How Sexuality Is Too Much - 1078 Words

Sexuality is a difficult topic to broach with teens. It is under constant scrutiny: how much is too much? Do youths understand more than society gives them credit for, or is society at fault for supplying them with information that they are not yet ready to cope with? In this paper I am going to explore several of the double standards and catch twenty-twos that teens have to navigate, particularly young girls. I will pay special attention to the paradox of the vixen and the virgin: that young women ought to be held accountable for their own sexual wellbeing, but at the same time remain virginal and naà ¯ve regarding sex itself. This mindset is represented by the majority of the population of the town of Lubbock, Texas in the film ‘The†¦show more content†¦It is when the two are expected in conjunction that problems begin to arise. The supposition becomes that women ought to be both knowledgeable and naà ¯ve, both self-assured and blushing, but if a woman cannot achie ve both simultaneously, that there is something then wrong with her. This is particularly true of young women, who are urged by some societal pressures (ie family, or a religious group) to remain indefinitely chaste, while at the same time being urged by other societal pressures (ie peer groups) to ‘just go with it’ and ‘have fun’. â€Å"Research shows that young women face a limited range of behaviours when it comes to sexuality. If they violate the sexual construction of girls as naturally less interested in sex than boys, they risk being labelled sluts. Young women constantly skirt the Madonna-whore dichotomy: either they are sexually innocent Madonnas or they are sexually lascivious whores (Elliot 2010). Less and less often there seems to be a space in between; female sexuality is divided into a clear list of dos and don’ts, a line where one side is distinctly lesser than the other. The problem with this thinking being that women as active desirers is not a negative thing, nor nearly as rare as its practitioners seem to believe. Moreover, it is another example of female sexuality being viewed as a line to be crossed rather than a gradual gradient. Much of the problem could be said to stem from the issues that society has with female sexuality itself. Too