Teenage Dream

The other day Abigail described me as "A Dog with a Bone".  When I get an idea in my head it's all I can think about, it's all I want to talk about, it's all I can see in everything around me.  A couple weeks ago I talked everyone's ears off about divorce; last month it took a very in depth discussion with Nathan for me to stop freaking out about mortality (I blame Percy Jackson, His Dark Materials, and Eragon for their war-torn, afterlife-heavy stories);  currently I'm obsessed with:

Swiping your V-card.

I just finished reading Sarah Dessen's Someone Like You.  One of her deeper novels, it centered on mousey Halley and her decision whether to succumb to her boyfriend's demands for sex.

I watched Bones the other day and the subplot concerns Cam's adoptive daughter choosing to have sex with her boyfriend for the first time (and new-mom Cam trying to navigate this).

I just finished watching Episode 4 of Family Ties.  And watching Michael J. Fox get his little heart broken after his first time was one of the most adorable things I've seen in a long time (I also like the spin on the traditional story line by making it a young man who gets taken advantage of).

Oh and I think the whole point of the first season of That 70's Show is to find out when Eric and Donna "do it".

I first started really getting into Katy Perry because of her song Teenage Dream.  When I first heard that song I was like "Oh my god, Katy Perry is brilliant, this song is about a girl deciding to swipe her V-card."  Listen to that song with that mentality.  It becomes a much better song.

I wish I could compile all the stories people have told me and make like a This American Life style radio broadcast about it.  Or like a book.  I think it would be fascinating.  If I didn't think it was a total breech of privacy I'd write them all down here.

Like I always wonder.  Would you do it differently?  Were you ready?  Do you think you should have waited longer anyway?  What made you decide to do it?  What was your relationship with the person you were with?  Were you "in love"?  Was it a big decision or did it "just happen"?  Had you been waiting a long time?  Or did you rush into something?  Did you think  you were too old?  Too young?Did you know you were going to do it before you did?  What happened to the relationship afterwards?

People start training you in like 7th or 8th grade about how big a decision this is.  It comes up in almost every TV shows with teens, and usually it's a HUGE deal.  Half the articles in Seventeen are about the seriousness of sex. In literature and in TV it's almost always the same (they are trying to set a positive example here):  the guy is ready and the girl has to have the self-confidence to realize that she isn't ready.  She tells the guy, and he needs to be respectful enough to wait.  There are variations on the way that's presented, but that's what you're supposed to take away from it:  Wait until you're ready, and have enough self-respect and respect for your partner to wait.  But it's so much more complex than that, and people have such different, interesting experiences and perspectives on that.  If I had stayed in the Psychology field, I probably would have studied sex, no joke.