Tuesday, January 17, 2006

Don't Blow Off Caitlin Flanagan The entertaining, clever and often misguided Caitlin Flanagan has an essay in The Atlantic that will get people talking-- it's about teen girls and oral sex. Problem is, her thesis doesn't hold up all that well as she's not looked carefully at the numbers. She says a quarter of teen girls are giving oral sex with nothing much in return, and away she goes from there, analyzing the hell out of the trend with fun references like Archie's dilemma over whether to choose sexy Veronica or pal Betty. Oliver over at the music/culture site Poplicks has a good counter-analysis and takes the predictable umbrage over Flanagan's characterization of rap music as "spoken-word, hard-core pornography" that can be blamed in part for the oral sex trend.  Oliver points us (as I would have myself had Oliver not gotten to it first) to the original National Center for Health Statistics survey that underpins the argument. It shows CLEARLY that teen girls are getting as well as giving at about the same percentages. But what I also take from the survey, looking further into the stats, is that the teens (both boys and girls) who are into oral sex are the same teens who have experience with intercourse. The virgins are mostly staying away from oral activity -- from sexual activity--- altogether. So it's not so much an oral sex trend as a casual sex trend in general. I think the greater prevalence of oral sex  (or at least the talking and bragging and singing about it) is a kind of fad, like tattoos or belly button piercings that will fade back into a more quiet private activity sometime soon. Still, Flanagan makes some very good and sad points about the village we live in and its failure to protect adolescence. That it's left to individual households to fend off the extremes and intrusions of sexualized consumerism. I recommend the essay. Not too many people are as willing as Flanagan to touch PC social topics and with verve and style. Your comments? -RH. 9:45:05 PM    comment []

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