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According to an article published in the London Times today, we Brits are now the most promiscuous nation in the world (of the western industrial nations, that is). In terms of one-night stands, total number of partners, and our "relaxed" attitude to casual sex, we beat Australia, the United States, Italy, and France. France! Where having extra-marital affairs is a favorite national pastime! If nothing else, at least now we might lose our reputation for being frigid and repressed.
In all seriousness though, Britain has the highest teen pregnancy rate in Europe as well as the highest teen STD infection rate in Europe (although both are significantly lower than here in the United States, where abstinence-only sex education doesn't seem to be helping much). Premature sex education in British schools (it can be taught to children as young as 4) has long been blamed for the epidemic, along with the inappropriate sexualization of children by toy manufacturers and the media. But here's a thought. In Britain, we also drink more than any other country in Europe (apart from Ireland and Finland, bizarrely), and our alcohol-related death rate has doubled since 1991. We've also, according to this reasonably insulting story in the New York Times, been causing havoc on summer vacations with our abhorrent, booze-soaked behavior. Could there be a correlation somewhere between the beer goggles and the newfound sluttiness?
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Melinda, it’s a fine idea to tell teenagers to wait. Except that it really doesn’t work. This is not liberal wishful thinking. Researchers have pried into the sex lives of abstinence-pledgers and discovered that at best, taking the pledge delays sex by 18 months. But it also encourages more of them to have unprotected sex. (See my review of the book, Forbidden Fruit, for Slate.) Teens who have pledged don’t really admit they are having sex until they’ve already had it, which is kind of too late for the condom (Witness Bristol. Also read Margaret Talbot on the messy realities of red state sex.) My other favorite sexy virgin of the screen is Lyla Garrity, the True Love Waits hottie on Friday Night Lights. For the first couple of episodes, she is snuggling with her boyfriend and dreaming about their wedding. Then she stumbles into an accidental kiss with her boyfriend’s best friend, and one scene later we see her getting up from his couch, pulling on her underwear. This is reality. It’s only in the vampire version that what the preacher said comes true: Go beyond the kiss, and you’re risking your life.
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True Love Waits (and waits and waits) was also the theme of my favorite show as a kid: Dark Shadows, starring the tortured, sorta good-guy vampire Barnabas Collins, who loved eyeliner, juggled relationships, and mostly kept his baser instincts in check. His girlfriends included trashy fellow bloodsucker Angelique—see what giving in got her?—and Josette, the love of his 18th-century life, who had only one dress and it was white; get it? Though long dead, Josette did sometimes walk out of her portrait to hang out with Barnabas. He was also much taken with, but never put the bite on, her modern-day doppelganger, Victoria WInters, the governess at Collinwood—played by Alexandra Isles, for whom I named my dolly in the first grade. (Sadly, Alexandra's later career included a real-life stint as Klaus von Bulow's mistress; Victoria would have known better.) Did the True Love Waits abstinence movement really fail, though, Hanna? Or is it more like AA, which doesn't work all that reliably but is still the best option we've got? Not saying sexuality is a medical condition, but if these programs help kids wait even a while, until they're maybe not ready but readier, isn't that a good thing?
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I know none of you are 13-year-old girls, but did any of you see Twilight this weekend? It's a movie about vampire love based on the Harry Potter-for-girls blockbuster series by Stephenie Meyer, a Mormon mom. I loved it, but what struck me most is how much it's an advertisement for the True Love Waits movement. High-schooler Bella Swan falls in love with Edward Cullen, who it turns out is a vampire. He thirsts for her blood, gives her desperate yearning looks. But he controls himself. He is part of a clan of "vegetarian" vampires who have taught themselves to live on animal blood and pass in the human world. In one amazing erotic scene, he shows up in her bedroom and says he will kiss her if she holds really, really still, because if she moves he won't be able to control himself. (By which he means kill her.) They kiss once, and then spend the night talking and snuggling in her room. The problem the True Love Waits movement could never solve is how to get teens to stop after one kiss. This is why the movement failed, except among a small minority of the super committed, who saved even the first kiss until after marriage. The answer, which never seems to have occurred to conservative Christians, is to date a vampire.
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