Mum, Dad, I've got something to tell you...
OMG THIS IS SUCH WIN. The capital city of Montana have proposed comprehensive and age-appropriate sex education starting in kindergarten. this awesome article talks about why this is so awesome; I know British parents can be prissy, and that American parents can be downright ridiculous when it comes to their kids learning sex-ed, and that as a result the programs over there are often waaay too late in the day and uninformative and pretty pointless, but seriously, this lady got told IN 2004 that if she got raped, she should sit in a tub of cold water to prevent pregnancy. Wtf USA. What. The. Fuck.
Teens not getting proper sex ed makes me SO angry. I'm really really lucky with my family - we've never had a "talk", we've just had hundreds of conversations about sex and puberty and reproduction from when I was like 3 or 4, when my mum first got me a book showing how babies grew inside the womb (I love that book. I should've been an obstetrician). My school sat all the girls down when we were like 8 or 9, and told us all about periods and pads and tampons (I vividly remember one being soaked in Ribena - "look how much it absorbs, girls!") and when I was 10, the girls and boys had sex-ed, together and separately. ALL TEENS SHOULD HAVE THIS INFORMATION. ALL TEENS SHOULD BE INFORMED ABOUT SEX. ALL KIDS SHOULD HAVE AN IDEA OF WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN TO THEM WHEN THEY GET OLDER. ALL TEENS SHOULD UNDERSTAND WHAT IT MEANS TO RAISE A BABY. I was DRILLED in the importance of protection, and other teens should be too. Sex-ed should start as soon as kids can understand, so that they can be prepared, so that they're not scared, so that they act safely as they get older; these are not horror stories, people, this is BIOLOGY. Pretending teens don't and won't have sex doesn't make it go away. It leaves teens uninformed so increases the chances of pregnancy/STDs. The fact that millions of kids miss out on decent sex education and can end up scared, confused or mucking up their lives (chlamydia can leave you infertile, guys) because they're parents are trying to preserve their innocence makes me MAD.
So yay Montana.
On a related note, the same blog talks about Forever 21's new maternity line. This meant little to me, coming from Britain, at first; Forever 21 is described as a cheaper, American version of Topshop, with 65 percent of their clientele under the age of 24. This article talks about the the normalization of teen pregnancy. I wonder if you could apply that to Topshop?
This other blog article (written by a 17 year old; it's the coolest blog for young feminists) talks about the maternity line aswell, and reveals 50% of new HIV infections are amongst kids aged 16-24, and that Chlamydia and Syphilis - STDS once considered to be virtually under control in the general population - are staging a comeback, mostly in our age group.
Teens not getting proper sex ed makes me SO angry. I'm really really lucky with my family - we've never had a "talk", we've just had hundreds of conversations about sex and puberty and reproduction from when I was like 3 or 4, when my mum first got me a book showing how babies grew inside the womb (I love that book. I should've been an obstetrician). My school sat all the girls down when we were like 8 or 9, and told us all about periods and pads and tampons (I vividly remember one being soaked in Ribena - "look how much it absorbs, girls!") and when I was 10, the girls and boys had sex-ed, together and separately. ALL TEENS SHOULD HAVE THIS INFORMATION. ALL TEENS SHOULD BE INFORMED ABOUT SEX. ALL KIDS SHOULD HAVE AN IDEA OF WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN TO THEM WHEN THEY GET OLDER. ALL TEENS SHOULD UNDERSTAND WHAT IT MEANS TO RAISE A BABY. I was DRILLED in the importance of protection, and other teens should be too. Sex-ed should start as soon as kids can understand, so that they can be prepared, so that they're not scared, so that they act safely as they get older; these are not horror stories, people, this is BIOLOGY. Pretending teens don't and won't have sex doesn't make it go away. It leaves teens uninformed so increases the chances of pregnancy/STDs. The fact that millions of kids miss out on decent sex education and can end up scared, confused or mucking up their lives (chlamydia can leave you infertile, guys) because they're parents are trying to preserve their innocence makes me MAD.
So yay Montana.
On a related note, the same blog talks about Forever 21's new maternity line. This meant little to me, coming from Britain, at first; Forever 21 is described as a cheaper, American version of Topshop, with 65 percent of their clientele under the age of 24. This article talks about the the normalization of teen pregnancy. I wonder if you could apply that to Topshop?
This other blog article (written by a 17 year old; it's the coolest blog for young feminists) talks about the maternity line aswell, and reveals 50% of new HIV infections are amongst kids aged 16-24, and that Chlamydia and Syphilis - STDS once considered to be virtually under control in the general population - are staging a comeback, mostly in our age group.