Category: Sexuality

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Last week I was watching a fairly clean prime time show with my entire family (not a lot of prime time that my 11, 13 and 15 year old can all watch anymore). The star of the show made a quick comment to his nerd friend that was spending time on the web on comic book sites. He said, “Why can’t you just watch porn like everyone else.” A subtle comment, but packed with meaning. Anyone normal looks at porn. It’s no big deal.

The week prior we were watching a show and one of the lead girls confessed, “I haven’t been laid in six months!” Everyone else gasped! The underlying message was clear. If you haven’t slept with someone in six months, something’s wrong!

The sad fact is… these were pretty clean shows. This wasn’t Gossip Girl, Desperate Housewives, or the O.C.

T.V.’s effect on our youth is nothing new to this blog (just click on the “sexuality” category on the left hand side bar , or do a search for “TV” and see how many blogs are dedicated to the topic). It’s a fact that TV shows and movies are getting blatantly more raunchy. I just was chatting with my friend Todd, our THE SOURCE Movie Review guy, about this. He recently reviewed the popular Adam Sandler movie, You Don’t Mess with the Zohan. Todd described this PG-13 movie as a “raunch-fest.” He’s right. This movie was a PG-13 Borat. I thnk my biggest concern here is the PG-13 rating. Again… the subtle message that this content is okay for 13-year-olds. The entire film was not only loaded with over the top sexual humor… it presented abundant female roles who had no problem with these male “pigs” and their consistent crude sexual gestures. Our young girls are learning that sex is simply “no big deal.”

Yesterday I received numerous emails from people about the research just released by the Journal of Pediatrics. Numerous articles are reporting the “Teens who watch television shows that have a lot of sexual content are more likely to become pregnant- or to get someone pregnant- by the time they turn 20.”

This research is what I call “Duh.” Think about it. If our kids are coached by shows like Gossip Girl or Tila Tequila every week, they’re going to respond in the way they’ve been taught. it’s that simple.

Perhaps parents need to say, “You can’t watch this.”

Hmmmmmmm.

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Time Magazine just came out with an amazing article called “The Truth About Teen Girls.” My favorite part of the article- a quote from an MTV producer who tells it like it is. Wow!

I’ll give you the whole paragraph, emphasis mine:

Middle school counselor Julia Taylor of North Carolina had a conversation with her sixth-graders last year that worried her. “A lot of them were watching The O.C.,” she says. “I just remember the show’s multiple sexual partners, the cocaine use, and then at the end, they drink, they drive, they set fires, but all is well! There are never any consequences.” Taylor understands the media better than many. Her sister Mary is a producer who has worked on MTV shows including My Super Sweet 16 and Spring Break. “I’m messing them up, and she’s fixing them,” says Mary jokingly. But Mary also suggests that if nobody were watching the shows or buying the products that are advertised on them, they wouldn’t succeed. “We’re not Little House on the Prairie anymore,” she says. “The world is different. If parents said, ‘You can’t watch this,’ and the ratings dropped, maybe we would change things.”

The entire article is good. Here’s another snippet:

…teenage sexuality is growing only more heated. Girlhood sexiness seems to be everywhere: on TV shows and in movies, in advertising, in teen magazines and all over the Internet. Most disturbingly, it seems to be coming from the girls themselves: the way they dress, the way they text, the way they present themselves on Facebook and, oh, mercy, what they get up to at parties. There are whispers, stories for which the anecdotal evidence–from school counselors and child psychologists and mothers–keeps accumulating like a national pile of unwashed laundry. These suggest teen girls are getting very liberal with sexual favors, especially of the type detailed in the Starr report. In one generation, girls seem to have moved from Easy-Bake to easy virtue.

Click here for the whole article. (thanks to David and Ypulse for bringing the article to my attention)