Talk Hard!

Today LZ Granderson wrote a piece aimed at parents about dressing their girls like tramps.  I get his point with regard to 7- and 8-year-olds, but once you’re 10 or 12, I expect you to be choosing your own clothing (maybe with parental approval, but you can always change once you get out of sight, right?)  So it’s up to you to consider the message you’re putting out through your clothes.

In the article, LZ describes a sexily dressed 8-year-old he saw in the airport, done up with tight braids, lip gloss, and dangly earings:

You can tell she had been vacationing somewhere warm, because you could see her deep tan around her midriff thanks to the halter top and the tight sweatpants that rested just a little low on her waist. The icing on the cake? The word “Juicy” was written on her backside.

Wearing something like that to work out or dance in is one thing.  Wearing it just to hang out in the streets, to school, or to travel? You need to think seriously about the purpose of your butt.

Do you want your butt to be a billboard that sets the expectations of others and emphasizes that they should pay more attention to what’s below the waist than what’s above it?  Isn’t it hard enough to negotiate expectations and be confident someone is interested in you as a person without that kind of interference?

Or to put it differently, the purpose of your butt is to be the thing you’re sitting on while you’re out doing something fun with your friends, or even sitting and talking or making out with someone special.  While you’re doing any of those things, you want the person you’re with to be in the moment, not thinking about hitting that “juicy” thang advertised by your clothing.

So manage your own message.  Don’t leave it up to the latest styles. Especially when they want to pimp your butt.

On Reproductive Health Reality Check (a terrific website I just recently discovered), Jane Fonda writes that Adolescent Pregnancy Must Become a Priority for All Americans.  Teen pregnancy and birth are on the rise in this country, which is really sad.  Blog your thoughts about it today and spread the word that action and awareness are needed!

 Planned Parenthood is currently running a campaign encouraging people to get yourself tested for STDs (GYT09).  They put together a video with a few different people talking about the experience of getting tested for the first time and why it’s important.

I think it’s very important to get tested, but I also think the third speaker on this video implies a belief about things that I want to counter.  She speaks of testing as something that lets you know if you’re in the clear or not, and then, as you get into a relationship, if you need to have a conversation, she says, you can have it.

What I want to say is that whether or not you have tested ‘clean’ for STDs, you always need to have a conversation about them with a prospective new partner.  Partly because not everyone knows all that they should know about STDs, and how they are transmitted, what the risks are, and what STDs can and cannot be tested for. Also, different people have different levels of risk acceptance, so behavior you think is risky your prospective partner may think is safe, and if she thinks it was safe, she might not tell you about it.  Is contact between the hands and the genitals safe for instance? Well, hands can have cuts on them and you can catch diseases that way though the odds are low: to be on the safe side, some people use gloves or condoms. Other people just accept that risk, because they’re okay with it.  How about kissing?  Well, a lot of people don’t know cold sores are caused by a strain of herpes so they might not watch out for that risk. Going down on someone?  A lot of people will have oral sex with no protection and think little of it, despite the fact that that is actually risky behavior.

I once started to get involved with a guy, and when he came to my bedroom for the first time he thought he knew what-all we could do that was safe. When I said we had to have a conversation he told me what he knew and how he was clean, and he was ready to go. I had to say “hold up, we need to talk.  I have herpes.” And then I told him all about herpes, because he didn’t know very much about it, like how you can have it without symptoms, and transmit it from mouth to genitals or mouth to mouth, and then we slowed way down.

Herpes is something you can get tested for these days, but the tests are not completely reliable.  Plus most standard test suites do not include a test for herpes. Other tests are more reliable, and very important, but a number of STDs take time to show up in the body, so if you’ve gotten tested but had sexual contact with someone new shortly before getting tested, they could have given you something that doesn’t show up on the tests.

So: Get yourself tested, definitely! To be rigorous about it, wait until you have gone 6 months without contact with a new disease vector - meaning you’ve been without a partner or you and your partner have not had any other new partners for 6 months. Then get tested. (If this really doesn’t fit your lifestyle don’t let that stop you though - do get tested! - just understand that while a positive result is a concern, a negative result may not guarantee a clean bill of health.)

Continue to get tested throughout your life, before and after sexual contact with new partners. Also, educate yourself about STDs, spend some time thinking about your own comfort levels with risk, and talk about it with every partner you have.  For their safety, and for yours.  Talk hard.

Fellow blogger Erin at A Dress A Day wrote in Oct 2006 about how You Don’t Have to be Pretty. A friend just pointed me to the post and I wanted to share.  For both boys and girls, there is a lot of emphasis these days on how you look.  As Erin points out, how you look is not going to be the most lasting thing about you, nor should it be something you feel you have to maintain for the benefit of everyone else, as though you were constantly onstage. So go read that post and think about being happy, not just with the way you look, but with your whole self.

Mainly, that abstinence-only education materials in Texas were found to be factually inaccurate in addition to being ineffective.

The money quote comes in the comments:

How do we fight this?

Follow the school board elections and fight for people who believe that students deserve an accurate education and a decent shot at growing up before becoming parents.

Sarah has written a great post about choosing the right oral contraceptive (on eHow.com). She talks about the history of the pills and some of the variations in prescription.

As she points out, it is important to discuss your priorities with your doctor.  It may take some experimentation to find the oral contraceptive that works best with your body. If you find you have mood swings, hot flashes, cramps, menstrual spotting between periods, lowered libido, dry eyes, or other symptoms that weren’t present before you went on the pill, discuss that with your doctor; a change may be in order.

There’s a great blog post by LilahCello on facial hair that I suggest people read. The main thing to note is that although the popular image of femininity is baby-soft skin and no facial hair, many many women get darker hairs on their face. If you have that, you are not alone. You are not a freak. People will not run screaming from you moaning about the horribleness of it all (if they do they’re just being obnoxious — no promises about younger siblings. But adults won’t do that).

However, if you have dark, heavy facial hair and if it makes you uncomfortable, or you find it unattractive, by all means do something about it. The woman who made the post beyond the link shaves her chin and looks forward to laser hair removal at some future date. Some women bleach or wax their facial hair, or have a salon do it for them. I myself have one thick hair that grows out of my chin. It is black and looks out of place and irritates my chin; for a while a few years ago I went regularly to see someone to try to remove it through electrolysis. Just one hair, how long could it take? Electrolysis is supposed to damage the folicle so it can’t grow back, but what I didn’t realize is it can take a long period of repeated visits to make it permanent. I gave up after a while. It’s just one hair. I can deal with having it there until I or a partner notice it and I pluck it out.

I don’t feel the need to hide the fact that it happens. It’s really quite normal. So don’t be afraid to talk about it if you have something similar.

I have been sad not to write for a few weeks; too insanely busy. People have been encouraging and I’m going to aim to post at least three times a week for the rest of the month. If you are interested in guest blogging on this site, do let me know.

This is going to be your holiday, every year, for as long as that child lives. If you are a typical first-time parent, you’re scared.  Further, you’re not sure what this is going to do to the rest of your life. It’s possible you will be an involved parent along with the child’s mother, but it’s also possible the child will be mainly raised by grandparents or someone else while both you and the mother grow up some more.

If you have the opportunity to get to know your child and you intend to be involved, I congratulate you on your interest and sense of responsibility. You aren’t alone. Consider that all around you there are hundreds of other first-time dads. Maybe they aren’t all the same age as you, but likely they’re just as scared or uncertain. Consider taking a class for fathers-to-be.  Talk to other men in your family and your community. Even if this pregnancy was an accident, don’t let shame about that keep you from reaching out to community resources to learn about what’s going to happen, to learn about babies and their development and how to be a part of it.

Good luck, all you young dads out there. Keep your chin up.  From what I hear, staying in this game is worth all the trouble.

Today is my day off. Well, it’s a day off for me, which means I still went to dance class because once you’re an adult who works at a desk it’s hard to keep in shape, and I have been cleaning the house a bit and filing papers, reading a book that’s background for an interview I’m doing in two weeks, but the rest of the day I have off to catch up on gardening and some work on one of the non-profit organizations I head, and relax and think. I even stopped by my mom’s house to be social with my parents and figure out what we’re doing tomorrow for Father’s Day. Nice to just hang out for a bit with them, with no big agenda. Don’t do that enough.

I’m a bit more of an over-achiever than most adults, but my point is, whether you’re a teen or an adult, you should value your time off and make the most of it. Most especially, you should appreciate it. When I was 15 I read 250 books a year in my spare time. Of course, I read all the time, even while walking to and from school, but now I look back on that wistfully, at all the time I had for purely recreational reading. And I think about how at the time I took it for granted.

These days, your average American spends 4-6 hours a day watching television and movies. I encourage you not to be average in this particular statistic. Spend less time passively absorbing things other people created and more time creating things yourself, whether those things are music, art, writing, new clothes, software programs, games, toys (cars and rockets count), clubs, good conversations, or even just your own self. I really mean that last one. That’s important. It takes work and creativity to create yourself, to figure out the particular ways you want to be in life, where you want to go, what you want to do, and who you want to do it with. Take time to get to know your friends, and take time by yourself to think and explore and get to know yourself.

Take time off, and really live that time. It’s one of the most valuable things you can do.