What kind of underwear does she like?" the grandmother asked.
"The same as me," the mother answered. "Low cut and silky. She's an extra-small."
It was just a conversation I was trying not to hear as I maneuvered past a grandmother, mother and her two young children who were blocking the aisle in a Victoria'a Secret outlet last week. That was until I realized who the subject of the conversation was.
"I can't believe she's an adult," the grandmother responded, as she weeded through piles of thongs with her granddaughter. "Ten years old!" She placed particular emphasis on the 10, like it referred back to the dawn of time. As I walked out of the store beneath 15-foot murals of pouty-lipped, barely-clothed, shimmery-skinned "Angels," I knew something was a little bit disturbing about the scene I had just witnessed. But more than anything, what bothered me was that someone could think of a 10-year-old as an "adult" ready to enter the grownup world of sex, or at least sex appeal.
In fact, younger and younger kids are sent suggestive and stereotypical messages about sex all the time. According to msnbc.com, Bratz dolls have outsold Barbie dolls in recent years. Bratz dolls sport bare midriffs, boas, fishnet stockings, mini-skirts, heavy makeup and exaggerated lips, eyes and hair that makes them more resemble a miniature prostitute than a toy. In this climate, it doesn't come as a surprise that despite federally-mandated abstinence education in public schools, the average age at which kids are starting to have sex is 14, according to a Congress-commissioned study released earlier this week on CNN.com. Anyone who's honest with themselves would know that there's no way any 14 year old is ready to make that kind of decision. No 14 year old is ready for the emotional baggage that sex brings. No 14 year old, who is a child, could handle the very real possibility of raising a child of their own or getting a lifelong disease.
If you aren't ready for these responsibilities, then you shouldn't have sex. That's it. It's the only 100 percent effective way to avoid all of these consequences. However, the government study also found that students who took part in abstinence programs were just as likely to have sex as those who did not. Is it time to give up on abstinence and write it off as an old-fashioned and impossible idea? I don't think so.
The popular notion is that "kids are going to have sex no matter what you tell them." It's true that some teenagers are going to have sex. For some, it's going to happen whether they are taught to abstain from sex or to have protected sex. But waiting to have sex -- at least waiting until well past 14 -- isn't this impossibly high, unrealistic standard. Just because it may be "difficult" or "isn't what everyone else seems to be doing" doesn't mean it's not worth teaching, or believing, or at least considering. Besides, people often rise (or sink) to the level of expectations people hold for them. Right now, our culture's expectations for sexual behavior is pretty much an "anything goes" philosophy. We've set our standard for "intimate" activities too low, and unfortunately, we're reaching them.
Today, Christina Aguilera's latest song "Candyman" talks about a man who "makes her panties drop." Clothing commercials feature naked models. People watch untalented train-wrecks bed hop on the Real World's bedroom cameras in between commercial breaks featuring (dun dun dun dun!) the Trojan Man. Plus, stars are rewarded with media attention every time they -- oops -- "accidentally misplace" a tape of their most recent sexual adventures. And, porn is literally accessible in every medium: in magazines, in books, on the Internet and on television. So while students may hear the "wait-for-sex" message for a half hour a day for one year, they hear "do whatever feels good in the moment" every day, all their lives, starting at increasingly younger ages -- and that message is winning out.
Let's face it: Sex is everywhere, and our campus is no different. Students hand out condoms in our commons. Fliers and seminars promote "safe sex" without ever presenting the option of not having sex at all.
College students have been labeled the"Hookup Generation" because more than 50 percent of the college-aged population "hook up" by having sex or oral sex every weekend, according to a Collegian article. Those with different partners every weekend try to deny the inherent properties of sex: that it's serious, it's life-changing, it's meant to create a bond between people, and it has consequences.
While waiting to have sex might not be everyone's decision, having sex at the age of 14 or having meaningless, careless sex is never the right choice for anybody. Although abstinence education is often criticized as ineffective or unpopular, it seems to me that it's our sexually saturated culture that deserves a deeper look.
