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Somebody should call Child Protective Services -- and not on these kids, who in most cases, maybe all cases, seem to be partaking in a sexual curiosity appropriate to their age. Franks is the one who needs remedial education in age-appropriate behavior. The only danger in pointing out that none of us actually knows what goes on in each other's bedrooms is the possibility that Franks -- or some other well-meaning authority figure -- will take this as license to ask for an eyewitness account in the name of journalistic accuracy.

Since this article is titled "The Sex Lives of Your Children," it dwells on the children of readers that Talk magazine expects to be within its demographic: "middle- to upper-middle-class" kids of baby boomers, in "urban and suburban areas of the East and West coast." ("Though," Franks adds ominously, "the language of this youth culture is universal." How she knows that kids in Ohio are giving the same blow jobs as kids in New York and California is anyone's guess.)

Sex in this article is dark and foreboding, not natural or innocent, and is brought on by (bad, bad, bad parent!) neglect. The causes of teen sex are predictably linked to the most tired clichés of bad parenting: parents who aren't home, parents who want to be seen as "cool," parents who are afraid to parent, parents who are too busy at work. (One father of a wayward teen, a psychotherapist for at-risk kids, laments that he was too busy working on his book to notice his daughter's downward spiral.)

Academic pressure also takes a hit. The pull quote on the first page, from "Richard," 14, reads, "We work so hard during the week, because of college pressure, that by the weekends, we're totally, like Let the games begin." Becca Bendler, the psychotherapist's daughter whose rescue and rehabilitation makes her the Cinderella in this fairy tale, has her behavior explained away by the fact that she had to attend a public school where a "fast crowd" gave her more attention than her own family.

A diagnosis of dyslexia and attention deficit disorder (one of Becca's "issues") adds more credence to the idea that teenage experimentation is always the result of disease or environment. Oddly enough, in an essay that takes parents to task for undue academic pressure, the solution for Becca is private school. At private schools, her older sister assures her, the students "are intellectually and socially more mature." (Never mind that "mature" in the context of this article tends to mean "one thing" -- lots of sex.)

And it goes without saying that this article is not concerned with the kids who don't have the option to leave public schools, nor the kids whose parents aren't around because they are working two jobs to pay the rent. I don't know that all of these kids are white, but I do know that the only time race is mentioned, it's in the context of a 14-year-old girl, described as a New York public school student, who says she was adopted by a group of boys: "They were African-American and they loved my boobs."

Girls, too, are doubly saddled with the old baggage of the virgin/whore dichotomy ("girls are sluts and boys are players") and the new unwelcome fruits of feminism. Franks tells us breathlessly: "Girls insist on a 'do-me' and boys, closing their eyes, comply, hoping the favor will be returned."

"James," 14, evokes the age-old vagina dentata when he laments, "Boys get pussy-whipped by girls. They cheat on their boyfriends and all they want to do is be eaten out." And "Scott," 15, is happy to blame the sex scandals on a "war between the sexes" that started when the girls were taken off to Take Our Daughters to Work days while the boys had to listen to lectures on gender discrimination.

Elsewhere in the same issue of Talk, a profile of Karenna Gore -- headlined "She Lived Through Grunge" -- is devoted to telling her happily-ever-after story of coming out on the right side of a troubled adolescence. Karenna is reported to have "pushed the boundaries of average teenage experimentation."

In eighth grade, the pubescent Gore dressed like a "freak" and attended late-night parties ("at the home of an out-of-town-parent," of course) where she played "boot and rally" and "smoked a lot of pot." She also sneaked out of the windows at the Gore homestead to smoke and drink; on one such evening, in the 10th grade, one of her friends drove Al Gore's car into a chain-link fence. (By college, it's reported that the Harvard Crimson considered doing an article "tallying up her bong hits.")

Yet Gore's teenage antics are not portrayed as pathology, but simply the charming exploits of a high-energy schoolgirl. She turned out OK. At 26, she's married to a doctor, has a child, is in law school and works as a consultant on her father's campaign. Talk even speculates about her political future -- though there is no doubt whatsoever that she's inhaled many times.

Karenna's rebellious youth is seen as a compliment to her father: "He reminded me of the punk rock bands I used to go see." (Strangely enough, Karenna Gore was not asked about the taste of semen. Her interviewer, Hanna Rosin, was content to allude to Karenna's "wild days" when she was "dark.")

What makes Gore's wrecking the car and smoking pot "average teenage experimentation" while teens 10 years younger are labeled foreign monsters for conducting the same experiments?

We're not doing our kids any favors by portraying them as sexual predators, nor by portraying them as sexual victims. We do not need any more exposés that portray our children as deviant criminals for having discovered their erogenous zones. If anyone should be writing about the sex lives of teens, it should be teens themselves. If kids could speak on their own terms -- without the pressure of currying favor from parents, teachers and journalists -- I doubt that they would describe their sexual experiences in the same way.

Sex is sexy, sex is complex, sex is confusing. But sex itself is not a pathology. As sexually active adults, we all should know this. I suppose that we are expected to be shocked and chagrined to find out that kids experiment with sex. I'm not. And I don't think that it is an indication that the kids are bad.

Franks' story doesn't tell us about the sex lives of kids at all. It tells us about the fears and sexual perversity of adults. Teens have their own sexual code, they are each other's sexual partners, not ours. In the end, they should certainly be allowed to keep their bedroom doors shut -- without the fear that journalists like Lucinda Franks will barge in to catch them with their pants down.
salon.com | Jan. 25, 2000

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