Blame it on Spring Fever: Today's news is chock full of weird sex stories. I had to read ABC News' headline about three times before actually confirming that it did, in fact, say, "Teens: Oral Sex and Casual Prostitution No Biggie." Of course, as Amy Benfer mentioned earlier today, the media has been crowing for years about randy high schoolers' oral fixations. The latest teen-sex tempest in a tube top centers on Sharlene Azam, a Canadian journalist who has written a book called -- no joke -- "Oral Sex Is the New Goodnight Kiss." Packaged with the provocatively titled tome is a documentary by the same name revealing, in the words of "Good Morning America"'s Robin Roberts, "what your kids could be doing without your knowledge."Actually, according to Canadian coverage, the book seems to be about teenage prostitution rings in Canada -- a shameful practice, indeed, though much more specific than your son or daughter's overactive libidos.
Meanwhile, Atlanta's Fox News affiliate reports on a very adult version of last year's Barbie v. Bratz showdown. Matt McMullen, who owns the company that makes Real Dolls, is suing Matt Krivicke, who left McMullen's business after two years to begin manufacturing the strikingly similar Lovable Dolls, for stealing his ideas. The litigation is a response to Krivicke's original lawsuit claiming that McMullen owes him $30,000 to $100,000 in back pay. Lonely dudes (and dudettes) the world over may want to start praying the sex doll manufacturers settle their difference before any impounding and/or destroying takes place.
And if you thought academics wouldn't lower themselves to debating this year's biggest teen sex controversy ... well, you'd be wrong. At Canada's 78th Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, Associate Professor Peter Cumming, of York University in Toronto, presented a paper claiming that "sexting" is nothing more than a contemporary equivalent of playing doctor or spin the bottle. But the NY Daily News doesn't let this shocking dose of sanity stand on its own. The newspaper also presents an alarmist counterpoint in "author and Hollywood media expert Michael Levine": "If you ask a kid what percentage of her top ten friends sex-texts," he says, "they’ll say 100 percent."
Finally, MTV has released a series of print ads in Belgium depicting men's and women's pubic hair as a squiggly collage of signatures. The message? "Some might stay forever"--as in, everyone you sleep with could possibly give you an STD. That's certainly true, and the graphic is both creative and effective... but something about the shadowy genitals in the ad gives me the creeps. What do you think, Broadsheet readers? Love it or hate it?
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