I saw this visual screen cap on an episode "30 Rock", it shows friends having lunch and asking a question, "Have you ever been French -kissed?" With the girl in the pigtails responding, "Are you kidding? I don't want to get pregnant." This visual makes a powerful statement about the lack of knowledge that young girls have about getting pregnant.
After I read the screen caption, I was stunned on the complete lack of knowledge about "sex". Unfortunately, this statement is true to many young teenagers because parents do not want to talk about "sex" with their teenagers. I am a parent of three boys and one girl and had to do the "sex talk" and how to protect themselves. Although, this is an uncomfortable talk, it needs to be done.
It's images show that they are having a general conversation during lunch at school. At first glance, the photographer's goal seems to capture young girls in the 1960s era, and are just having a great time at school with friends and eating lunch. With the top girls in the picture being all giddy and looking bashful while asking the question and the bottom picture with the surprised look on the girl's face, shocking that she would asked such a question. This photo says a thousand words on just the lack of knowledge of the topic "sex". The photo's stark images support this position. For example, the strong sense that there is no communication and no teaching about the facts of life here. This is a reality. That parents and teenagers should talk about "sex" and teach them the preventive measurements not to get pregnant.
This young girl's perception about how a French-kiss can cause pregnancy is due to the lack of communication from her parents. This statement "French-kissing", is not going to stop the teenagers from having sex . This is my observation, that telling a lie is easier than to talk about the true facts of life with young teenagers. This is called a blind-eye, and one that should be more wide opened to the reality of teenage sex.
A note that accompanies the photo states that is not a statement against teenage sex. Still, the impact on its audience is likely to be perceive that there is a lack of communication about sex and pregnancy. So, lets teach the real facts of life and give the knowledge on how to prevent teenage pregnancy.
I could not agree with you more on this one. I actually heard/saw another peorfect example of what you're saying here in a Broadway musical called Spring Awakening. In the show, the protagonist girl character asks her mother the question, "Mama, when are you going to tell me about sex?" The girl at this time was young. Maybe 14 if I remember correctly. Just hitting puberty. And her mother was too embarassed and too immature to tell her daughter, so she had her daughter sit down on the floor next to the chair she (the mother) was sitting in. She then had her daughter lay her head in her lap and she covered her daughter's face with her apron so she would not have to make eye contact. And what she told her was literally "Well, when two people fall in love and get married, they have sex and the woman gets pregnant and has a baby." The end. Nothing else. And when the daughter comes to her mother later on in the show upon discovering she is pregnant, her mother screams at her "How could you do this?! You know this could happen when you had sex!" A statement to which the terrified daughter replies "No, mama. You told me you had to be married to get pregnant.", which then segways into a very nice song called "Mama Who Bore Me". But the statement shows just how dangerous not knowing things can be. Or in some people's opinions, the dangers of only having a little information. Which, might I add, is in my opinion even more dangerous. I agree with you 1000% that parents need to talk to their kids about these things, even if it is embarassing. It is a much better alternative than kids finding out from an older, slightly more informed kid and getting it skewed and backwards. Or getting it from television, movies, and the internet, which would either terrify them or desensitize them and make them think it was no big deal and nothing to be worried about. Thus situations like the one in Spring Awakening: a young girl finds herself pregnant without ever truly understanding how it was even possible.
ReplyDeleteI hadn't even thought of the Spring Awakening comparison, Jason. That's a really good analogy.
Delete