Generation Lost: The Sex Obsession

Ahh...the high school years. The time of your life when you're supposed to make tons of friends and have the best of times doing fun things you'll remember for the rest of your life. Somehow, it's not exactly everything I dreamed it would be. On TV, teenagers always go on these wild adventures with their friends that in the end, bring them into adulthood and full on maturity (and funnily enough never have any real consequences or negative repercussions.) In real life, it's not anything close. It seems like the only thing kids my age do these days is talk about having/actually have sex with their "boyfriends" or "girlfriends." And I'm tired of it!

I don't want to sit down with a group of friends (Gosh...ever since Facebook we use that term really loosely don't we?) and have a conversation about sex! #1: Most of us have never even had sex...so what are you talking about?! #2: Even if you have, it's pretty clear you weren't mature enough or you wouldn't be telling the whole world. #3: I simply don't see the need to talk about it...what exactly is so interesting? We all know that it exists. Why must we make stupid perverse jokes about something none of us should be doing?

And why is it so uncool to be a virgin? I've seen guys who shook their heads vehemently and denied it over and over and over again, when they were asked. Then their guy friends slap them on the back and congratulate them and ask them questions like, "How was it?" Same thing with girls. I heard a bunch of them sitting around a table once asking one another, "Are you a virgin?" One raised her eyebrows and winked, "Well I'd say I'm half a virgin." Giggles all around. "Oooh what does that mean?" She winked again. "Sorry, I don't kiss and tell." Then some other girl who had been quiet this whole time worked up the nerve to say, "Well, if you're half then I must only be 1/4 a virgin." And suddenly all the attention was on her whatever knowledge she must have in store. One-quarter virgin? What the heck does that mean? You either are or you aren't!

I guess at one time, it would have been horrible for people to find out that you fooled around with a member of the opposite sex without being married to them. But now, everyone wears their fornication like a badge of honor. Guys AND girls. Of course, guys still throw around the words "slut" and "whore" but not for the type of girls who actually deserve those names. No, that's reserved for the nice girls out there who won't give it up so easily. They see it as, "What? You won't have sex with me even though every single other girl I know has?  Whore..." 

It makes sense though. Everywhere we look we're bombarded with sex. Watching a PG-13 movie? There's a sex scene. Watching a network TV show? There's a slightly less explicit sex scene. Watching commercials? Well there's plenty of those for lingerie and perfumes/colognes that somehow always end up with men and women in suggestive poses. Just glancing at the cover of Seventeen Magazine? Sex advice from real teens! It's all so glamorized. Even 16 and Pregnant and Teen Mom shows what will happen if you're not careful. They don't try to send the message of abstinence, they just say don't make the same mistakes as these girls and use protection. They also call that "respecting yourself." It's ridiculous. But like I said, it makes sense. After going through your whole life with sex thrown at you every second of the day, of course you end up talking about it with your friends. It just seems like the thing to do.

But it doesn't have to be! There are so many other things to talk about, so many other things to be doing besides sex. Especially as teens, we have no real responsibilities so why do we try to change that? We'll be adults soon enough, then we'll do whatever we want and deal with the consequences. But why now would we risk pregnancy and STDs and emotional scarring. Every single consequence of sex is something you will carry with you for the rest of your life. Why not wait until you're ready? Until you're married?

Peer pressure is a very real thing, I know. However, it can be overcome! Start with ending those conversations about sex, even if that means hanging around with different people. Don't pretend like you understand or agree with something you don't. Tell people when you're uncomfortable and ask them to stop! Make sure people know your stance on the issue, because believe it or not, everyone's NOT doing it! And then simply talk about something else. If we who believe this way try harder to stop this problem, maybe obsession with sex wont have to be yet another bad thing our generation is known for. 

Ahh the high school years...the time of your life when you're constantly around people you don't like in places you don't want to be getting involved in things you're not ready for and don't understand...

Adventures in Job Hunting

All day yesterday I was out looking for a job. It's cool because I'm 16 now so I know that when I apply for one I actually have a chance of getting it. Kinda. You see, the applications are like totally designed to make you as a teenager look like a totally undesirable employee. There's this whole section on the back of the application for previous employment that usually says something like "this section must be filled out ENTIRELY." (Volunteer stuff "doesn't count.")Which is fine, if you're older and have had years of other jobs. But when you're 16 and just starting out, how are you supposed to have something to put in the previous employment box when no one will hire you? And round and round we go...

Almost every store I applied to also had a favorite phrase: "We're not hiring now, but we're always taking applications!" Always said it a way-to-cheerful voice. Translation: "You can spend half an hour filling this out but we're just going to throw it away anyway!" The most annoying part is, all the teenage jobs have been taken by adults due to the decrease in job availability I suppose. Nowadays, you walk into a McDonald's and you see 50 year olds behind the counter. You walk into Hollister and you see some old lady rearranged clothes on the rack. Come on...in teen clothing stores ESPECIALLY the employees are supposed to add to the appeal of the brand! And a 40 year old wearing clothes from Hot Topic does the exact opposite. It is what it is I guess.

Anyway, I finally found a store in the mall that was hiring, and the lady gave me an application to go fill out and bring it back. Of course, neither me nor my dad had a pen on us, so we set out on a quest to find a store that sold one. I suggested the dollar store on the lower level. We went down the escalator and into the store. The first thing that warned me away from this place was the smell. It stunk...like nothing identifiable. That was the worst part. The shelves were half bare and on this one place along the wall there were bags of strange foreign food (probably where the smell was coming from.) Eventually we found the pens. They were right where you would expect them to be! Next to the cleaning stuff and across from the weird smelling food. I approached the counter and after a few minutes I discerned that the woman was saying it cost a dollar ten.

I paid and sat down in a chair right across from the dollar store. I opened the pack of ten pens and clicked the first one. I wrote my name in the first box and...the pen ran out of ink. I stared at it for a second, scribbled on the back of one of my applications, and still nothing. I thought maybe it was just one bad pen so I took out the next one and filled in my birthday. Then THAT pen ran out of ink. Ten pens later, only about half of the application was done. I brought the pens over to my dad and he opened one up. Half an inch up the tube the ink is in had been pinched. There was a minuscule amount of ink in each pen. Just enough to write a few words.

We set up a system. My dad would take the pen apart and blow inside of it and then place it on the table in a line. I would snatch the first one in the line up, write a few words, and the grab the next one. The foreign people that run the dollar store and the knockoff clothing store next door were standing out in the hallway, almost like they were mocking us. They could clearly see our plight. This is probably their favorite part of owning that store. They cant make any money off it (because everything they sell is crap) so they like to watch unsuspecting people buy a product, try to use it, and then start to cry because it quickly breaks or stops working or self-destructs in their hands. I would never buy anything from their clothing store after this experience. It's probably designed to randomly tear itself apart after a few minutes of wearing it. I'm sure the bottoms of the purses randomly fall out and the shoes dissolve as soon as they come in contact with water. Or hot pavement. All I know is, the mall must be doing pretty bad for them to be able to rent a store there.

Finally, like an hour later, I finished the ONE application. I scooped up the broken pens, imagined throwing the sorry remains in their faces, but instead just dropped them in the trash. I didn't even get my dollar's worth.
By the end of the day, I completed 4 applications. Hopefully I'll get a call soon! Then I'd be able to rent a space in the mall and quickly put those evil dollar store owners out of business...muahahaha.

5 Ways To Survive Valentines Day While Single

1. Avoid Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites. Unless you want to see all your friends who are dating smother each others walls and statuses with "I love yous"....or unless you want to see all your single friends constantly whine about how this day makes them feel depressed and alone and blah blah blah...

2. Eat chocolate. It doesn't matter if you're on a diet, or if you have to go out and buy it for yourself. Eat it, it will make you feel better. And don't get the cheap stuff either. Reaally treat yourself. (And if you don't like chocolate, go buy ice cream or something. Actually, even if you DO like chocolate go buy ice cream. That plus the chocolate will be like double happyness.)

3. Watch a Nicholas Sparks movie! Yes, with yourself. Or better yet, with a girl friend. Watching Channing Tatum, Ryan Gosling, or Liam Hemsworth will make you realize one thing: if you're not gonna spend Valentines Day with a guy like that, then you're better off alone until you find one.

4. Express yourself. If you're feeling a little sad, don't keep it bottled up and cry alone or whatever. Talk to your girl friends about it! No one understands what you're going through better than they do. Or draw a picture that explains your emotions. Or write a story or a diary entry or a blog post. But please, please, PLEASE keep it private. Don't write all over Facebook about how lonely you are (not to be mean or anything, but it's pathetic.) And if you talk to a friend about it, talk on the phone, or in person, or over private message! Not on a wall post or something that every single person you know can see.

5. Forget about it! You've been single up until this point anyway...so what's the difference if you're single on Valentines Day? It's just another day that's been extremely commercialized so that places like Hallmark and all the giant teddy bear factories of the world can make a gazillion dollars. Just live it like you would any other day. Keep yourself busy, do school, or work, or watch a couple episodes of your favorite sitcom (FRIENDS!) and before you know it, the day will be over, and you wont have anything to worry about for a whole other year. PHEW!

Anyway, I hope everyone has a good Valentine/Single Awareness/Just Another Day Day! <3
Oh yeah... if you'd like, let me know YOUR tips and tricks for surviving Valentines Day while single in the comment box place below!

Generation Lost: I'd Rather Be Beautiful

A friend of mine recently explained to me the difference between a "hot" girl and a "pretty" girl.

"She's hot." He said, pointing out a tall, thin girl in our class who dressed like she was from some Hollywood fashion show. "She has that body...ya know, she could be a model. But her face isn't particularly...pretty or anything."

"But don't models have to be pretty?" I asked, which he responded to with one of the most condescending looks I've ever seen.

I should have known. It's fairly obvious that, to be hot, you could be faceless and brainless too and the guy wouldn't even care. All you need is that "perfect" body that most guys desire.

I know that this isn't a particularly new concept or anything, I'm sure this has been going on years and years before I was even born. But what is new is the extent to which it's being taken to in society today. Girls and women are under constant pressure from every direction to lose weight so they can achieve that ideal body, which according to ANAD (National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders) is possessed naturally by only 5% of American females. TV shows, ads, magazines, and people are all telling the other 95% that they're supposed to spend most of their time dieting, exercising like crazy, and doing whatever it takes to be like the 5%. That's ridiculous!

Now obesity is a growing problem in this country and some people do need to diet and lose weight to maintain their health. But we're not even talking about that! We're talking about girls wanting to get surgeries to alter their bodies. We're talking about girls starting all the way back in 1st grade who are so influenced by TV and magazines that they want to be thinner. 1st grade. Do you realize how insane that is? My little sister Anna is in 1st grade and I can't even imagine her thinking about stuff like that at this age. No wonder women are so much more likely than men to develop eating disorders. If you're thinking about you and your body this way from the time you're 7 years old, that will definitely influence you throughout the rest of your life.

I don't see anything wrong with exercising and eating healthy. But if you're a healthy teenage girl, you should not be obsessed with losing weight and changing your body because people have said mean things to you or so you can get a boyfriend who's only interested in "hot" girls! People are not worth it, and a guy who thinks like that is not worth it. And I know how it feels to be teased about your weight. When I was 10 probably until I was 12 I was a little on the fat side. I got made fun of by lots of kids my age about it too. But it never affected me in such a way that I was driven to not eating or purging or obsessively managing my weight. I did end up losing a lot of that extra weight anyway, and I still don't have that body!

Don't get me wrong, it's not like I don't wish I did from time to time. That's how society has affected our generation. It's like built into your brain or something, "Your worth is determined by the way you look." But you have to be able to look past that and realize that you are worth SO much more than that. Especially as a woman, you have to believe that you don't have to be a supermodel to get places in life. I mean, look at Oprah! She's one of the most influential, rich, powerful women in the world, and she's not thin. Because that. Doesn't. Matter.

So what I'm about to so is so cliche and overdone that you will probably roll your eyes BUT...what each and every girl needs to remember is that she is beautiful. Beautiful is not hot. Beautiful is not pretty. Beautiful is what you are inside and what you become on the outside. If you are a confident, happy, nice, good person I guarantee you people will look at you (guys and girls) and know that you are beautiful. Of course, there are always those who will hate on you. That's unavoidable no matter what you look like. But it's your attitude toward them that matters. Forget about what people say. (Okay, extremely corny moment is OVER.)

After that conversation with my friend, I couldn't help thinking back to that "hot" girl he had pointed out. Sure, plenty of guys probably look at her all the time and call her that. But is that necessarily a good thing? Think about it: she has tons of guys lusting over her body, calling her unpretty, and completely ignoring the fact that she is a person with a personality and a mind. Wow. I think...I'd rather be beautiful.

Generation Lost

So I was scrolling down my news feed on Facebook when I came across this video. At first, I laughed. It's funny how people could answer these simple questions in such stupid ways right? A few minutes after the video was over, as the content of it started to sink it, the funniness wore off just a little. And then a lot. I realized that this illustrates something that I had been thinking about quite often - I am increasingly embarrassed to be associated with this generation.

That wasn't the first time. I was struck in quite the same way a few days ago. I was sitting at a table surrounded by my peers. I wasn't really involved in the conversation, I was just listening, trying to get to know everyone before I jumped in. But as I started to listen more and more, I kind of wished that I hadn't. The topics of conversation were appalling to me! From just plain stupid, to just plain disgusting, it was clear that I wasn't going to be fitting in well with this group. 

And don't get me wrong, I'm a teenager, I can be just as stupid, and I'm sure I have been on many occasions, and will be on many more to come. I'm not trying to say that I'm necessarily "better" than these other people. But it sure seems to me like I'm the only one who sees it! I find myself in those situations whenever I'm around people my age. Sometimes, I look around me, and I just KNOW that there is no way in this world that I could even even pretend to act like these people do. Seriously, it takes some real talent to consistently remain at that level of stupidity!

This is our generation. We have a fixation with Hollywood, the Internet, and all aspects of life that aren't real. We don't pay attention in school, we don't seem to have any interest in things that will help us get ahead in life, and we go from day to day running around like a chicken without its head. (Keep in mind I'm using "we" as a generalization. I realize that not every single teenager is like this.) In my opinion, we are the generation that has no identity, no sense of direction, and sadly, no bright future. Videos like the above "Lunch Scholars" do a good job of destroying whatever hope there might have been.

Think about it. What has my generation as a whole begun to accomplish that the generation before us hasn't. Hmm...we can use the computer for social networking, hours of useless YouTube watching, and pointless time wasting websites like Tumblr and Stumble Upon. We know how to use the DVR to record TV shows so we never have to miss them. We know how to send 160 character text messages in under a minute. We know how to get cheat codes to unlock things in video games. We know which cast member of 16 and Pregnant just broke up with her boyfriend. Ohh, and we know how to use video cameras to record ourselves singing covers of other people's songs.

Basically, we have a million and one more tools than any generation before us, and the majority does nothing with them. Why? Because we're lost. No one knows who they are so we end up spending most of our young adulthood drifting from group to group, trying to fit in and "discover ourselves." Sometimes we do find where we belong and we settle down there, lacking the motivation to move and start the process all over again. Otherwise, we never find where we belong, don't have the strength to handle it, and spend the rest of our time being unsatisfied social outcasts. I blame the media for constantly bombarding us with tons of content we weren't prepared to handle.

Really, I believe that the exposure we have to all this stuff has made us a little psychotic, and confused, which in most cases, leads to stupidity. Oh, of course, we all have the power to overcome, but most of us don't. We don't feel like it. We're either comfortable or just lazy. Adults pretend not to understand us, so we greatly lack direction. We are Generation Lost.

It's depressing and frustrating. There is a light at the end of the tunnel though. As hard as it may be to believe, there are some people out there who do know what they're doing, and do have a good head on their shoulders. Hopefully, these are the people that will end up in power when our time comes. Hopefully. Until then, those of us who realize what is going on should stand up and fight against what is going on. Make our way to the top. Don't fit in because it's easy. Don't pretend to be stupid because that's what's expected of you. Don't be one of the lost. Being an individual is exactly what our generation is not expecting. Right now, the best thing you can do is to just be YOU.

"You must be the change you wish to see in the world." ~ Gandhi