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Canadian author Lynn Coady has an opinion. This is her edgy but hilarious online advice column exclusive to DearAnyone.com.
Thursday, June 30, 2005
Coady of Conduct: My sister is a very gorgeous girl. She is 13 and guys that are a lot older than her and much more experienced are getting involved in her life. She thinks I'm just jealous but I just don't want to see my little sister get hurt. She's a virgin, but at the rate she is going, I'm afraid she is going to end up pregnant, etc. She is being very deceitful, mean, and rude lately. I think it is because she is getting caught up in her popularity and not caring about her family as much as the boys that are using her. Angry and Confused in Missouri Let me tell you a little story. When I was 15, my oldest brother took me tearing around the back roads in his pickup truck and proceeded to give me the worst sex talk in the history of western civilization. For the first fifteen minutes, he kept referring to a process called my "oil change." He talked about what went on before my oil change and after my oil change. He gripped the steering wheel and stared intently yet with a cockeyed grin at the dirt roads in front of us. I listened and nodded, confused and fascinated. Then he went on to talk about the way guys were and the kind of thing guys liked and didn't like and my fascination continued unabated. Fascination aside, none of this was even close to what I needed to hear. When I finally asked my brother what an "oil change" was, he stared at me with a look of incredulous despair, realizing perhaps that he'd just spent the last half hour muddying the waters that my parents had appointed him to clear up. It was, frankly, no task for an 18-year-old boy, though god knows he did his best. The little ba-dum-bump moment of this story comes a couple years later when--ba-dum-bump!--I get pregnant. The moral being: for the love of god, don't tip-toe around this issue. Don't be terrified of your beautiful, bitchy 13-year-old sister. Just because she seems like a different person, it doesn't mean she's not just a freaked out kid, grappling with her new sexual power. The most confusing thing on the planet for a girl is the day (and it really does happen overnight) people start treating you like a wanton harlot simply because your attempts to emulate the pretty girls on TV suddenly don't make you look like a gussied-up ironing board anymore. It's bad enough that 40-year-old men start to proposition you on the street, but then your family compounds things by making bizarre, unfounded assumptions about how you comport yourself, laying down hysterical new edicts and basically making you feel like a skank. And all you did was grow up. Now factor sudden popularity into this equation. It's heady stuff at the best of times, and not everyone can handle it with graceful aplomb. Simply put, your sister's head is spinning like a windmill right now. It's up to you to get some basic facts through to her. Contact Planned Parenthood and other organizations who take an interest in women's sexual education and health--they'll set you up nicely. Broach the topic in a spirit of respect and concern. DO NOT come at it from an attitude of shame or censure, i.e. "Sis, you've been acting really bitchy and skanky I have no faith that you aren't going to end up pregnant." No, no, no. It's not a 13-year-old's job to make sure she likes and respects herself enough to be responsible about her sexuality. It's ours.
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