Following last week’s show and talking to your kids about sex and the whole vibrator thing - I think America was somewhat shocked that it had you know. . . . gone this far.
Do girls masturbate? Well, yes Gail King, they do. And some of us are okay with that. (The ones who masturbate/masturbated? (wondering why Mark Consuelo can say he masturbated for three years straight and I feel like I’ve just crossed a major social boundary for implying I might’ve heard about it?))
Should we, their parents, buy them vibrators? Uh. Some of us are just not ready for that.
Maybe it’s a bad idea?
I do not have any insider information at all about today’s scheduled Oprah show in which she discusses what’s really going on with teenage girls.
I suspect it might shock me into conservatism.
See, here’s the thing. I’m a girl who did and wishes she didn’t. I’m a girl who well, set the bar too low.
It’s not that I’m shocked girls send their semi-nude and nude photos on cell phones – I’m just profoundly grateful they hadn’t invented cell phones when I was younger and my long-distance boyfriend probably deleted those email.
I just can’t tell you how much I pray that Ainsley’s not nearly as stupid as her mother.
If anyone gets why girls do the things they do – I do.
If anyone gets why girls shouldn’t do the things they do – I do.
For the same reason – because I did.
Old tactics for prevention and abstinence don’t work.
They didn’t work when I was a kid and they don’t work now.
So, I think it’s best that every parent tune into Oprah today and listen to what Laura Berman and the teenagers who say they are “ready” have to say. It will be useful information whether we agree or not.
We’re going to have to do something different. You know the definition of insanity: “Doing the same things and expecting a different result.”
There are some things worth paying taxes for . . .
Roads. Schools. Libraries. Police Force. Fire Men. Health Care.
Top on the list is enough FBI Agents and resources to hunt down and prosecute Sexual Predators stalking our children for their own sick psycho-sexual pleasure.
I’m pretty much willing to pay whatever it takes to lock those deranged animals up.
Oprah made it easy and wrote a sample letter. You just have to copy and paste, sign your name and click senate.gov or congress.gov on her site and whalla you’ve taken political action demanding that the United States Government protects its own children.
We can bail out banks and car manufacturers and they totally screwed up.
I took Ainsley and her BFF on opening day and they both loved it.
The plot, I’ll warn you now, is the exact same plot of every single one of the television episodes, but evidently some people (children) don’t get bored with the same plot.
Hannah Montana has a lot of career choices and must-do appearances that interfere with her alter-ego Miley’s interpersonal relationships – best friend Lily, father, brother, school – sort of like every adult woman I know, especially working mothers.
She often makes the mistake of scheduling a “Hannah Event,” like the Music Awards or a save-the-town concert and a “Miley Event” like her first date with a cute cowboy for the same exact. same. time.
Then you get to watch her run through revolving doors changing clothes and wigs – brown, blond, brown, blond, brown, blond – while she changes and confuses her roles and identities.
If I could bring that back to the modern-day woman’s dilemma – I’m a professional, I’m a mom, I’m a professional, I’m a mom, I wear a business suit, I wear my yoga pants with spit up on them, I wear a business suit, I wear my yoga pants with spit up on them. Like that.
Eventually she gets busted, just as we all do.
When you get down to it Disney is just trying to prepare young girls for the crazy hectic and stressful insanity of being a mom and a professional – right? Well, YOU’RE the one who said you wanted “the best of both worlds,” is often repeated in the show (and in the lives of real women).
Anywho, you can take your kids to see this and there will be no inappropriate nudity or violence. Nothing inappropriate at all. Really.
You do, however, get to see Hannah Montana throw down with Tyra Banks over a pair of designer heels.
Other celebrity cameos include Rascal Flatts, Taylor Swift, Vanessa Williams, Cheryl Hines, David Archuleta, and Zac Efron.
Dr. Laura Berman, the beautiful and non-threatening sex therapist and author of Real Sex for Real Women, walked us through a very nice and forthright conversation we can have with our tweens. I was down with that. I even asked Ainsley if she wanted to watch that part of the show to answer any questions. No, I’m almost finished with my chapter book, she said.
We’ve already had the nuts and bolts discussion about what sex is. I know it seems young, but it kept coming up and like Laura, I think it should be an ongoing and honest conversation devoid of fear and anxiety. I wrote how that went for Ainsley and I in Empowering Girls: Anti-Climactic Birds and the Bees.
I was totally on board when Laura said we should talk to our kids about touching themselves as well. Small children – girls and boys – know it feels good to touch themselves on their private parts. I have been having a dialogue with Ainsley about this since toddlerhood. The conversation was centered around safety issues:
No one is allowed to touch you there except you. You need to be very gentle when you touch your vagina (I’m not saying labia or clitoris to a toddler – shut up). You never, ever put anything inside your vagina, because that’s not gentle and you could harm yourself. No one, ever, is allowed to put anything inside your vagina ever. That is never, ever okay and if anyone ever tries to, you kick and scream and bite and then come to mommy or daddy and tell on them.
Menstruation? Easy. Just answer the natural questions “what are those for?” when you buy tampons or pads or they find them in your purse. We bleed. It’s how God made women. We do it to carry babies.
I’m totally down with the talking about sex thing, I thought.
Until the junior high girls came on. I swear to you my first instinct was, Screw that! I’ll just put her in an All Girls School or Home School. Who doesn’t want to be spared the singular social nightmare of junior high anyway?
Here’s the part I’m confused about: Was there some evolutionary shift in the Universe that made girls way more desperate for love and affection than teenage boys are to touch boobs or have sex?
Evidently, teenage girls are desperate to be loved and claim a “boyfriend.” So desperate, in fact, according to the teen survey in Seventeen Magazine and O Magazine, that boys can extort nude photos to show their friends and demand sexual favors of girls simply by saying “if you don’t put out then I won’t talk to you anymore.” And girls are falling for it.Read the article about the teen survey here.
Steve Harvey claims that girls lowered the bar for boys. In his book, Act like a Lady, Think Like a Man, he claims that the fact that girls require nothing – no dating, no roses, no commitment or basic level of respect - before they will have sex is responsible for the declining behavior of men.
When I wrote about this theory before, a several adult women responded that they don’t “withhold sex” to get stuff. They felt the men they dated respected them anyway and it was mutual. But, when we’re talking about teenagers it seems teenage girls ought to get some level of dating signifyingrespect before they do it for nothing! And nothing about it seemed mutual.
Girls are giving blow jobs as Third Base (30% of teen girls admit to oral sex). Boys don’t perform oral sex in return. Foreplay is a Sext demanding sexual acts, for which the girls get . . . .what? Evidently nothing. No love, commitment, romance or affection. No movie, no dinner out, no flowers, no love poem, and no “I’ll love you forever.” She gets to claim she has a “boyfriend” for five minutes, until another girl sends nude photos of herself and trumps her claim.
Surely this is an extreme example? Those middle school kids on Oprah acted like this is run-of-the-mill, every-day reality for them.
“Seventy-eight percent of surveyed girls who are no longer virgins say they’ve had sex without using a condom, and 65 percent of them admit they lied about or hid it from their mothers. Most troubling, a sobering 56 percent of girls who are no longer virgins have had sex without any form of birth control: Sixty-six percent of these girls have kept that a secret from Mom. Even among the few girls who had an abortion, many didn’t tell,” says the article.
Boys no longer have to do anything to get sex from girls, girls do it for nothing and they aren’t using condoms and 25% of them now have STDs. Brilliant.
A few weeks ago I suggested parents, teachers, mentors and counselors talk about sex so often, so openly and so honestly that we claim sex back from the media with the truth and make it a middle-aged serious-as-hell, kinda grody thing to do in Real Sex, Take 35.
The survey holds this theory to be true: “It’s the girls who talk to their moms before their first time who are less likely to have regrets and risky sex.Also, girls who have The Talk are half as likely to get pregnant as those who don’t,” says the article.
Toward the end of the show Dr. Laura Berman made Gale King nearly die of a heart attack when she suggested mothers buy their daughters vibrators. Truth be told, I also nearly choked.
Her logic holds that if girls are able to fulfill their sexual needs by themselves, they won’t be so likely to have sex with a partner.
Maybe.
But, what’s wrong with good old-fashioned tools like shower heads and water faucets? Or their own hands? Why do we need to buy our kids vibrating gadgets? Will it be the new status symbol like the hottest cell phone or Wii? It’s just too much.
And really, the vibrator solution does nothing for my biggest concern – the obvious desperation of girls who will do anything sexual for no emotional pay-off from boys who treat them like they are nothing.
What did you think of the Talking to Kids About Sex Oprah Show?
Download an easy-to-use freehandbook about how to talk to your kids about sex here.
I’m reusing the eggs from last year and from the various Easter Egg Hunts.
I picked up the egg dye and baskets at a garage sale and I’m about to see what I can scrounge up from thrift stores, not because I don’t have any money, but because I don’t want to spend it on Easter.
I skipped both kids’ school Easter Egg Hunts. How many Easter Egg Hunts should I have to attend? I notice their father doesn’t feel guilty about going to work instead.
I’m putting sugarless gum in the eggs.
I’m confiscating the candy from the various hunts and re-gifting it in their Easter Bunny Baskets Sunday Morning.
Then I’m confiscating it and eating it.
I’m thinking about not letting them dye eggs this year b/c of time. That or we’re buying instead of making the cupcakes we’re taking to NaNas. They wanted $6 for a dozen cupcakes. The mix is $1 and the cream cheese $1 and I can make 2 dozen. We’re making the cupcakes. We’re dying eggs.
Zack gets a new suit – because my sister is getting married. Also it will make me happy to see him wear it and it’s only $20. No one in town sells suits for boys this year. Hope my mom will buy him one.
Ainsley does not get a new dress or shoes.
I might buy them Webkinz - if they are on sale. I rented “brand new with tags” stuffed bunnies that will fill up the basket for $1.25. I’ll return them to the thrift store to be resold in 3 weeks. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Declutter.
At one point in my motherhood I might have felt guilty about some of this. But, I don’t feel guilty about any of it this year.
Good Holiday Recipe
Don’t spend too much.
Don’t do too much.
Don’t make it a hassle.
Skip events, parties and traditions if they cause anxiety.
Don’t strive for unattainable nonsense like equality or perfection.
