who like other teens interviewed for this story is being identified only by her first name. "I felt like a player."
Fourteen-year-old Mia of Racine, Wis., explains with pride how she uses a calculated approach to flirting and dating to extract money from multiple boys. "I've been pimping," Mia said. "I've got dudes who give me money every day."
My guess is that parental influences - or lack thereof - play a big part in these sorry tales. Or perhaps this is due to the great public school "socialization" factors that we hear so much about?
A lot of adults may not want to believe it, but these and other teenage girls are adopting some stereotypical "male" attitudes toward sex, according to reports from a national research firm and interviews with girls and officials who work with them...Planned Parenthood says that promiscuity is helping fuel the rise of sexually transmitted diseases among teenagers - diseases that can rob girls of the ability to bear children. There's also evidence the trend is turning dangerous in other ways, with girls sexually harassing and even assaulting boys.
Kieran Sawyer, executive director of the TYME OUT Youth Center, a Catholic organization in Waukesha County that runs teen programs that focus on relationships, agreed.
When even Planned Parenthood is siding with the worried parents and the Catholics, you know things have gone too far. It's understandable that, in the revolutionary 70's, feminists trumpted the notion that a woman's independence might depend on her acting like a man - in bed and out - but it's appalling that the notion is still around in this day and age, and for teenagers, no less. Women might have come a long way, baby, but STDs, unwanted pregnancies, and fractured relationships still abound, and ghetto wear that encourages women to objectify their body parts is no more "empowering" now than it would have been in 1972.
To counter these aggressive attitudes, Planned Parenthood is reworking the teen workshops it runs in schools and churches and through other community organizations to place greater emphasis on the importance of healthy relationships. The workshops will force girls who act like pimps and players to examine why.
"We want to ask girls who play boys: `What was the value? What do you get out of this?'" Lathen said. "We want to help girls understand and reject the stereotypes the media projects of them so they can make positive, healthy decisions about their bodies."
Good luck. Given all the "you should be as sexy as you want" messages that have been pushed by "feminists" over the years, Planned Parenthood may find themselves stymied by young girls who literally do not understand any other way to be than as a sex object. And if they don't drag parents into these conferences as well, it's unlikely that will change.
And what would such an article be without a "parents just don't understand" line?
"What a lot of boys and a lot of adults don't understand is that the door swings both ways," said Lisa, 18, of Brookfield, Wis. "It's not just boys who sometimes want something purely physical. Girls have needs too."
Guess what, Lisa? You're not the first girl to think that. You're also not the first girl to think that all those negative things - pregnancies, AIDS, date rape, horrible relationships - aren't going to happen to you. I wish you had more responsible adults in your life to tell you that these bad things can happen, and that satisfying your physical needs does not now, nor has it ever, nor will it ever, come without a high price. Too many girls nowadays are willing to ignore it.
Before any of my Devoted Readers jump in and say this - yes, if I had a daughter, she would be called Alice; she would be homeschooled, and kept in pigtails, and dressed in tights, flat shoes, and jumpers until she was 16 years old. If you think my attitudes mean that I would probably drive any child of mine crazy, yes, you're right.
Posted by kswygert at October 27, 2004 03:56 PM