Teens not all talk when it comes to sex
FIFTEEN year olds are having sex and they’re enjoying it. Fourteen year olds are going to alcohol-free discos without any underwear on and 16 year olds are (when supposedly on sleepovers in a friends’ house) performing oral sex on two different guys in a night.
Yes, it’s going on in towns and cities across the country and none of it shocks the average 15 year old.
“I think nothing nowadays is serious,” says one 15 year old nonchalantly. “It’s just the way it is,” chirrups a 17 year old, seemingly oblivious to what is perceived as disturbing and downright terrifying by their parents. “Oral sex? The way people see it, you can’t get pregnant doing that,” says another, in an entirely perfunctory tone.
Over the last fortnight, the Irish Examiner has spoken to up to 20 young Irish people, aged 14-17, about ‘what young people are really up to’.
We met face-to-face with the young people and spoke to others over the phone. All were promised anonymity so they wouldn’t self- censor. Getting girls to divulge was not difficult and their confidence around their sexuality was part- admirable and part-disarming. With boys, it was another matter.
Far more boys refused to talk than actually agreed and out of those who spoke, many were clearly uncomfortable around this subject. Other boys wouldn’t talk unless paid. We refused. And of these are the same teenage boys that the girls all say “are obsessed with porn”.
“God, they just talk about it all the time,” said one 15-year-old girl. “They’re a lot more open about it than girls would be I’d say. They talk about what they see and stuff.”
“Recently, I asked my friend where the guys that we hang round with sometimes had disappeared to? My friend said they were all up watching porn in a field. I said on what? And she said on a phone. It’s disgusting. TV, computers, phones. Anywhere they can get it, they’ll get porn on,” said another 15-year-old girl.
None of the boys tried to hide their fascination with pornography.
“Yeah, we look at it a lot. It’s normal really. We’re looking at it on the telly, the internet. iPod Touches are great for watching video and there are so many sex apps and there’s so many iPod-friendly videos. We look at a whole range of stuff. I think most guys can separate porn from real life though. It’s just a laugh,” said the 16-year-old boy.
“I’m not that into it,” said another “but in school yeah, you’ll see the lads pulling out their phones in between class change and showing off some new pictures they’ve got or a new video”.
“Yeah, porn does the rounds alright,” another 16 year old smirked. “If someone has something good, they’ll pass it on. It’s all about bragging with the guys I suppose, about what you’ve done and who you’ve done it with. Guys will rip the piss out of the girls though, who send them on photos of themselves though. And yeah, they don’t really keep those pictures to themselves. To be honest, any girl who sends on pics like that is stupid.”
One 16 year old described himself as having “a good bit of experience with sex” . Young fellas, he believes, can be quite let down when they eventually do have full-blown sex.
“I remember there was a friend of mine and he said ‘God it was nothing like I expected’. Some of them haven’t a clue as you’ve got to have a bit of common sense. Those people are actresses being paid. I know the difference between real life and porn. I went out with a girl for a year and I got to see the reality of relationships and sex. In real life, sex is a whole different thing.”
All of the older teens spoke of a remarkable difference in mindset between a 13 or 14 year old and a 16 or 17 year old.
“When you’re young, like 13 or 14, and you see a girl out with hardly any clothes on you think, ‘Hey. That’s class. I want to be with her’. By the time you get older, you’re ‘How did your old man let you out like that? You are practically in your bra and knickers’,” said one 16-year-old boy. “Just there, I saw a 10-year-old girl wearing hot pants and you think, God what will she be up to in a few years?”
One 15 year old we spoke to revelled in her refusal to dress “like all those other girls”: “You know sexuality is supposed to be defined as a liberty whereas these days you see girls wearing totally inappropriate clothing and they have no idea about what sexuality is. They’re so naive. They have a totally false idea about what it is to be sexy. They are putting themselves in situations that 13 and 14-year-old girls should not be in.
“The irony of the thing is that you see these same girls at a disco and they are constantly fidgeting and tugging their dresses down and pulling their tops up. The thing is that they’re obviously uncomfortable in their own clothes.”
“It’s all about 13 and 14-year-old girls wanting to just look older and more grown up than what they are,” said one 15 year old.
“Thirteen and 14 year olds try to be grown up, obviously like celebrities yeah, but sometimes it’s more local. They’re looking at 17 or 18 year olds and want to dress like that. They can’t grow up fast enough,” said her friend, who admitted to dressing just as skimpily back when she was that age.
The low-cut or skimpy tops paired with hot pants or a short skirt are nearly de rigueur for the under-17s, they say. If you look at the snake-like queues outside teenage discos, it’s all platform and wedge heels, fake tan or teabag tights, short skirts, eyeliner, false eyelashes and plenty of bling. Rarely do any girls stand out as showing any individuality. It’s practically an international uniform — one that screams popstars like Katy Perry, Rihanna or even Lady Gaga on a tamer day — it’s a look that is mimicked across the US and Britain but interestingly, one you rarely see among teenagers in France or Spain.
Girls say that dressing provocatively helps them fit in — and ironically, makes them feel less self-conscious and braver. “I am a small girl and I feel very self-conscious at discos and stuff, and that’s where slutty dressing and heels come into it, I think. It makes people feel less self-conscious,” one girl admitted.
“I don’t really dress like a slut,” said her friend, “but I like make-up because I hate looking at myself in the mirror but I can look at myself in the mirror with make-up on.”
Most school-age girls can’t even put their pictures on Facebook without feeling they have to doctor their image. “Girls want to look as provocative as they possibly can. It’s all photoshopping and photoexpressing. Half of them don’t look like themselves. Sometimes I don’t recognise my friends unless they are tagged,” laughed one 17-year-old girl.
Another boy mentioned that guys love taking pictures of the most provocative looking girls on a night out. The early teen might think she’s dressing for a dimly lit hall but it’s not uncommon “for someone to spot a girl who isn’t covering much and they’ll take her pic’ and put it on their Facebook page”.
All of the young people we spoke to said there was a pressure out there to dress in a certain way, talk in a certain way and to act in a certain way, but the vast majority said they were well able to say no.
“There is a lot of pressure out there and it’s getting younger and younger,” said one 17-year-old girl.
“There’s one girl in my year and everyone knew that she hadn’t been with a guy and it really was ‘what’s wrong with her?’. A lot of it depends on who you hang out with. There is pressure and there isn’t.
“There is a group that will do anything. A group that you know that are having lots of different types of sex. Most girls that I know that are having sex are having it within relationships and there’s others and it’s nothing over PG (parental guidance). They won’t go further until they are ready. There are others then who are having a lot of one night stands but they’re not really the norm.
“There are some boys that have serious high expectations and boys that will totally take advantage if the girl is off her head but then there are other boys who won’t go there.”
All the teenagers say that teenage discos, even if they’re supervised and alcohol-free, are still a hotbed of teenage hormones.
“Yeah, a lot of them might be supervised but a lot goes on. People do get thrown out if they’re being OTT but a lot of it isn’t seen,” a 17-year-old girl said.
Another girl, aged 16, was far more explicit: “It’s not just boys pushing it; girls want it too. I’d say it’s half and half. Girls see themselves as being in charge of their sexuality. They have sex in the corridors away from the main floor, wherever. I think that the adults don’t notice half of what is going on. Often it’s the younger ones that are worse. It can be the 12 year old at a disco that’s a real worry, the girls that are basically in their underwear.
“Girls going out without their underwear is totally normal now. People don’t take any notice. It’s normal. Girls will bring a change of skirt too, a shorter one than what their parents might have seen them in. It’s just the way it is. And yeah, girls snog one another. It’s just snogging. You’d have guys looking for threesomes but I don’t know, anyone I know has said no. Oral sex? Yeah, there’s plenty of girls who do that at discos as you can’t get pregnant. They’ll do it for the laugh and there are girls out there who will blow a few different guys in a night for the laugh. Girls have slapper competitions to see how they can meet [snog] or do stuff with the most guys... The internet and porn definitely influence things. A lot of the lads look at it.”
It really annoys teenagers that because a percentage of their peers are blatantly promiscuous, it’s presumed by adults that they are all falling in and out of bed with one another. Ironically, the fear of earning a ‘slapper’ or ‘slut’ reputation is still as potent nowadays as in decades previous — with the common view being that ‘you can do what you want’ once it is within a relationship. Again, the word relationship is not what it once was — it can last days, weeks or a few months.
“I don’t think we worry about morals and stuff. The thing that stops lots of people doing more stuff is that they don’t want to get a reputation,” said one 17-year-old girl. “Girls are judged more badly. You don’t want to get a bad name. You don’t want to come across as easy.”
As one 16-year-old boy said: “The girls who are willing to do it all the time with anyone, we don’t really have much time for them. I think a lot of them are just looking for attention. Where I’m from though, all the girls that will do all that stuff go off with the older lads anyway.
“There are plenty of girls who don’t care. They don’t have any shame... They’ll sneak into a backroom at a disco with you and you just hope that you don’t get caught. The big thing though is if a girl does something to you, you wonder does she do it regularly? Is this normal for her?”
All the teenagers that we spoke to are fully aware that they live in a hypersexualised world. Most believe that they can cope with it. “I can cope with it. I find it difficult sometimes but on the whole, you’re used to it,” said one 15-year-old girl.
“It has all become shallow and meaningless though,” another said. “Years ago, if you kissed someone it was really special. Now you just go around randomly, kissing strangers. You don’t know who they are. A kiss is nothing now.”
“I think the obsession with sex now is too much,” she said emphatically. “I was on this website Tumblr the other day. It was all about how in the 1970s, all they wanted to do was hold your hand, you know that song? Now it’s all about sexting, porn and drugs. What about my kids? Where will it all end? What will be the norm then?”
Romance, they agree, is sneered at. One girl sighed at the prospect of being wooed by a boy and treated like a lady.
“I would love to have lived back in the real era of the romance, in the black and white movies. I cannot begin to explain how much I would have loved to have lived at that time. At the moment, my friends are all like, ‘I have someone here for you to meet’ and I’m like no. I don’t want to. I don’t look at it that way. I want to find someone that I really like, someone special.”
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BEING the father of a teenage girl is not all bad. But there are a few basic rules. The most casual innocuous remark can be misconstrued as a personal insult. They don’t like sarcasm: this makes girls storm off. And while they may at times provide the perfect opportunity for a windup, you must try and avoid temptation.
Overall I think my daughter and I are finding we have more in common as time goes on.
I think it is good that she has easy friendships with the boys in her group; well, they seem to text and Facebook each other a lot. I am worried about peer pressure, but I think she won’t be that easily led. I can’t see that she has any desire at present to get into smoking, drinking or anything else along those lines. She is very different to how I was at that age.
Certainly she is more interested in the opposite sex than I would have been at the time. I don’t know much about her relationships to date or the level that has been reached in them, but I suppose I trust in her judgment and in the belief that we have done a good job in imparting a set of values and morals upon her. That said, I do worry about the excessively sexualised world that young people are exposed to, especially girls. I feel old saying this, but things were different in my day. Kids are not allowed stay innocent for very long, and I think a lot of this is due to parents not taking any responsibility for what their children watch on TV, and then not taking the time to teach them anything about respect.
I get very uncomfortable when guys I know tell stories about stag parties and heading to lapdancing clubs. Not so funny when you have a teenage daughter. A lot of music videos suggest to teenagers that girls should act like they are in a lapdancing club all the time, and boys should treat girls accordingly.
Girls are expected to put so much effort into how they look before heading out, not on the town, but just meeting up, whereas the boys just wear whatever is to hand (some things don’t really change). There is always going to be pressure on them to get experienced (American Pie comes to mind, see picture below). It seems that some of her friends view their relationship successes as sort of status symbols or trophies to brag about. I would hope my daughter is different.
To any parent with an adolescent daughter, I would say to hang in there. It will get worse, but it does get better. You will learn a lot about life from them. It is important that teenagers feel like they can come to you and confide or share their experiences with you. I feel lucky that our daughter is comfortable enough to do this with us.
SHE criticises my hair, my clothes, my friends, my taste in music. I worry that I am an embarrassment to her because we don’t own a hair straightener. And I realise that at 15 she is much better at criticising these things than I am, because, thankfully, that really is all she has to worry about.
Why do people think that babies are so difficult? There are baby whispering books and books aimed at toddler-taming and raising boys, but where are the helpful manuals for guiding (I don’t think that raising is what we do at this point) teenagers?
It really is a case of the blind leading the sulky, resentful blind. I certainly don’t know what I am doing. I try to understand her, based on my own teenage experience but that was the 1980s, the Square Age, and we are in the midst of the Social Networking Age.
Now it is acceptable to be battered constantly by advertising, and media and a Reality TV culture which puts huge pressure on adolescent girls to be thin and pouty and have ATTITUDE, and to be sexy too of course.
Thanks to singers like Rhianna in particular for sending out these really confusing messages on sexuality and relationships; be in charge, tell him how he should make you feel, make him feel like a man, cheat on him, cry and make sure you are flexible enough to dance around a pole because that is what boys like.
I cannot understand how mothers have let things get to the point where girls have to dress like hookers from a bad 1970s cop movie to go to a teenage disco, while boys wear the same old shirt-and-jeans uniform that Elvis wore.
While girls are burning their hair and squeezing into hotpants in the middle of December, boys are still throwing on a jumper and overdoing the Lynx. And if girls are getting the message that they should be sexy and available then, surely, boys are getting ideas about what they should expect from girls.
At teenage discos the whole point seems to be to “meet” as many guys or girls as possible (meeting means kissing or getting off with).
No dancing or conversation or even an exchange of names is required, and girls don’t expect it, because this is what everyone does.
This is the saddest thing, our teenagers trying to meet all these expectations when they haven’t even finished growing.
We have managed to escape the worst of this because she doesn’t play GAA (so no underage GAA discos) and her friends are more into agonising self-analysis than dancing.
Thankfully we have not yet reached the point where we have to argue over her drinking and smoking, but I know this is next. We can look forward to many more years of arguments, because teenagers love it.
It is a favourite pastime with ours because her life is awful and her parents are insensitive and mean. Wait until she reads this.
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A LOT of the teenagers believe that boys and girls are equally as sexually adventurous. However, both agree that the boys revel in talking about their exploits or supposed exploits. Boys and girls say there is a huge pressure on young boys to be “macho”.
One of the most disturbing tales told by the young girls was about the phenomenon of ‘head rape’.
“Yeah, you hear about that going on. A girl is walking through a disco and a random guy will grab her by the back of the hair and start pushing her down, like down to the level of his crotch before he lets her go,” said one 15 year old.
“You’ll see groups of certain lads who think it’s hilarious but it’s awful.”
All the girls believed that guys “have no respect for us”. “They don’t make any effort to get to know you. They just want to meet you and get what they can,” said a 15 year old. However, many of the boys we spoke to admitted to being overwhelmed by this pressure to appear macho — yet none said they would discuss it with mates.
“There is a bit of macho stuff going on. I see it in the younger boys. I see the way that they are acting. They just want to be pure hard boys. You’re not allowed to be soft. There’s a standard that you have to meet. I wonder though does it have to be this way?” said one boy aged 16.
“The girls and boys expect you to be after one thing and then you have to portray that too. It’s a vicious circle. If you’re not like that, you’re different”.
He reckons half his male friends are virgins and that most that lost their virginity, lost it within relationships — relationships that could have lasted weeks or months.
“If they’re not in relationships, drink is a big factor in losing their virginity.”
Another 15-year-old boy remarked it isn’t just teenage girls who are craving a perfect body.
“There’s a friend of mine and he’s up at 7am to do press ups and floor exercises. Guys too have to have good bodies,” he said.
SEXTING is a major phenomenon among this age group.
Girls tell me it’s often the most socially awkward guys who are “obsessed with picking up phone numbers ” so they can send girls illicit texts outlining their fantasies.
One 15-year-old boy told me how he got a slew of sexts from a girl that he was “meeting” last year and that this was her way of expressing that she wanted to have sex with him.
“I didn’t sext her back as I didn’t want to have sex with her. She wouldn’t talk to me then. She thought it was something to do with her. But it’s just I didn’t want to have sex with anyone,” he said.
“Sexting? Aah, it’s really common. You’ll get random texts and it can be from anyone, someone you don’t know or it can be a friend who starts getting really sexual.”
“Boys and girls do it but it seems to happen a lot more with boys,” said another 15-year-old.
“Often, the girl getting the sexts is really worried and uncomfortable and wants to tell him to stop, but she’s like ‘ha, ha’ and stuff as it’s not easy to tell them to stop. If you were to refuse somebody sexting you, it’s like ‘why?’.”
Teenage girls are also used to finding pictures of random penises in their phones. “My friend has a house in West Cork and it’s in the middle of nowhere. A group of us go down there sometimes. Anyway, she dropped her phone one day and somebody found it. They texted her and said we have your phone. When she was down there again, she called to get the phone and he said there might be stuff in it.
“When she got home and went through the pictures, there were all those pictures of his penis in it. He was 14,” shrieked one 16-year-old.
Another 16-year-old said: “I got an anonymous phone call one day and he hung up. And then a few minutes later I got a sext and it was disgusting and it made me so uncomfortable.
“It was a guy ringing random numbers to see if it was a girl before sexting her. What’s wrong with them?”
GIRLS snogging girls is pretty pedestrian these days, according to the teenagers.
“Often it’s just a messing thing. But sometimes, there would be people and they really fancy the girl if she’s really pretty and they might be with her for a while. It doesn’t mean they’re gay,” one 15 year old explains nonchalantly.
“I had a friend who was seeing another girl. She was probably 14 at the time,” a 16 year old said. “She’s not lesbian though. She was kind of experimenting”.
“I know a guy then who went out with another guy for a while. No, he isn’t gay. It was just an experience,” said another 15 year old. “Not everyone knew about it. It depends on who you hang out with though. Going gay happens with guys yeah. But it probably happens less than with girls.”
Her friend said that young teenagers differentiate between the “real genuine lesbians” and the “girls just messing around”.
“I know a few real genuine lesbians and you’d see them out with their girlfriends holding hands and stuff. They’re different from the girls who will snog on a night out for the laugh or who just end up fooling around together for a while.”
Do girls snog in public, to please guys?
“Yeah some will but others are just doing it for themselves. Girls will also do it with drink. But I think that drink can also be an excuse for doing things that they want to do anyway.”
ALL the teenagers believe they are getting ample sex education — and they think it’s brilliant that they are.
“Schools do sex education really well. If the teacher is really embarrassed around the whole thing, nobody will really listen. But if they are trained properly to do it, great,” said one 17-year-old girl.
“The best are the specialists,” said another 15-year-old. “The people who come in from outside are really good. You’ll listen to them and actually ask them questions.”
Another 15-year-old girl giggled: “You know we had this HDip once and she was mortified talking to us about it and that meant that the guys made her even more mortified and started pulling the piss, saying stuff like ‘Miss, what’s a dental dam?’ She’d go bright red. Then, we had a teacher who took no crap and we learned.”
One 15-year-old boy said the talks focus on girls too much. “They don’t talk much about guys and they can be repetitive after a while because we get so much of them,” he moaned.
“They do try and educate you,” said another 15 year old girl. “In our PSE class, they like do try and address it. If you listen, you will learn. The guys can be all skittish, all giggly though, like children.”
One 16 year old says she always aces exam questions on reproduction as she’s been taught so much sex education.
“I always do best in those chapters but I’ve never sat down and studied them. I just know it. It’s weird,” she said.
- Meet: To kiss.
- Meeting randomers: French-Kissing boys/girls you don’t know.
- Beat the slut/beat the slapper: A contest between girls as to who ‘meets’ the most guys in one night.
- Tramp: A girl who plays beat the slapper.
- Being topped: when a boy removes a girl’s upper clothing.
- Rank/mank: Ugly.
- Mog: An ugly person.
- Fit/fine: Hot or cute.
- Player: Male or female who ‘gets around a lot’ and ‘meets’ many people of the opposite sex.
- Smooth operator: Player.
- Skank: Someone who is easy with boys; a girl who will ‘meet’ or even engage in further sexual activity without much persuading.
- Man-whore: A boy who ‘gets around’ a lot.
- She’s easy: She will ‘go’ with anybody.
- A ride: Good-looking male or female.
- Hot stuff: Somebody who is exceptionally good looking.
- Hot-and-not list: A ‘ranking’ of who is good-looking or ugly.
- Minger: Boy or girl with an unpleasant personality.
- Minging: Ugly or fat girl.
- State/mess: Disparaging reference by a male teenager about a girl deemed to be trashy and not up to his standard.
- Hard sham: Someone who is tough or cool.
- Stall it to the gaff: Come with me to… the pub, club, etc.
- Would you go with him: Would you ‘meet’ him.
- Are you coming out on the knack?: An invitation to participate in under-age binge drinking in a field or park.
- That’s PG: Inappropriate behaviour which should preferably be carried out in private.
- Getting your bit: Having full sexual intercourse.
- Being on the pull: Looking for a girl or boy to go with.
- MILF: Mother I would like to f**k.
- FILF: Father I would like to f**k.
- GILF: Granny I would like to f**k.
- TILF: Teenager I would like to f**k.
