For Goodness Sex (20 page)

These days, kids start trimming or removing their pubic and body hair as soon as it comes in. They will argue it’s purely for aesthetic reasons, which raises the question: why is body hair unattractive? But I think there’s a lot more going on than that.

Kids always ask if it’s OK to shave or trim their pubic hair and body hair. They want a quick answer; I want them to explore the why behind the question. I have a quip about body hair that always makes the kids laugh, and then think. I say, “Humans are mammals, and all mammals have hair.” And then add, “If you didn’t have hair, you’d be a lizard.” As I want all of my students to be in charge of their own bodies, I never tell them they can’t trim or remove their body hair. There’s nothing fundamentally unhealthy about doing that. I just want to really make them think about
why
they’re doing it and ask themselves if they’re OK with that answer.

It’s important to think about the reasons why we have body hair and pubic hair, and also the timing of
when
we get the majority of our body and pubic hair. Hair that grows in during puberty is a sign of sexual maturity. It’s a way to differentiate reproductively capable adults from those who are immature and not capable of reproduction. So what signal is sent when postpubescent people choose to groom themselves in the style of prepubescent people? I ask my students all the time, “If you’re all in such a hurry to grow up, how come you want your bodies to look like you’re still eight years old?” I have a theory about this. It’s not scientifically tested, but I’ve gathered lots of anecdotal evidence in support of it from high school students, college kids, and adult audiences. I wonder if shaving pubic hair and body hair is a way of subconsciously trying to escape the adult responsibilities involved in sexual activity and sexual relationships. I think there’s an “if I look like a little kid, then I can act like a little kid” mentality that pervades our culture, and I don’t think it’s healthy at all. Of course, this is just an idea. There are lots of other reasons why kids today might shave or trim their body hair. It could simply be about wanting to appear youthful and not connected to sexuality at all. Or perhaps girls want to look younger because they think boys like younger girls. And as with any adolescent behavior, kids may start to groom their pubic hair simply because their friends are doing it and because they are in a locker room with teammates who are shaving. Again, the crucial question to ask (and conversation to have) is about the why.

The body-hair question brings up another important point we have to think about and talk about with young people. When a society no longer distinguishes between prepubescent and postpubescent bodies, how does it treat actual prepubescent people and their sexuality? Starting in the late 1970s, children have become ever more sexualized in American media and culture. I graduated from eighth grade in 1978. That same year, Brooke Shields, who is a year younger than I am, starred in the movie
Pretty Baby
, playing a child prostitute. The societal uproar was enormous. How could such a young girl be cast in such a sexual role, the critics cried! Soon after, Shields starred in a series of television commercials for Calvin Klein jeans with the seductive slogan, “Nothing comes between me and my Calvins.” This also prompted a public outcry. Fast forward to today, when clothes for little girls are emblazoned across the butt with words like “juicy,” “sexy,” and “booty call,” and lots of people (including the mothers who purchase these clothes for their daughters) think it’s cute. We can’t pretend that blurring the lines between sexual maturity and immaturity won’t have social consequences. It has profound implications for the development of healthy sexuality. Healthy sexuality for a fifth-grader isn’t about being “hot” or “sexy.”

One way parents can help their children develop sexually at a healthy pace is to work against the tendency to make kids appear or act older than they really are. Is what your child wearing appropriate for the chronological age and the development of his or her body? It’s OK to tell our children that some things are not appropriate for them because they’re simply too young for that. A great example of this comes up every Halloween, as costumes for women and girls become skimpier and sexier. You can’t just dress up as a witch or a nurse anymore; it has to be a “naughty nurse” or a “sexy witch.” Even costumes that have nothing to do with gender, like an outfit in the form of a candy bar, have become sexualized for women. A guy who wants to be a Hershey’s kiss gets to wear a big, baggy, shiny triangle, while a woman gets a silver bra, silver go-go pants, and a Hershey’s sash to tie around her bare waist. We look at ads for Halloween costumes every year in my class, and the kids are always grossed out by the blatant sexism. Are we questioning things like kindergarten proms where five-year-olds are expected to pair up, dress up, and go to a dance together? (I’m not kidding—this happens!) Whether your child is invited to a coed sleepover, a costume theme party, or a school dance, I think it is always important to ask the question, “Is this age-appropriate for my child’s physical, emotional, intellectual, and moral development?”

Body Image and Sexual Activity: The Connection

T
he psychiatrist and author Anthony Storr once said, “We cannot escape our physical natures; and a proper pride in oneself as a human being is rooted in the body through which love is given and taken.”

There is no doubt that body image has an impact on the way we approach sexual activity and behave during it. A good body image is correlated with increased sexual pleasure and satisfaction, while a poor body image is correlated with the reverse. The reason is pretty simple: the most satisfying sexual experiences happen when the people involved are fully present in the moment and fully understand and appreciate their bodies. When we are worried about our bodies during sex, it’s much harder to be present enough to enjoy ourselves. A poor body image may also lead to avoidance of all sexual relationships or sexual activity. And a poor body image may prompt some people, especially young people, to participate in sexual activities they don’t really want to engage in because they think that’s all someone who looks like them deserves or can get.

For teenagers, their changing bodies are an endless source of fascination. Boys stare at the lone facial hair that popped out of their chin and chide one another as their voices grow deeper during puberty. Girls shave their legs with the precise focus of an air traffic controller, gossip about who stuffs their bra, laugh about who bled through their pad or tampon in History class, and live in pure humiliation when it happens to them the next day. Most of the fun that teenagers poke at their bodies comes from insecurity. They know that their bodies are supposed to feel good to them at the same time that they’re mystified and often horrified by all of the changes taking place in them. They generally feel pretty out of control when it comes to their bodies.

Many, if not all, of the questions my students ask about their bodies and sex are anxiety fueled:
How do they know if they’re ready to have sex? Is it normal to masturbate more than once a day? Does the first time always hurt?
They’re less interested in hearing me talk about the play-by-play of what happens during sex, which is good because, as I often remind them, it’s not a how-to course. They’re all ears when I begin to deconstruct the emotions, misconceptions, and sometimes shame that accompanies having a body and using it for sexual purposes. They want to know if it’s OK to be so simultaneously scared and interested. And above all, “is it normal to . . .” (fill in the blank). I’ve had kids ask if it’s normal to feel awkward when making out or having sex with someone (yes!) and normal to have to be talked into sex by your partner (no!).

Ultimately, they’re saying, “OK, Mr. V. I have this body. So what do I do with it?”

Building a Relationship with Your “Junk”—Kids’ Views of Genitals

Y
ou may be familiar with one of the slang words used today for genitals:
junk
. I really dislike that term, which is often used among high schoolers—especially boys. In my opinion, we’d be a much more sexually healthy society if we had an open and complete understanding of our bodies and were honest about the fact that our genitals are far from “junk.”

Talking about genitals with my students is tricky. I don’t want them to think of their genitals as the most important parts of their bodies when it comes to sexual activity, but I need to talk about genitals in order to make that point.

“It’s important that you know what your genitals look like and feel like, and what kind of stimulation is pleasurable and painful for them,” I’ll tell my students. If you’re going to take your body into a sexual situation with somebody else, you’ve got to be an expert on your own body first. It’s going to be difficult to give and receive pleasure without knowledge of your body.

If there’s any part of a young man’s body that he thinks he knows everything about and yet is endlessly curious about, it’s his penis. By the time they reach puberty, most boys have already established a complex relationship with their penises. How can they not? Penises are pretty obvious; men look at and touch them multiple times a day for both sexual and nonsexual purposes. Boys receive explicit and implicit messages about their penises all their lives. The penis gets called things like “manhood,” “tool,” “spear,” “snake,” and any number of other aggressive names. A boy begins to hear that his power and his success as a man are connected to his penis. Our society is pretty accepting of talking about penises in serious and not so serious ways.

Don’t get me wrong, penises are great, and I’m glad when boys can become familiar with their genitals and feel good about them. But the preoccupation can sometimes be taken too far. I love announcing to my classes, “Penises aren’t light sabers! They don’t offer the cure for cancer! They’re just penises.” The kids roar with laughter, but they also get the point. Guys can easily go from feeling penis pride to having penis arrogance. It stops being an organ for sexual, reproductive, and intimate uses and pretty easily gets thought of as a weapon of power and dominance. On the flip side, you have boys whose penises are smaller than average (or at least they perceive them to be smaller) and who may suffer needlessly from feelings of inadequacy. We need to address all these ideas with boys when we talk about their bodies and their sexual activity.

There’s another important thing to know about boys and their penises. While every boy is expected to know his own penis, it’s not considered OK for boys to know about one another’s penises. Daring to take a peek at another guy’s penis in a locker room or bathroom will get you called a homophobic name and may even get you punched in the face. There are not a lot of ways for boys to compare their penises with others’, which results in huge gaps in their knowledge. A boy often knows the size of his own penis, but not how that fits into the spectrum of penis size.

Even my students, whom I consider sophisticated and savvy, get hung up on penis size. They believe all of the myths:
A bigger penis is a better penis. Every other guy has a giant penis except for me. A bigger penis feels better during sex.
If I had a nickel for every time the question, “What’s the average penis size?” was placed into my Question Box over the years, I’d be a very wealthy man. The message boys get about penis size, whether from the media, the schoolyard, or from porn, is that they come in three sizes: huge, gigantic, and so big they drag on the floor. That’s obviously not reality. So I look forward to dropping this piece of data, which tends to open their eyes.

The vast majority of fully grown men will have an erect penis that measures somewhere between 5 and 7 inches, with the largest concentration between 5.5 and 6.5 inches. That’s it. Yes, some men have penises that are larger than average and some men have penises that are smaller than average, but remember, we live in the middle. The size of the penis when it’s flaccid (not erect) is no indication of the size it will be when erect. As the saying goes, “Some guys are show-ers and some guys are grow-ers.” I always add, “Ultimately, smaller than average, average size, or larger than average, penis size is just a number. It doesn’t matter at all. Love what you have and your life will be much better.”

Because boys are hung up on penis size, they also assume that a bigger penis means more sexual pleasure and satisfaction for them and their partners. Again, this is not true. It’s important that boys understand that penis size is not the only determining factor in sexual pleasure. Believing that the mere presence of his penis ensures sexual satisfaction makes a man a lousy lover.

When it comes to the subject of girls’ genitals, society is much quieter. Neither girls nor women are encouraged to know their vulvas or be proud of them. Most girls have seen a image of a penis by the time they’re in high school, even if just in an art museum. But you don’t typically see images of vulvas as regularly—they remain hidden, and many girls internalize this, thinking that a vulva is something no one wants to look at. The young women in my class (and the young men) are shocked when I show them pictures of a variety of vulvas to illustrate just how much they vary. Unlike penises, which tend to look pretty similar, vulvas come in an amazing array of shapes, colors, and sizes. The labia can be symmetric or asymmetric, the inner labia can be longer than the outer labia, the clitoris varies in size from woman to woman. The range of normal for a vulva is expansive and wonderful. Yet rather than appreciate the unique beauty and variety of vulvas, there’s a trend today for women to make their vulvas as “pretty” as possible. Some women even go to the extreme of undergoing plastic surgery on their labia to make their vulvas look “better.”

Boys are typically mystified by how little girls know about their bodies. “What do you mean you don’t know what you look like?” a boy will always challenge the girls.

The girls will squirm a bit in their chairs before one bravely pipes up: “You can’t just look at it—it’s kinda hard to see!”