In a sex-saturated society, girls face increased pressure to find some way of becoming sexually active. Along with the well-known dangers of unwanted pregnancies or STDs, giving too much, too soon results in girls experiencing guilt, shame, and lack of trust in males. In fact, academic research has recently confirmed that for girls (though not for boys), even modest sexual experimental increases the risk of depression. Could this phenomenon help to explain the CDC’s latest report finding that suicide rates among preteen and young teen girls had spiked by a whopping 76%?
Certainly, it’s not easy to reject what trendsetters decree is “cool.” Those who object to the sexual saturation of the culture are likely to be ridiculed as uptight, joyless prigs. But by acquiescing, even implicitly, in a social order where girls are encouraged to present themselves as nothing but sex objects – and being called a “prude” is more stigmatizing than being characterized as a “slut” – America has been letting young women down.
When adults fail to speak up in opposition to the sexual values being transmitted by pop culture, young people interpret their silence as indifference to or agreement with those mores. And so it’s unfair to glorify women like Spears and Hilton – and then insist that girls not emulate them. It’s wrong to shower rappers like Eminem with music industry honors – and then hope that young women will discount his lyrics. And it’s unrealistic to present teens with movies, magazines and books larded with sexual content, and then expect them to take seriously admonitions to abstain from sex.
Change is possible. But it will come only when Americans decide that the toll on young girls exacted by a sex-saturated society is unacceptably high. Without a broad social consensus for toning down the sexual content dominating so much of pop culture, policies recognizing the inevitability of underaged sex, like the one at King Middle School, will endure, and so will news reports of other young girls with multiple sex partners, and the rising rates of STD’s – all weary reminders of a needless, sad reality.