“You look good wearing my future”

I still remember the metaphor Donna Martin used in the TV show Beverly Hill, 90210 to convince the parents that sex education is a good thing. She says: what if there’s this swimming pool and you do everything you can to keep the kids out of it, you build a big fence and you keep it locked, but still you know that the kids are going to get in it, shouldn’t you teach them how to swim?

I don’t know which is worse, that I remember a scene I watched once in 1992 or that I’m still getting so many of my ideas from pop culture. I mean, I think I get most of my values from church, from the family dinners my parents conducted every night at 6 pm my whole childhood, but lately I’ve had sex on the brain, and movies and TV and the New York Times have had a lot of good things to say about it.

On Glee, there was a line about how it’s not who you’re attracted to, it’s who you fall in love with, and on the Op-Ed page of the Times there was a great piece on Why Monogamy Matters, where the conclusion from recent research is that “a high sexual ideal can shape how quickly and casually people pair off, even when they aren’t living up to its exacting demands. The ultimate goal is a sexual culture that makes it easier for young people to achieve romantic happiness — by encouraging them to wait a little longer, choose more carefully and judge their sex lives against a strong moral standard.”

Sometimes it’s hard for me to balance reality with idealism, especially when it comes to what I want my kids to know. And this is particularly important for my daughters, because that research shows that female promiscuity is strongly correlated to depression. This sounds sexist, but really it’s practical biology. (Not to mention backed up by my faith — which encourages chastity and fidelity for women and men.)

Last week Tom and I watched Easy A, and while it definitely earned it’s PG-13 rating (and then some, for language and theme, though nothing actually happens), it was a fantastic movie. I love high school movies in general, and one that pays homage to 80s John Hughes flicks and Nathaniel Hawthorne? Sign me up! The more I think about it, I’ll probably watch it with Avery in a couple of years, when I’m ready to take The Talk a little further.

A couple years ago I had to encourage someone who is more pure and innocent than most five-year-olds I know to get STD testing after her husband left her. Things happen. I don’t expect my daughters to be perfect. I wasn’t, and am not perfect, but there has to be a way to balance the high ideal we’re never going to give up and the reality that we’re human beings in a imperfect world. In Easy A, which is about truth and reputation/perception and gossip and friendship and family, the school counselor says something about this being a time in your life to make mistakes and explore but that she doesn’t want something to happen (unplanned pregnancy, STD) that will define you for the rest of your life.

That’s what I want to do for my girls — not by handing out condoms necessarily, as the school counselor does (though I have thought before that if I had a wild daughter, I’d take her in for a depo shot), but by teaching them and being available enough to them that while they’re free to discover who they really are, hopefully we can keep them safe from the type of decision that can’t be undone.

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I am participating in the Let’s Talk about STDs Campaign for RapidSTDtesting.com. I memorized Some Kind of Wonderful and had four daughters I now have to teach about all this stuff all on my own. (Ok, Tom helped with the daughters — but NOT with SKOW.)