"Unlike the rest of us, sex, lies, and scandal never take a vacation..."

For the last part of this blog, I just wanted to take a short look at American youth culture.




In case you did not notice in this Gossip Girl trailer (which by the way, came straight from CW themselves), in the first season of the show, these characters are supposed to be juniors in high school. And although most juniors would be 16-17 years old, the characters in the show are always running about town, going to clubs, bars, drinking uncontrollably, doing drugs, and having lots of sex with each other.

This show is watched by almost 4 million people (1). That is a crazy number. Especially telling is that the targeted demographic of the show is teenaged girls. When people see things on TV, especially at a young age, they want to emulate the behavior they observe, thinking it might make them “cool,” or help them to fit in, like the characters in the show. However, most teens have parents that watch over them slightly better than the parents of Gossip Girl; they are not able to fully engage in all of the activities in the same way that the characters of the show do.

When these kids arrive at college, they are pretty much given a free pass to do whatever they like, and for some, that means promiscuous sex. As someone mentioned earlier in a comment, for many, college is the first time that students are not watched over 24/7, and sometimes they get carried away with their newfound freedom. So American youth culture may also have something to do with what is deemed acceptable and what isn’t, and what kinds of activities teens desire to engage themselves in.

Although this blog has been just a brief overview of this topic, I hope it has shed some light on the phenomenon of people having sex in public. I tried to be broad with my research, and after looking a little at female and male sexuality, desire, sexual scripts, exhibitionism, voyeurism, sexual identity, as well as American youth culture, I have realized that this issue goes so much deeper than the aspects I have discussed. There are books and books that deal with each one of these topics, and although the information available is vast, I hope I have been able to summarize it accurately, and with the information I have provided, help others to understand why these practices take place.

(1) "Gossip Girl' hits record high, 'Terminator' declines." Entertainment Weekly 16 Sept. 2008. Hollywood Insider. 16 Sept. 2008. Entertainment Weekly. 4 Dec. 2008 .

"How about some more fun-fries, guys?"

Because the Blank article was written before the women's movement took a strong hold in American culture, I automatically assumed that it would contain huge generalizations and politically incorrect statements. However, I realized that although his concepts might seem outdated, they still hold strong in today’s culture. He spends a great deal of time discussing how males are traditionally more curious than females, which leads them to be more voyeuristic. Females on the other hand aren't as curious and overall tend to be more passive. This culminates in by far my favorite generalization,

"...in many societies where nakedness is the rule, females cover their genitals; there is no known society where males cover their genitals and females do not; and exposure of the female genitals seems to be an almost universal form of sexual invitation throughout the mammalian scale...If the male looks, then the female must exhibit.(1)

He goes on to explain how females were practically made to be looked at, while males were to do all the looking. This idea, although it may seem out of date, actually has many examples in modern culture to support it.



Although many disregard South Park to be a dirty show full of toilet humor, it also provides rich social commentary. In this scene, which is obviously a parody of a Hooter’s restaurant, the girls are the ones displaying themselves while the boys look on. In our culture women are objects on display everywhere: in advertisements, in fashion shows, on stage, in pornography – women are on display so much more often than men (although I think that over time this is beginning to change…especially after looking at the female sexuality in the Sex Toy Party article). Perfect example: how many topless bars exist? I would say a fair amount…but I can’t even think of an equivalent example where men are put on display. Even videos such as “Guys Gone Wild” are mostly marketed toward gay men, and not women. It is almost always the men doing the looking, and almost always the women on display.

In my opinion, because women try so hard to dispel these stereotypes (of women being prostitutes or porn stars), they get upset when they learn that a woman had sex in public because it is seen as a step backward. When TheGirlfriend had sex in a room with two other boys, many women that I talked to seemed outraged that she would do such a thing, although had no reaction to what the man had done.

Women are expected to have control over (sexual) relationships. Even in the Raisin’s clip, it was Lexus (notice all the girls have car names), that touched Butter’s arm, and he is the one who loses control. Women are looked down upon if they can’t keep control over their romantic situations because males are stereotypically sex-charged gawkers (like the crowd at Raisin’s) that cannot be held accountable for their actions.


(1)Blank, Leonard. "Nakedness and Nudity: A Darwinian Explanation for Looking and Showing Behavior." Leonardo 6 (1973): 23-27. JSTOR.