The Toronto Globe & Mail recently ran a story headlined “Teen Girls Are Swapping Sex for … Just About Anything” which deplored the fact that lots of teenage girls actually have sex.
Both my female and journalistic instincts tell me there’s something fishy about the story.
My main problem is that it lumps together perfectly normal teenage female behaviour with the way teen drug addicts behave. But they’re entirely different people living in entirely different worlds.
I know. I’ve never been a drug addict (although I’ve known and loved some) and didn’t lose my virginity until I was all of 18. But I experienced almost every other variety of sex, including being paid for it, from my very early teens. And I went a fair bit further in the “paid” column than just being wined and dined for my troubles.
It’s called having sex. It’s what we girls did. It’s what girls have always done when they can. It’s what girls will always do when they can. And since the invention of Penicillin and The Pill, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it. In fact, it’s a normal part of female growing up. And since we aren’t blessed with male privilege and male upper-body strength, it’s by far the best way for us females to survive and manipulate a dangerous world to our advantage.
When the hormones hit us and, in fear and trembling, we surrendered in the back seat of the car and no lightning struck us and it actually felt good, we relaxed and decided sex was a really, really good way to attract and even hold the godlike creatures who strutted around our schoolyards with those big, strong shoulders, fast cars and potential marriage licenses.
Since the beginning of time, girls have always been sexual beings exploiting their sexual attraction and its awesome power whenever necessary and possible.
And sometime, just for practice, when UNnecessary and possible.
Forget about blaming parents. If anything, parents today are far more involved in their children’s behaviour than my parents’ generation and their parents’ generation. Back then, our parents told us little more than having sex before marriage was bad (mostly because someone called God said it was) and would lead to all sorts of terrible things including babies, disease and something called “disrespect”.
Meantime, my journalistic instinct tells me the story’s purely anecdotal and directly contradicts a recent Maclean’s article that actually did a scientific survey indicating today’s teens are having less sex than previous generations.
Personally, I don’t think it matters either way.
(Samantha Jones is a Canadian journalist publishing her erotic memoir at www.lulu.com)
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