In all seriousness, where has this journey taken us? Well, for as long as time has been ticking we have been and will continue to be beings that are anthropologically, genetically, physically, emotionally and spiritually driven to engage in sexual relationships with others. That has not been the issue of this series. I am all for people having sex. The issue is how we go about pursuing sex and how, in many ways, we have become slaves to our cultural beliefs, attitudes, behaviors and language of sex. IMHO, sex is one of the most sacred experiences in which we can engage with another person, and it is important that we see it that way for ourselves and others to preserve our self-respect and others’. Probably the most important subtext to this series has been the effect of our attitudes and the influence of various cultural issues on our kids. Honestly looking at all of these factors when it comes to ourselves, it is the influence of our issues on our kids is often the hard part.

Lost and Found Along the Way

It has not been my goal to come across as judgmental, nor holier than thou. I am not taking a religious nor political point of view; I am more focused on the health of our collective spirit. Sometimes in life, we become distracted by that which looks and feels inviting. This is not always in our best interest.

Life offers many distractions and temptations and so many things become a part of these distractions: work, play, relationships, television, internet, the media, drinking, drugs, social life, how we look, who likes and loves us… Many of these things I have touched on, and one of the common denominators of all these issues is often sex. It is ultimately up to us to take responsibility for what we focus on. It is my sincerest hope that you have grown through this exploration. These are some of the issues that I would like you to consider when considering your choice, not just in sex, but in life:

• Are we making the choice that brings us instant gratification, or making choices that look at our long-term best interest?
• Are our actions dishonoring our self and our soul, or are we loving, respecting and honoring ourselves?
• Are we looking for a quick fix, or are we truly looking for intimacy?
• Are our behaviors and attitudes carelessly affecting our children, or are we careful about what they see and hear?
• Are we indifferent to our children’s awareness and attitudes about sex/life, or if we are invested in what they are learning and doing?

I hope these become guidelines for you to use in your everyday life to help direct your choices for you and those you guide. Never forget the power that you have in what you create. No matter what you do create, do it from a place of love, and let that become its foundation. After all, amusement parks can be enjoyable when we ride them safely. When I’m done with this blog, I am going to Disney World.

The Pledge

I hope you will take the following pledge and will allow this to become a part of your everyday living.

I pledge to learn more about love, what it truly is and truly isn’t. I agree that sex is not love, but instead can come from a place of love. I agree to honor, my body, mind and soul and commit to the intention of acknowledging my mistakes in the context of sex and love and to learn and grow from them. I understand that to err is human and forgive myself and others is Divine.

I understand that sex is not a shameful or guilty act, and also acknowledge that sex, intimacy, trust and love belong hand-in-hand-in-hand-in-hand, and one without the others may not honor the creator’s intended design. I understand that it is my place to find my power and ability to love myself from within and will honor others as I honor myself.

Sex is not intended to be a vehicle of power, status or control, but a vehicle of love and connectedness that is the culmination of a respectful and healthy relationship based in Agape, Eros and Philos. I owe this commitment to myself, those I love, and those I will love.

Respectfully,

Dr. E…

When it comes to how we treat our bodies, there are often wide gaps between our real, feel and ideal, because it can feel painful to be so honest with ourselves and others. We spend so much time trying to avoid our truth and our emotions. As a result, we look to others for approval with our appearance and sexuality to see what we need to do to feel accepted and fit in with others. Family, peers, society and sources in the media become the objects that we look to that contribute to how we determine our real, feel, and ideal. There are many areas in our life where we may apply these concepts of real, feel and ideal and our sexuality is definitely one of them that is prominent in our culture. Too many times we are trying to deny and disprove our feel, ignore our real, and spend too much time trying to support our ideal by attempting to appeal to others through the way we dress, sexual innuendo and sexual behaviors… These behaviors are often accompanied with arrogance and exploitation which become a major part of our avoidance.

The purpose of arrogance is to protect us with a shield of false pride. It often hides feelings like shame, guilt, embarrassment, inadequacy, unlovable, and many other emotions that we consider to be bad, wrong and weak. The problem is that it often our arrogance can lead us to denial and can result in us getting into situations that are over our head and sometimes dangerous and even life-threatening. When we attempt to dress, talk, and/or act in a sexually provocative manner, we are often trying to use some of our “assets” that we feel will appeal to others. We want the attention, acceptance and power from others, often because we want to feel better about ourselves, getting us further away from our “feel” and closer to our ideal, but at what expense to our integrity and truth?

Am I saying that wanting to dress up and look nice is or wanting to feel our “sexual beingness” is a bad thing? Absolutely not. What I do believe, however, is that behaving as we do contributes to our avoidance of emotions, issues, attitudes and beliefs that would help us to become better people if we had the courage to face them. Too much of our lives are spent around avoidance of learning and understanding ourselves, and the intoxication surrounding sex and everything around it is often a great way to avoid.

Until my next post, pay attention to your feel, real, and ideal and see what you can learn about yourself. You may be surprised.

Get Slinky

I would like to provide you with a few examples that I have seen in the past two days. My daughter is four years old, and she likes to get on the computer and play on some of the dress-up sites. These sites are geared toward kids who can use the mouse and drag and drop clothing, shoes, jewelry… In other words some are very young kids who are learning to use the computer and may not have proper parent supervision. There are hundreds of these sites on the internet and many of them come with ads attached. The range of characters are from cartoon characters, to fairies, to young girls, teens and adults and actors and actresses. I am very conscious of how many of these characters are portrayed, and while there are many that I don’t allow my daughter to play on, still there are many more that have “Zwinky” ads on there that have many cartoon type girls with cleavage. These ads run on the side of many of these dress-up sites, and I talk to my daughter about these sites and that I don’t want her to feel that she has to look or dress a certain way to get attention.

The second example is related to Eureka a show that I was watching on the SyFy channel. This show is more of a technology-fantasy type show, and in one of the scenes, a woman is proposed to by a man, and in the process of her opening up the ring, she is wearing a tight-fitting tank top. The camera puts the center of the shot on her breasts with the ring to the side. The camera then has to pan up and to the right to focus on her face. What caught my attention to this shot was that the camera had to move so abruptly to the right to refocus on her face that I rewound to see the layout of the shot to really notice how quickly and subtly this was done.

Finally, the most obvious selling of innuendo was on America’s Most Talented. There is a female artist named Maricar, who in one of the shows did her act in a devil’s costume, purposely accentuating her bountiful cleavage. As if her artistry act wasn’t enough, they continued to fit her in to many of the segue shots after that with other contestants and then next to the host at the end of the show.

Dwayne the Bathtub, We’re Dwowning…

These were only three short examples, and I did not cover magazines, news shows, prime time television, kids shows and cartoons, commercials, billboard, advertising, suggestive wording and phrasing, adult-focused internet content (not pornography)… and the list goes on. As we know, sex sells, and often what it is selling has so little to do what the product.

We are inundated in sexual content, and we don’t even realize it. Now please understand, I realize that we are sexual beings, but how early and how much of our lives need to be inundated in sexually suggestive content. Remember, I believe the human body is a work of art, and is something to be appreciated, however, I do feel that there is a difference between appreciating the human body and selling sexual content. We may have become numb to it, but do our kids need to become numb to it also, and at what cost to them? If these patterns in our society are going to change, we have to choose to stop buying.

Up next… Part 7, The Dying Breed

Respectfully,
Dr. E…

Did you ever take a moment to think about how you learned to speak a language? Did you just wake up one day and start talking? No. Over time you were exposed to the language. You initially had no idea what people were saying, but as you grew older, you understood more and more and tried to speak. Your brain continued to develop and you understood more and more and learned to speak better and better.

The next issue is where in the country you grew up. Different places in any region have different slang terms, accents, vernaculars, and depending on where you grew up, you believe that you have no accent and the terms you grew up using are “normal” to you. So, have you had any “bangers and mash” lately? Ask a Brit what that is, if you don’t know.

So, why am I talking about language, when I was talking about sex? Well, we acquire our knowledge and beliefs just like we acquire language. Now, here is what I would like you to do. Take a look around your house and your neighborhood. That includes what’s on your TV shows and commercials for ALL ages, computer emails, websites ads and pop-ups (especially your kids), magazines and newspapers, clothing styles, including words, name brands, phrases on clothing… Also do this for your kids. When you are looking at these items, I want you see if there is anything in the content that is sexual. This does not mean that they showing skin (for example, a show about a medical issue versus a commercial showing a bikini), but is there direct or indirect reference that could be seen as a sexual nature.

Do this for a week, and if you really want to be scientific about this, write down the number of things that you begin to notice and keep a tally. What you might expect is that you may first not notice as much, then may become more aware and notice more and more. I expect that what you notice will be biased by the “language” that you grew up with. Just as with language, sometimes we don’t realize our slang is “slang” until we listen to ourselves and others. Be aware of how much you were accepting of and were just accustomed to the content.

I don’t want to taint your assignment very much, so I won’t say much more. Good luck with your assignment.

Until next time…

Dr. E…

Vanessa’s post:

I have been working with the amazing Dr. E… on helping young people respect and cherish their bodies.  Our biggest challenge was figuring out how to spread this message in a relevant, interesting way to kids and teens so that we were not being preachy or missing the mark.

We decided to write a short series of posts on this topic for our parent readers.  Dr. E…’s first article, [here] is an introduction to the Your Body is Not A Disneyland Message:

“Your Body is Not a Disneyland: Throughout time, people have treated their bodies like amusement parks, sometimes letting almost anybody take a ride at any cost to their self-respect. Whether it is in the name of experimentation or being a free spirit, your body is your temple, and how you and others treat it is, in some way, a testament to your feelings, beliefs and attitudes about yourself. The issue of how we treat our bodies doesn’t begin or end with us as adults. This has a trickledown effect to our children. They are always watching and listening. If we don’t begin to see and understand this issue, our children and ourselves will likely continue this self-depleting pattern. Why and how do we develop our attitudes and beliefs about sexuality, and how can we and our children learn to respect our bodies and our souls?”

While thinking about my take on this concept, I remembered a comparison that my health teacher made to me in 5^th grade that has always stuck with me.

“Your body is like a car,” she told me.

“What do you mean Mrs. Brown?” I asked.

“If you knew you had one car for your entire life what would you do when you got it?”

This was an easy question, “I would take really, really good care of it.”

She nodded. “Would you give it the best quality gasoline?”

“Yes, definitely,” I responded.

“Would you wash it, clean it regularly and take it in for check-ups?”

“I would take it in all the time just to check, and I would make sure that people cleaned their feet before they got in.” I responded, reconciling having only one car my whole life and my messy friends.

“I bet you would be careful who you let in it and who you let drive it too?” She sat down.

“Oh my goodness yes.  I would only let people I really, really trust drive it.”

“Have you ever thought that your body is like getting one car for your entire life?”

I had not, but now I was getting the comparison.  Here are the tips that changed how I treat and think about my body. I challenge you to share them with your family:

1. You only get one, so treat it very carefully.

2. Take preventative care.  Make sure to protect the outside and the interior with sunscreen/carwax, vitamins/leather cleaner.

3. Get regular check-ups.

4. Have fun too, but always make sure you are safe.

And the most important one…

5. Only let people you really trust and love get into it.

Dr. E…’s [second and third installment] addresses love head on, from a global, scientific and even historical perspective.  I thought I would add to these angles by bringing an example that many kids understand in real terms.  They would never let someone they did not know or trust drive the only car they get for their entire life.  It is the same thing with loving relationships and with sexual relations.

I hope that you can talk to your kids about treating their body more like a once in a lifetime car, and less like a Disneyland.

Next Installment: The Media Machine

Vanessa Van Petten, youthologist and teen author of the parenting book “You’re Grounded!,” manages RadicalParenting.com, a parenting blog written by 119 teen writers, ages 12-20 to help parents and adults get an honest and open view into the world and mind of youth. Van Petten’s work and blog have been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Teen Vogue, CNN, Fox News, Real Housewives of Orange County and much more!  She won the Moms Choice Award in 2009 and her work is read by over 300,000 adults.
http://www.RadicalParenting.com

Additional Articles by Vanessa and her crew:

The Laws of Teen Dating: Tween Inter-Sex life Here I go over some popular sexual terms and trends including sexting and what is inter-sex anyway?

Teen Trend: 7 Reasons Why It’s Cool to Pretend Be Bisexual Yes, this is the new wave.  Everyone is bisexual and a lot of teens are now pretending to be bisexual or gay because it is the ‘cool’ thing to do.

Teaching Teen Girls: 5 Signs A Guy Is Only Interested in Sex A parent’s guide to teach their daughters this very important dating lesson.

Teen Hook Up Culture: Teen Sex and Theme Parties Oh yes, teens having sex and Pimps and Hoes Parties when parents leave town or the second they get to college…some myths and truths.

5 Messy Teen Sex and Relationship Issues You NEED to Talk to Your Kids About There’s more to the “Sex Talk” than just the birds and the bees. What every parent must discuss with their teen.

The Sex Talk: 6 Things Parents Must Know Straight from the mouths of teens, what parents should consider before giving the sex talk.

Many of the teen articles are here: http://www.radicalparenting.com/category/sex/

How Do I Love Thee???

Let’s first look at our concept of love. We have one word that describes so many different emotional states, and this lack of attention to detail to this very important concept is a major problem in our culture, IMHO. There is a popular urban legend that says that Eskimos have more than one-hundred words for snow, and while the figure has been grossly exaggerated, the idea is that concepts that are important to a culture will have much more specificity than those that aren’t as important.

So, just how do we “love” things, let me count the ways… You can love your mom, your dad, your kids, your sister, your brother, your friend, your uncle, your aunt, your cousin, your teacher, your boss, your student, your country, your team, your school… You can also love a sunny day, an ice cream cone, the beach, skiing, baseball, football, as well as your pets. Some even say that they love sex.

The question is, even with this short list of things we may say that we love, do we love them the same way? I think not. Yet we use the same word to describe so many states of emotion. Do we have some words that describe different states of love? Yes, but our use of the word love is somewhat careless and leads to a lot of confusion that I firmly believe affects our relationships and attitudes toward intimacy and sex.

It has been said that Sanskrit had 96 words for love and ancient Persian had 80. Greek has three: Agape, Philos, and Eros. I will explain those, because it takes a takes a lot less time to convey the point, and we all know that blog are supposed to be brief . Agape is considered to be a more spiritual love. It is described in the Bible as to how God loves man, and I would describe it as our admiration and connection to people on their journey in life. Philos or philia is a brotherly type of love and overlaps into how parents love their children, how siblings love each other, friends love each other, and even how some people may love their pets. As you can see only three words is already getting a bit sticky. The third type of love is eros, which describes a romantic type of love. It involves the attraction between two people that is sexual and ranges from physical attraction to blind infatuation.

Well, what happens when we only have one word to describe so many states? It leads to emotional confusion and a great deal of discomfort. Let’s say that a girl loves a boy in a philos way, but the boy feels eros? They both love each other, but the boy is feel that he wants to take the relationship to the next level, while the girl is enjoying the closeness with the boy. She may then feel pressured by him to take the relationship where he wants to go or fear losing him and the love she feels from him. They both “love” each other don’t they? But does it mean the same thing, and are either of them ready for sex?

Age Is A Relative Term

What I try to teach people, as young as twelve years old through adulthood, is that in order for any intimate long-term relationship to survive, both people have to feel all three components as the relationship develops and grows. Too many times, people in our culture believe that feeling that eros attraction, which is often as strong as a mind-altering high, is enough to take a relationship to the next level. Eros will always wear off, because that is, in part, a neurophysiological experience (I will explain more about that later). The problem is that when the eros wears off, what are the two people left with? Too many times they are left with nothing, and the relationship dies. What happens when either person wakes up and one finds themselves pregnant or they find themselves married?

Developing a deep friendship (philos) and admiring the person (agape) that you are in a relationship are crucial to a successful relationship. It is easy to open ourselves up to our more primal urges and let emotion take over only to find ourselves in the walk of shame the next morning, but I feel that we were born with the ability to reason beyond our more primal self and learn to respect ourselves and those we relate to. We owe that to ourselves.

In my next installment, we will discuss “The Ultimate High…”

Respectfully,

Dr. E…