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Profile of journalist at Kent State, written, filmed and produced by Allison Pritchard
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When peers talk about sex, it’s more about teaching than preaching
MEDILL NEWS SERVICE
by Allison Pritchard, published March 8, 2010
As a high school freshman, Emma Belz said she was kicked out of her sex education class at least three times for not buying it that all students would wait until marriage to have sex.
The concept of abstinence did not seem realistic to her.
Every time she was kicked out, she wanted back in the room. She wanted her peers to know the truth about birth control.
“I need to tell my classmates this,” she said she thought. “They need to know the truth.”
As a peer educator, she goes to high school classes to teach fellow students about sex and contraception. At her own school, Normal Community High School in central Illinois, Belz, now a junior, works with the school nurse to provide other teens with pamphlets, condoms and facts.
While officials at Normal said the students do learn about birth control in the abstinence-based course, many students don’t think it’s enough. That’s why, since freshman year, Belz has been part of the Planned Parenthood of Illinois program that aims to teach teens about safer sex.
But abstinence teacher Shelley Toolis and others like her think differently. She works with Abstinence Resource Services of the South Side Pregnancy Center to teach teens in southwest Chicago and suburbs to wait until marriage to have sex as a way to foster happy and healthy sexual relationships.
She said giving teens condoms and birth control information is like saying, “I know you’re going to screw up, so here’s plan B.” She has faith that teens will wait. “They have the power to make their own choices.”
Toolis herself made a choice to wait until marriage. “I’ve been married for 10 years,” she said. “I think it [waiting for marriage for sex] helped me have a stronger marriage.”
But with nearly half of Illinois teens having sex, many may wonder: Is waiting until marriage really all it’s cracked up to be? And more important, is it realistic?
According to the most recent Youth Risk Behavior Survey of Illinois teens, 47.5 percent of Illinois high school students have had sex, based on the 2009 study.
But don’t rely totally on the survey. What does the original sexpert have to say about the issue?
Dr. Ruth, the 81-year-old Ruth Westheimer, said waiting is realistic for some teens today.
“Ones that adhere to religious or moral or ethical values and decide to remain virgins, men and women, have to stick to that,” she said. “Certainly there has to be respect for those who say they are going to wait to after their marriage ceremony.”
Another peer educator, Alyssa Mandula, a junior at University High School in Normal said that everyone thinks everyone else is having sex, but “more people aren’t having sex than are. Sex is a very personal thing,” she said. “Just because everyone in your group of friends is having sex, it doesn’t mean that you’re ready to.”
Like Belz, she works to make sure that fellow teens who have sex have proper birth control. Some teens are embarrassed or don’t have much money to spend, she said. That’s why she passes out free condoms from Planned Parenthood and leads activities to inform her peers.
Abstinence supporter Toolis takes a different approach. “I’m an idealist,” she said. “If I didn’t believe it was possible [teens waiting for sex], I wouldn’t teach it.”
She said it’s disheartening to her that the Obama administration recently decided to end funding for abstinence-only education. It’s sad, Toolis said, “that we don’t believe in our kids enough to believe they’ll make good choices” Comprehensive sex educators who portray abstinence as a method of birth control downplay its importance; teens need to see abstinence as a lifestyle, she said.
Who’s doing it?
A teen’s economic status is a greater predictor of the age of a sexual encounter than geographic location, said Shireen Schrock, vice president of community education for Planned Parenthood of Illinois. Some lower-income children report the onset of sexual activity as early as age 12, she said.
A number of factors contribute to children from economically disadvantaged homes having sex at younger ages, such as less-educated communities and single-parent and single-income situations.
Another issue for poorer teens is “when they don’t see that there’s a way for them to have hope for the future; they don’t care about their future,” Schrock said. Many don’t worry as much about the risks, she added.
A main difference teacher Toolis sees is that city teens are a lot more willing to talk about it, she said. “They ask a lot more honest questions.”
Nationally, 46 percent of 15- to 19-year-olds say they have had sex at least once.
Most young people have sex for the first time at about age 17, but they do not marry until their middle or late 20s, according to the most recent studies by a national reproductive health center, the Guttmacher Institute. This means most people have about a decade of premarital sex.
What are they learning?
Teen peer educator Mandula said education in some schools isn’t what it should be: “The only thing I learned in sex education is a uterus is shaped like a moose.”
“The last time I felt any pressure [to have or not have sex] was in my freshman wellness class,” she said, where her teacher yelled at teens to remain abstinent.
When the junior gives presentations and coordinates activities for high-schoolers, they soak up the information better because information is coming from a peer instead of a teacher, she said.
Along with about 50 other peer educators in Illinois, Mandula trains before each school year for 60 hours. “We just want to make sure all of our contacts that are having sex are incredibly safe and informed.” She encourages students to come to her with questions or to send a Facebook message or text.
Rev. Emily Gage, a minister at Unity Temple Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Oak Park, is concerned about the messages teens get.
“I’m really reflective on how our kids are just bombarded with messages about sexuality,” Gage said. “The more that we can empower parents to help their children, the better off they’re going to be to listen to their own voice and think about their own values when they’re faced with so many conflicting and mostly unhealthy values that are out there.”
Her church runs a comprehensive sexual education program that promotes parent involvement.
Dr. Ruth also believes in the importance of parent communication when it comes to sexual issues. “Sex education has to start with parents,” she said: Parents have to be askable.
All children need a clear message and a positive role model, Toolis said. Some parents feel they can’t be a good role model because they are divorced. But teens “need to see one person in their lives making it work.”
SIDEBAR:
Teen sex today
When’s the best time to have sex for the first time?
People never forget their first sexual experience. It probably won’t drastically change their lives if it was consensual and no one got pregnant or hurt, Dr. Ruth said. Teens, she said, shouldn’t be drunk or do it merely to inform dorm mates or other friends. And, she added, some people are very disappointed with their first time. They think their relationship will last forever, but it doesn’t.
Society tends to think sex is more romantic if it happens organically, but teens need to be prepared and have protection, said Shireen Schrock, vice president of community education for of Planned Parenthood of Illinois.
For some reason people think if a girl is carrying condoms that she must be a slut, but that’s not true, she said.
When the Peer Educator program asked teens when the best time to have sex for the first time is, they didn’t come up with a specific age or grade level.
Instead the students talked about maturity levels, Schrock said. Teens talked about being in a healthy positive relationship in which sex is consensual and both people are educated about the possible consequences, she said. “It’s about knowing yourself and knowing your own values and knowing your partner.”
“It would be irresponsible to say at age ‘x’ it’s OK to have sex,” said Dr. Angelique Sallas, a Chicago psychologist who works with young people. “You could have a 40-year-old having sex for the first time and have it be exceedingly unhealthy.”
Sallas doesn’t think teen sexual issues have changed much over the years in terms of activity and pressure among adolescents. “Boys are boys and girls are girls,” she said, meaning that “a teen guy doing what he wants and the girl wanting to be liked” are still things that occur in high schools nationwide.
One thing Schrock tells young people is that “if you can’t talk about sex with your partner, then you’re not ready for it,” she said. “We want to try to get young people to think about their limits and boundaries are before they’re in the situation.”
Chicago abstinence teacher Shelley Toolis said teens have told her they think the reasons some young people have sex are to make people jealous, or for revenge. “I think they’re kind of playing with fire,” she said.
Today’s teens going forward
America’s teen pregnancy rates are on the rise, after more than a decade of decline, according to a study released last month by the Guttmacher Institute. The teen pregnancy rate rose 3 percent in 2006, reflecting increases in teen birth and abortion rates of 4 percent and 1 percent, respectively, the study said.
Planned Parenthood employees anticipated the jump based on what they’ve observed from customers, Schrock said. Many blame years of Bush administration support for abstinence-only education.
Some teens have always been having sex at a young age, but most people might not realize that in the 1950s the teen pregnancy rate was as high or even higher than it is today, Schrock said. It was just more acceptable for pregnant teens to marry, she said.
When Dr. Ruth teaches at Yale and Princeton, she said, students ask the same questions they did in the past, only today’s questions are more explicit and include topics such as oral and anal sex.
Respectively, young people today don’t realize the risks in those two forms of sex as much as the risk of vaginal sex.
“I think there’s a speculation among teens that it’s less risky to partake in anal or oral sex,” Schrock said. “It’s just as risky, if not more so in terms of passing along STDs.” They are thinking about it in terms of pregnancy, she said.
Another difference is that some of today’s teens deal with sexting and other technology-related issues. “Young people are bombarded with messages about sex from every direction in terms of media,” Schrock said. “We need to talk with the young people to help create a filter for all those messages.”
Teens use cell phones and other technologies as outlets for experimentation, Schrock said. They look at it as fun and flirtatious, not realizing the danger, she said. Maybe 20 years ago they would have acted out those urges with another person, she said.
America as a whole needs more research about the sexual behavior of today, Dr. Ruth said.
“We need a new Kinsey study that gives us good valuated scientific data,” Dr. Ruth said. The last one, done about 50 years ago, surveyed sexual practices of Americans. She said the new study should include more about homosexuality.
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Dying to be entertained
by Allison Pritchard
(Exerpt from nonfiction book sample chapters written in graduate school)
We are all going to die. One day, our eyes will forever close. Some of us will be in a box below ground. Some will be disintegrated into in little pieces, burnt to a crisp, turning ashes to ashes for its literal interpretation. Others will be donated to medical science or have their organs given to those in need.
But some choose to be put on display.
Yeah, on display.
More than 11,000 individuals have donated their bodies to become part of Body Worlds traveling exhibits–the world’s most popular touring attraction. To date, more than 28 million people have attended. And now the pop queen Lady Gaga herself is confirmed to share the stage with dead bodies on her upcoming tour, collaborating with Body Worlds founder Gunther von Hagens, also known as Dr. Death.
Despite the attractions’ success, only in the recent decade has America welcomed the exhibit. The dead (and body parts of the deceased) are positioned throughout the exhibit space, usually a science center. Some bodies are exposed to show the muscular skeleton. Others are sliced to show layers of tissue and bones. And some are positioned as if they’re still alive, participating in activities like throwing a football or playing chess.
It was in 2004, that for the first time, German anatomist, scientist and doctor, Gunther von Hagens brought his first-of-its-kind show to North America, premiering at the California Science Center in Los Angeles.
Visitors come in to see these now famous dead. From someone’s grandfather, to someone’s pregnant daughter (fetus exposed), these shells of people that once walked the earth and now stand in exhibits continue to twist our minds.
With enormous crowds flocking to exhibits like Body Worlds in the United States, never before has death filled the airwaves, museums, shops and everything else. Never before has the content been so blunt and open. And never before have we enjoyed it so much. Essentially, death has become a new entertainment, regardless of the fact we’re still hush about the topic in social circles.
As the final frontier on social openness after women’s rights, sexuality, race and color, death remains one of the last subjects to move away from taboo-ville. Even with all the open media, in our everyday lives, and we use the soft-willed oft-prescribed wording of “passing away.” Death is—in the words of filmmaker Alan Ball—coming out of the coffin.
But it wasn’t always this way. Philippe Aries chronicled how in the Middle Ages, people knew when death was coming in his 1970s book Western Attitudes Toward Death: From the Middle Ages to the Present. And when people didn’t know death was coming, it was labeled as the exception to the rule.
The deathbed scene was one of acceptance, described as “half-way between passive resignation and mystical trust.” The person who prepared to die told others of his or her impending death. Religious ceremony also preceded the death.
Aries calls this eager reception of death in the old ages the “tamed death.” Those dying didn’t rebel against death, he said, and there was no great show of emotion when neighbors, friends and family gathered in public to watch the person breathe his or her last breath.
But “the old attitude in which death was both familiar and near, evoking no great fear or awe, offers too marked a contrast to ours, where death is so frightful that we dare not utter its name,” Aries said.
The usual slowly tamed death changed to the “forbidden death” between the thirteenth and fifteenth century, when death became more personal. People as a whole saw death more as “an inner feeling of death of self.” This was coupled with “a passion for being, an anxiety of not sufficiently being,” Aries said. Therefore, death became unnamable in the 19th century, despite the proliferation of funeral processions and cemeteries. Aries explains how the time period lead to today’s setup—where death is pushed out of regular life, making it seem “distant and more dramatic.”
Today we treat death delicately when someone we know dies or a close friend mourns. We’re almost afraid to bring up the topic. But when it comes to American entertainment, it’s a different story.
With this recent openness about death in popular culture, how has America’s attitude toward death changed? Why do some people fantasize about being dead and becoming a vampire or being displayed in an exhibit when they die? Are these just ways to essentially “live forever”?
Body exhibits are just one of the numerous new ways America has become closer with the Grim Reaper in popular culture. In the last decade, we’ve been introduced to an endless parade of new vampire books, television shows and movies involving life and death. We line up outside the theater to swoon over a seventeen-year-old white-faced vamp. And Showtime subscribers root for the serial killer Dexter as he murders the bad guys on a routine basis. Some of us even go to death metal concerts—for fun.
With the recently ignited passion for vampires on cable shows, some might think vampires in mass media is new. But people have been reading about vampires since the 18th century. And from Shakespearean suicides on stage to Dracula to the Addams Family, death in general has always played a role in entertainment in American culture. But in today’s entertainment, we are even more blunt about death’s realities and morbid entertainment is even more pervasive.
Allan Ball “broke ground” when he created Six Feet Under becoming an HBO god. The 2001 show revolved around a blunt portrayal of life and death at a funeral home. It asked questions no one has dared to ask before. Each episode started with a death, and presented the effects each death had on those left behind.
An existential view of life and death is very much brought to the foreground in Six Feet Under. Kelli Marshall, a visiting assistant professor of film at the University of Toledo blogged about the best things about the show after the series ended.
“Death is immanent, unexpected, and often unexplained. To me, this is Six Feet Under‘s greatest gift to the viewer. In an age as well as a medium that privileges life, youth, invincibility, and a complete disregard for death, the show’s constant emphasis on mortality is provocative and, dare I say, refreshing.” Marshall even called the in-your-face bluntness consoling.
Sociologists Avi Shoshana and Elly Teman have argued that Six Feet Under even goes so far as to evoke “the idea that the living can be more lifeless than the physically deceased and that the departed can be livelier than the living.”
The idea certainly holds true with today’s media vampires. Cable viewers watch sexy vamps in True Blood live their exciting “lives,” the same way we’d watch hospital drama in Grey’s Anatomy. After all, isn’t sucking someone’s blood and being together for an eternity kind of excitingly romantic?
Television news’ portrayal of death also lets us look at death in new ways. When the media publicizes the unexpected deaths of young celebrities like Brittany Murphy and Heath Ledger and grand memorials like Michael Jackson’s take over the airwaves, we find comfort in the social hoopla of it all.
While it’s true American media have become open, they don’t truly reflect America’s perception on death. Even though we see death all the time on TV, we are not very accepting about it in our own lives.
Even though the fact that 7 out of 10 Americans believe in an afterlife, we vehemently fear death. People cry, lose sleep, miss work, see psychiatrists, lose weight, gain weight and do a million other things because they are so upset about losing someone they love.
When Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross wrote the 1969 death education staple On Death and Dying, she went as far as to argue that recently Americans have experienced an increased fear of death, citing psychological issues including a greater need for understanding and coping with the problems of death and dying. Her explorative study and seminar on death put the five stages of grief on the map: denial and isolation, anger, bargaining, depression and finally acceptance.
Kubler-Ross pointed out that death is distasteful to man and probably always will be: “In our unconsciousness, death is never possible in regards to ourselves. It is inconceivable for our unconscious to imagine an actual ending of our own life here on earth, and if this life of ours has to end, the ending is always attributed to a malicious intervention from the outside by someone else. In simple terms, in our unconscious mind we can only be killed. It is inconvincible to die of a natural cause or of old age.”
We don’t live as though we believe death is coming. At least, not now, and not for us.
To the contrary, in today’s popular culture, especially in entertainment media, death is fun, and in the few instances it’s not fun, it’s meant to comfort us. We emotional Americas just can’t accept what will happen to every single one of us. Perhaps the filmmakers, artists and innovators that shape today’s popular culture are just a bit more in touch with the human condition that plagues us all.
Professor at the University of North Texas and co-author of Cultural Changes in Attitudes Toward Death, Dying and Bereavement Bert Hayslip believes America’s openness toward death has fluctuated over different points in history. Our culture is hyper-sensitized to death when people experience a personal loss or national loss like 9/11. But at other times, people are completely ignorant of death, he says.
“I think that death is like the sun – you can only look at it briefly and then you must turn away. Or perhaps like wet paint, you want to touch it, but only long to see if it is really wet…We are fascinated with some kinds of death and repulsed by other kinds,” Hayslip says.
Exhibits like Body Worlds and television shows/movies can act as outlets for our curiosity, Hayslip says. Watching death safely from a living room couch or from a distance gives people a free pass, he says.
As a whole, Americans are more aware of death and other issues relating to the end of life, but we still see life and death as opposites, Hayslip says. We learn about death when it’s required of us. As of today, only two American universities offer degree programs for thanatology, the study of death.
Ultimately, contrary to media’s open and far reaching displays of death, we still don’t talk about our fears of death, at least not often, and not in public. Aside from the development of hospice, medical research and some academia, there seems to be a cultural disconnect between the newfound openness about death in popular culture and the shying away from death in real life. Even so, body exhibits and television media may prompt us to open our minds, and perhaps help us not be so scared of the inevitable—the impending doom that haunts us all. By asking new questions about death, perhaps we can get closer to accepting death and living these frail lives we have to the fullest.
