Let's Talk About Sexualization, Baby: Growing Up Over-Sexualized

An exploration of how "sex" affects the youth of America. Trigger Warning: discussions about rape, abuse, assault, domestic violence, and exploitation. Sections that allude to these will be marked by *. Image from Shutterstock.

Everyone's Favorite Taboo

Sex. The word alone can invoke a lot of feelings. Fond memories, embarrassing stories, plain discomfort. For me, the pure idea of sex makes me a bit uncomfortable. It’s odd because while I love expanding my education on sex and how to have healthy sexual relationships, yet I still manage to feel a sense of shame and discomfort. Sex is a loaded topic and not just for myself. In my situation, I’m a queer girl who grew up in the south with very Christian, black, immigrant parents. Sex was not a discussed topic in my household. Despite this, it’s still a topic that demands to be noticed and talked about. Middle school kids whisper about it to their peers and high school students share their experiences over lunch. Teens are often starved of knowledge when it comes to sex and, as statistics have shown, that hasn’t stopped them from engaging with it.

Sex and sexualization have an obvious impact on young adults and their development, but why is that and where does it start? Sex in society is both glaringly obvious and surprisingly discreet in the way it causes us to look at the world and ourselves. Whether you're a self-proclaimed slut, prude, involuntary celibate, or a person simply confused about your role, sex has a huge influence on what it means to grow up in America.

"Boo, you whore."

One issue with the way sexuality in teens is represented is that there are differences between the way it is presented to both boys and girls. Peggy Orenstein, author of Girls & Sex, makes note of the difference. On the NPR podcast Fresh Air, Orenstein said that girls are told “they’re supposed to be sexy, they’re supposed to perform sexually for boys, but that their sexual pleasure is unspoken.” This can be seen in teen movies from the early 2000s like Mean Girls. Karen, one of the main characters is constantly referred to as a “slut.” When watching this, I found it confusing because all of the girls are shown as sexually active and/or sexual beings. Regina George, another main character, was shown cheating on her boyfriend multiple times during the movie, yet she was one of the main people reinforcing the idea that Karen was a “slut.” What made Karen more of a slut than Regina? Orenstein says that “pop culture and pornography sexualize young women by creating undue pressure to look and act sexy” and that “these pressures affect both the sexual expectations that girls put on themselves and the expectations boys project onto them.” This claim is reinforced again by the movie Mean Girls. The narrator, Cady Herring, explained the idea of halloween to viewers by saying “Halloween is the one night a year when a girl can dress like a total slut, and no other girls can say anything about it.” In the next scene, Cady’s character shows up to a halloween party in a non-slutty outfit and is made fun of and gawked at. This scene held an odd duality: a girl is encouraged to dress like a slut on the one day it was considered okay, but was considered weird for not abiding by this guideline, yet a girl shouldn’t act like a slut without fear of being ridiculed. Why was this okay?

I should probably back up and explain what a slut is in the first place. Unfortunately, I do not have a solid definition in my own words. The meaning of the word slut has changed over the years, and with that, has garnered different connotations. According to Merriam-Webster's Dictionary, a slut is a “promiscuous woman” or a “woman who has many sexual partners” (Merriam-Webster, n.d.). This term originated in the 15th century. That is approximately 600 years of usage. During the time Mean Girls was shot, “slut” was a terrible thing to be called. No one wanted to be one, yet the word was thrown around so freely and usually by women. The idea of women calling each other sluts was and is counterintuitive. In Mean Girls, this is addressed directly by Ms. Norbury who says “you all have got to stop calling each other sluts and whores. It just makes it okay for guys to call you sluts and whores.” Slut, and all its other synonyms, was very much a girl-oriented insult. It wasn’t until the 2010s where an equivalent word finally became widely used against men. The word “fuckboy” came into play around the same time women started reclaiming the word “slut” for themselves and deeming it a good thing or a tool of empowerment.

Don't Hate the Player, Hate Who He's Become*

A key difference in the emergence of the world “fuckboy,” however, is that it lost its insult value much quicker than the world “slut.” The gendered connotation faded over time as well. Being a “fuckboy” became branded as a good thing. Any man that was considered conventionally attractive was a “fuckboy.” Simultaneously, it did retain some form of insult because it was also used to refer to men who, for lack of a better term, fucked people over either through general mistreatment of romantic prospects, cheating, or a lack of personality that led to disappointment. Thought Catalog featured a submission by user mediocremind to describe what a “fuckboy” really is:

This submission is reflective of general attitudes to fuckboys, yet highlights another key difference between “sluts” and “fuckboys.” The idea of fuckboys is framed around pain and heartbreak, while the idea of slut is characterized by general promiscuity. What does this mean in the grand scheme? It shows an inherent difference in the value of these two promiscuous individuals. The fuckboy preys on the feelings of their prospects, usually women, while sluts seem to just have sex with who they want. Fuckboys tend to employ tactics of gaslighting and manipulation which elevates the complexity of this archetype and leaves sluts to be rather one dimensional. As mentioned before, fuckboy has lost a bit of its gendered connotation, but overall, the association with men still remains. With this association, the clear difference between the female-oriented word "slut" and the male-oriented word "fuckboy" remains. The difference being that men are granted a degree of power and authority in sexual relationships in a way that women are not. Men are applauded for sexual promiscuity while women are shamed. The term fuckboy gives insight on how sexually promiscuous men employ tactics that grant them control over their partners emotions. Sluts are deprived of the same ability and instead are just seen as women who engage in "excessive" sexual activity. Now, the word fuckboy could have a more in-depth meaning because of angry and hurt women who have been affected by such men. To a degree, this is probably true. However, it does say something that so many women (and men) are familiar with this fuckboy character and are able to identify them in their daily lives.

Simultaneously, the image of a fuckboy has existed in media long before a name was attached to it. Movies spanning multiple genres have given us the image of a man who is sexually promiscuous and often uses tactics to get women in his bed. An example would be Chuck Bass in the popular TV show Gossip Girl. Chuck was a rich "playboy" who was known to get many girls because of his looks and his wealth. However, it wasn't just his looks and wealth that landed girls in his bed. At one point, Chuck Bass is able to have sex with a woman, Blair Waldorf, because she's drunk and emotionally distraught. This is never really addressed as an issue in the show. Instead, this is credited a the inciting incident of their series-long love story. In fact, one particularly "fuckboy" act Chuck did was force Blair Waldorf to wait for him to "become a better person" until they could be together. In addition, he also discouraged her from seeing anyone else often using tactics of manipulation to do so.

The existence of fuckboys brings something else into question. How did this behavior come to be? Chuck Bass is a character originating from a show made in 2007, but the existence of manipulative men is still present and the idolization of sexually promiscuous men (while simultaneously condemning sexually promiscuous women) still exists. Not only this, but its current existence is a continuation of this hOne of the most prominent instances of a shamed woman existing next to an idolized man is the Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake Super Bowl incident. Janet Jackson suffered a wardrobe malfunction at the 2004 Super Bowl that resulted in her breast being revealed on live television though the incident lasted "less than a second." Jackson and Timberlake were performing together and it was Timberlake's action, though unintentional, that resulted in the malfunction. However, it was Jackson's career that took the hit while Timberlake was launched into stardom. For example, Jackson was not allowed to go the Grammy's the following month while Timberlake was both invited and asked to do a performance. The issue was a very obvious example of the difference in the way women and men were treated in regards to sexuality. Both Jackson and Timberlake were well known for their sex-symbol images, but it was Jackson's display of sexuality that was condemned while Timberlake's career sky-rocketed. In addition, this image reveals another dark side to differences in sexuality; another glaring difference being: race.

Sex and Race*

Intersectionality refers to how certain social categories such as race, class, and gender overlap. One certain individual might have multiple marginalized identities. For example, I am a black, second-generation immigrant, queer woman. Each of these groups are marginalized on their own, but together it causes the problems of each identity to overlap and even magnify. We know women are more marginalized than men and we know non-white people are more marginalized than white people. It is at the intersection of womanhood and non-white racial identities that young girls find themselves victims of varying levels of objectification.

Growing up as a black girl, it was very common to hear the phrase "fast" in reference to girls who are perceived to be sexual sooner than they should. Parents would say it discourage girls from wearing shorts, doing their hair a certain way, or even interacting with boys on a platonic level. There was a girl in my neighborhood whom mine and other parents deemed as "fast" because she was wore shorter clothes, began developing sooner than the other girls, and hung out with the neighborhood boys. In the black community, "fast" was just another word for slutty or promiscuous. The most difficult part to grasp was that this idea was perpetuated by adults, not children. Perceptions of sexuality and promiscuity usually never develop organically; the adults in a child's life are usually the one to indoctrinate them into these perceptions.

When it comes to sex and race, perceptions of sexuality are usually pushed by adults. Studies have proven that black girls are seen as older than their white counterparts of the same age. In the same vein, they are also viewed as less innocent. This is an issue in the case of discipline and the juvenile corrections system, as black girls account for 28% of referrals to law enforcement and 37% of arrests. But what does this mean in terms of sexualization? Black women have long been seen as sexual objects throughout American history. Modernly, this has manifested in multiple ways.

In my middle school and the beginning of high school, the dress code was strictly enforced. If teachers thought dresses or skirts were too short, they would take you out into the hall and put a measuring tape between the end of your finger and the beginning of your knee. If you were four inches over, you'd be sent home or forced to wear the outfit of shame. The odd part was that black girls were far more policed than white girls at the school. My school already discriminated against girls with the dress code, but they took it a step further by policing black girls more. At a 60% white school with a staff of mostly white teachers, this was not a good look. At one point, I was one of the girls humiliated in the hallway. While walking to class a teacher briskly pulled me aside and accused me of trying to escape dress code by holding my books up to my chest in order to hide my "cleavage." I was wearing a dress that I had bought the night before and my mother had approved. I was an anxious ninth-grader whose books were too heavy to put in my backpack. With my set of B-cup breasts, I had no desire to wear a dress that showed "cleavage," yet I was treated disrespectfully anyway.

Mine is not the only story of this kind. In 2017, researchers from the University of Kentucky found that black girls were disproportionately targeted by enforcers of dress code and other minor infractions. This issue is an example that the idea that black girls are less innocent than white girls does not stop at behavior. In my experience and the experience of girls at other schools, black girls are told that are bodies are more sexual and we are a greater risk of "distraction" to boys. Black women are told from a young age by both our parents and the world that our bodies can easily be portrayed as sexual. Our innocence in the education and justice system runs out sooner than our white counterparts.

Growing up, these pressures from our parents and the outside world make a lot of black girl feel insecure in their bodies. Curvier black girls were subjected to sexualization for their more/faster developed bodies and slimmer black girls were made to feel insecure for not having bodies that could be sexualized. Music videos show black women with bodies that are damn near impossible to achieve naturally and boys ridicule women whose bodies don't match that of video vixens and harass the women whose bodies do. The issues don't stop with black women, though. Unfortunately, all women of color experience some kind, though different, of overt sexualization.

You're so exotic.*

Exotic: foreign, especially in an exciting way. For a lot of non-black women of color, this is a term that is heard often. The idea of being something other than black or white can be exciting for some men to the point where they care less about the woman and more about her skin-tone and where she's from.

There has been a long history of stereotypes regarding Asian women and their experience with exotification in western society. Researchers Shruti Mukkamala and Karen Suyemoto broke down the common stereotypes that Asian women face. The two most relevant to the inherent sexualization are the stereotypes of "exotic" and "submissive." Specifically white men have a tendency to seek out these traits in Asian women they consider for sexual and romantic partners. With East Asian women, one of the most prominent manifestations of this sexualization is the imagery of geishas. With South Asian and Middle Eastern women, one of the most prominent manifestations would be belly dancers. You can the overt western sexualization in the way these two cultural figures are used as Halloween costumes. The costumes often take time to put emphasis on or create the sexual aspects. This can also be seen with other groups of women such as Native Americans and Pacific Islanders where their cultural clothing is often turned into sexualized Halloween costumes.

What does this mean for young Asian-American girls? Simple, predation or humiliation. If images of women who are supposed to represent you are over-sexualized, where does that leave you? You're either forced to conform or chastised when you defy it. Specifically, many women grow up having a hard time navigating their own sexuality and what it means to them. Like black women, the pressure from the outside world to be these sexual creatures can be magnified by parents, parents who warn their children not to succumb to these images of intense sexuality by restricting their self expression. Sure, it can be a means of protection, but it can also cause young girls to feel like they have to either be hypo-sexual or hyper-sexual. This causes them to have complex relationships with their own sexuality. You can force yourself to be this image of sexual attraction and desire, which if it is not native to who you are, can place you in regrettable situations such as assault or worse. Contrastingly, you can force yourself to be absent and devoid of all sexuality, which if it is not native to who you are, can cause you to neglect an important part of who you are and create these narratives that limit your sexual understanding greatly. This is the problem with sexualization: you are presented with two extremes that, for most people, does not fit who they are entirely, yet your only choice is to fall into one of them unless you're given the information and ability to unlearn this mindset and set yourself free.

The World of Incels*

We’ve established that girls are meant to be sexual objects to be wanted by boys. With that, one can come to the conclusion that boys are taught to want women as sexual objects. In the 90s and early 2000s, teens and young adults were introduced to tons of movies involving underdogs. Before, we had the “sexy” and “manly” man who always got the girl, but this time “nerdy” and “less cool” boys got their shine, too. If you look around and see that everyone is supposed to end up happily ever after and “get the girl,” what happens when you don’t?

Welcome to the world of incels, self-described “involuntary celibates” (shortened to the word “incel”) who congregate in online forums to lament about not getting the girl. Incels are the product of a society that teaches men that they are entitled to beautiful, attractive women who want to and will have sex with them no matter what they look and act like. In recent years, they have gained notoriety due to the increase of their numbers, getting banned from the website they started on, and being linked to domestic terrorism.

Incels are men and young boys who have never had sex and feel marginalized by society for never having done so. They characterize their ideologies into two main stratas of thinking: the red pill and the black pill. The Red Pill theory, as described by Contrapoints’ 2018 video entitled Incels, is based on four main points: women are inherently hypergamous (people who go for those of a higher social standing than themselves), only 20% of men attract women, dating is a sexual marketplace, and feminism gives women all the power (Contrapoints, 2018). Basically, the dating pool is rigged for women and above-average men. The Black Pill theory is based on another set of four points: sexual market value is genetic, you (incels) are permanent virgins, you (incels) will never have sex or relationships, and happiness is impossible (Contrapoints, 2018). In other words, if you’re born beneath societal standards of attractiveness, you will never find love or happiness. This all sounds kind of bleak and intense, right? Well… it is. Natalie Wynn, the face and main creator of Contrapoints (an internet analysis channel on Youtube), says “the black pill is, essentially, dogmatic hopelessness about dating and life in general. It’s the pinnacle of what psychotherapists call catastrophizing: a cognitive distortion where anxiety or depression leads you to infer apocalyptic conclusions from mundane setbacks and anxieties” (Contrapoints, 2018). Incels have a really dark, sado-masochistic worldview. Sado-masochistic in the sense that it not only harms others, but also themselves.

What does this have to do with the other ideas in this piece? It’s simple. Girls are not the only ones affected by a society that over-sexualizes them. Boys are just as much affected and incels are the proof. These boys desire women beyond a point that can be comprehensible at times. Their whole schtick is wanting women to have sex with them, yet hating women so much that they despise how they dress, talk, act, and have sex with other men. It’s a messed up cycle. What self-respecting woman wants to be with a man that hates everything single thing she does?

There has been a swing of the pendulum in society. Before the time of feminism and women’s rights, women were essentially property in every sense of the word. Period pieces have shown many a story where a woman is slated to a man she hates, is forced to succumb to his every whim, and pops out children until she dies. Check out most any piece based on a real woman’s life before 1960. Women existed for men and under the rule of men. In a country that existed since 1776, women didn’t get the right to vote until 1920 (and that was only white women!!!). The sexual revolution of the 1960s brought us women who were more confident in their sexualities. Jia Tolentino in a The New Yorker article entitled “The Rage of Incels” said that “most American women now grow up understanding that they can and should choose who they want to have sex with.” Women should choose who they want to have sex with and they have. Women have access to sites like Tinder and Bumble that allow them to choose attractive men that they want. Bumble even allows women to send the message first in order to dissuade any unwanted or harassing messages from men. But this swing of the pendulum has caused men to feel left behind, more specifically incels. Gone are the days where American women need to marry a man, regardless of how she feels about him, in order to survive. Not every man is guaranteed to have a young, beautiful virgin anymore. Needless to say, the incels are pissed.

You Just Haven't Met the Right Guy for You*

LGBTQIA+ women often stand a cross-roads of sex and sexuality. They’re women, so they still fall victim to the pitfalls of over-sexualization of girls. Simultaneously, they are not given much information on how to safely have sex with other women if they so please. As far as sexualization goes, the sexualization of queer women often goes extremely far.

The term "queer women" is not solely limited to lesbians and bisexuals, but for the sake of specificity I will be referring to these two groups as data on other sexualities that include queer women (e.g., pansexuals) does not exist in abundance. With that being said, these issues are not solely limited to lesbians or bisexuals. As a queer woman who has known many other queer women, specificity of label doesn’t matter when it comes to the sexualization of your queerness. It's fair to say all women become victims due to the sake of us being queer women.

Bisexual women have been a long-standing sexual objects in the media. There are stereotypes about them being highly promiscuous, always wanting threesomes, or simply doing it for male attention. These ideas have not only undermined their identities but have also caused bisexual women to be victims of harassment. According to the 2010 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, 61% of bisexual women “experienced rape, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetime” (NISVS, 2010). This is compared to the 44% of lesbian women and 35% of heterosexual women who reported the same (NISVS, 2010). Though the survey does not point to a reason for this, it does cause one to wonder why this is. Researchers say that bisexual women occupy a unique position of being simultaneously fetishized by the media and ostracized by potential support systems. Bisexual women are placed in vulnerable positions to be hurt by romantic partners and predators without having the ability to be heard or recognized.

Lesbians have a different relationship with sexualization than bisexual women. Kozee and Tylka, In an exploratory study of the objectification theory model with diverse women, "interrelationships among the objectification theory constructs were different and more complex for the lesbian participants than for the heterosexual participants." While another study on objectification and bisexual women displayed that factors related to objectification in heterosexual women were the same factors for bisexual women (Brewster et al., 2014). While both are made to be objects of male attraction by the media on varying levels, the lesbian experience exists outside of male attraction completely; at least, it's meant to. While womanhood is not supposed to be about the existence of male attraction regardless of sexuality, lesbianism is intentionally devoid of the male gaze due to the fact that lesbians are not attracted to men. However, many shows and movies still portray lesbians as overly sexual creatures usually to appeal to male audiences.

The L Word was a show meant to portray the lives of queer women, yet there was a lot about the show that seemed to be played up for the sake of being sexual. While men are not the only ones who might find enjoyment from two women engaged in a session of lustful actions, there is some question of where the line is. The website Pride made a ranking of the 97 sex scenes involving a main character. Game of Thrones is a show that is well-known for it's numerous and graphic sex scenes had about 82 sex scenes by the end of season seven. The L Word had about 97 by the end of its six seasons. There would often be episodes where several couples would be having sex at once and the scenes would be cut together almost like a slideshow. As a queer woman, it often caused me to step back and wonder who these scenes were really for.

There is a stereotype/joke in the queer community that lesbians have sex with everyone in their circle. The L Word had a whole episode on it where Alice, a main character, made a chart that was able to connect lesbians she knew to famous people simply based on hookups other lesbians were known to have. While this can be true in real life, it made me, a relatively sexually inexperienced person, insecure about not having a large amount of sexual or romantic partners. Embarrassingly enough, I felt the need to fulfill this in college in order to make up for it and fit in with other lesbians. While I didn't follow through, I still feel the pressure to be promiscuous in order to fulfill this idea.

This idea of the promiscuous queer woman, regardless of her sexual orientation, has long been regarded as a reason why men feel entitled to them. There is not a queer girl I know that has not had the experience of a guy telling them that they can "change" them. The implication is usually that we just haven't met the right guy. However, as statistics show, lesbians and bisexual women experience harassment by their peers (specifically men) because of their sexualities.

Your Body, My Rules*

A great deal of the issues that stem from the sexualization that young women face and how it affects both men and women, comes from the male entitlement to sex and women's bodies. As mentioned in the section about incels, society has done men a disservice by putting out media that enforces the idea that every man, no matter what, should get a woman. One such example would be the DC's the Joker.

The Joker and Harley Quinn are a well-known couple. In their notoriety, they are well-known for their unhealthy relationship. Co-creator Bruce Timm was initially worried about giving the Joker a love-interest. He told The New York Times, "We didn't want to give Joker a girlfriend because it humanizes him, and we were really trying to stress how bizarre and creepy he could be." Regardless, the show creators made Harley Quinn's character the Joker's girlfriend. Their relationship from conception has been characterized by the Joker's abuse of her character. Dr. Wind Goodfriend, principal researcher for the Institute for the Prevention of Relationship Violence at Buena Vista University, expressed worries to MTV that victims of domestic violence could be re-traumatized by the Joker's behavior. The Joker is known for his brutal sadism and disregard for people, particularly Harley. Characters like him serve as an example that no matter how deranged or dangerous a man is, he can always get a beautiful woman to dote on him unconditionally, even if it's at her own expense.

A harsh manifestation of male entitlement is rape. It is important to note that men are sexually assaulted and that any form of sexual assault involves entitlement to one's body. For the sake of the topic, this conversation revolves around the rape of women and the policing of their bodies. According to the website the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network, women between the ages of 18 to 24 are at elevated risks of sexual violence. 80% of all juvenile victims of sexual violence are female, while 90% of all adult rape victims are female. It should be noted that these are only the cases that are reported, so it's likely that numbers are higher.

The issue is: why does rape occur? Of course, something that happens so often and widely cannot have a strict set of answers. However, there are a few things most acts of sexual violence have in common. According to a project entitled Rape: Power, Anger, and Sexuality, sexual assault centers on power and control rather than sexual gratification. This is key to understanding the issue of male entitlement. Often, sexual violence is excused by answers that blame men's inherent mindset and behaviors. Sayings like "boys will be boys" and "it's a compliment" perpetuate the idea that sexual violence is a result of lust or romantic desire rather than an assertion of power. But why do men who perform acts of sexual violence do this?

SAFER explains that male entitlement is not something that is hard-wired into men's DNA. Male entitlement is result of societal conditioning. SAFER explains that in western society, men are conditioned from birth that they have an inherent right to power--- "boys are tough and strong and aggressive and have a right to anger" while "girls are gentle and pretty and compliant." These stereotypes are then perpetuated by the media. Tropes that have existed for centuries such as "the damsel in distress" have continued to reinforce these ideas of inherent female compliance and male strength. So how does this work in romantic relationship and areas of assault. SAFER sums it up:

It's important to remember that not all men are abusers and perpetrators of sexual violence. However, it is also important to be aware that all men (that exist within the confines of society) victims of "toxic masculinity." Toxic masculinity is a loaded term and one that has garnered great controversy. To clarify, this is not the idea that all men are inherently toxic, evil predators. It is the "narrow and repressive description of manhood, designating manhood as defined by violence, sex, status, and aggression" as well the "cultural ideal of manliness" as defined by The Good Men Project. The point of this concept is to dispel the idea that men are naturally inclined to aggressiveness or bad behavior.

Toxic masculinity is not something that only affects men or women. It affects both in dangerous ways. Incels are one example of how society pushing the need for men to be creatures of sexual conquests backfires when a man cannot live up to these expectations. Insecurities about their worth can be fostered in ways that can eventually, in extreme cases, lead to suicide, homicide, or both. Even men who are not incels can feel insecure about how they performs in terms of sex. Men who don't have these hyper-sexualized traits of male sexuality can also feel dejected or insecure about themselves. On the other side of this, the emphasis on the need for sexual conquests in order to validate one's manliness leads to the sexualization of women as well as the assault and abuse of women. Detroit Lions' Deandre Levy says it best in his work about sexual assault: “It’s truly astounding how many awful things that occur in this world because men are afraid of appearing weak.”

So What Now?

Sex, who's having it, who isn't, and who is affected by it are not simple questions with clear-cut answers. Common perceptions about sex are often flawed or under-developed for many reasons. Most of the time, the reason is that it is impossible to see all the ways that sex impacts us. There are a few concepts I did not explore because of the complexity and context those topics require. Topics like religion, sexual abuse and how that shapes victims' relationships with sex, mental health, and more require nuanced explorations of the topics to fully understand how they interact with sex and effect people. There are hundreds of works, studies, and explorations on these topics and I encourage everyone to do at least some minimal research on them.

When I started this inquiry, my goal was to discover all the ways sex affects teenage life. Instead I found myself looking at how the media, culture, and society builds these images of sexuality from youth in a way that hits hard in your teens and early 20s. For sex to be so undiscussed in our youth, it manages to have the biggest impact here. Our interactions with the ideas of sex (and gender) when we're young form the basis of how we view sex forever. Personally, I have had to do a lot of learning and un-learning and I know many that have had to do the same. Perhaps one day, there'll be a generation of kids who never have to unlearn harmful ideas towards sex and sexuality.

References and Blurb about myself coming soon. I was just exhausted after today.