Ok, here we go again. The above t-shirt is from The Candies Foundation, which is an offshoot of the Candies Shoe Company. The mission of the Candies Foundation is as follows:
The mission of The Candie’s Foundation is to educate America’s youth about the devastating consequences of teen pregnancy through celebrity PSA campaigns and initiatives.
Celebrities that have participated in the campaigns include Beyonce, Ciara, Jenny McCarthy, Vanessa Minnillo, Ashley Tisdale, Hilary Duff, Ashlee Simpson, Usher, Rachel Bilson, Teddy Geiger amongst many others.
Celebrity Messages Include:
• Be Sexy: It Doesn’t Mean You Have to Have Sex
• Be Smart: Don’t Give Up Your Education
• Be Smart: You Are Too Young to Start
• Not Really the Way You Pictured Your First Crib
• Not What You Had in Mind for Your First Set of Wheels
• You Think Being in School Sucks
Oh my god. Where to start. First of all, it seems as if their mission is not to prevent teen pregnancy, but rather to promote abstinence. Now while abstaining from sex does indeed prevent pregnancy, it is not the only way to prevent pregnancy. So their message is disingenuous at best, purposefully misleading at worst.
The main point of the campaign seems to be that being abstinent is sexy. Which, I hate to tell you it's not. Personally, my idea of sexy seems miles apart from Candie's anyway. But why all the focus on being sexy? It seems to me that Candie's is encouraging girls to be cockteases. Even if you don't have sex, you are still expected to be sexy . . . so that you can keep your boyfriend panting and waiting with the promise of the sex your aren't having (as the above shirt, I'm Sexy Enough to Keep You Waiting). Wow. So I guess if you are an ugly girl, you have to give it up, because no man is waiting on your un-sexy ass! Or if you are sexy, and you have sex, then your boyfriend will no longer wait around for you. Seriously? All the one night stands I ever had called back, but maybe it was because I was not sexy and it confused them so much they had to call to find out why they had sex with me in the first place. (Personal note, once you go fat . . .)
Also, why are the celebrities needed for the message? Am I truly to believe that teens are so stupid that they will believe that abstinence rocks because Ciara says so? I guess Ciara would know about sex, considering her new video with Justin Timberlake in which she basically has the camera waved in by ground crew to her vagina. Also, Usher was a previous spokesperson? I guess his song Love in This Club was about cuddling a stranger in a nightclub, not anonymous sex. Or maybe it doesn't count when it turns out you had sex with a ghost. My bad. And Jenny McCarthy? I guess it's ok to pose naked in Playboy (she's just being sexy!) for men to masturbate to, but don't actually have sex with them. Yet another reason to STOP JENNY MCCARTHY!!!
So what happens when teens are told to abstain from sex, instead of being encouraged to make decisions about their bodies for themselves? It turns out that encouraging teens to abstain from sex, and take virginity pledges (like Candie's pledge called "Vow Not Now") leads to some interesting result. Although they do begin engaging in vaginal intercourse later than other teens, they have "higher levels of oral or anal sex than nonpledging virgin teens and less likely to use condoms once they become sexually active, according to a study published in the April issue of the… Journal of Adolescent Health, the Washington Post reports." There is even a term for it courtesy of Dan Savage of Savage Love fame, saddlebacking!
So in the spirit of the Candie's campaign, I have my own slogan's for what would really help bring down the teen pregnancy rate:
Up the Ass Today: No Baby Tomorrow
This Valentine's Day, Give Her a Pearl Necklace
No One Ever Got Pregnant from Swallowing
Handjobs have ALL the Right Benefits!
Eating Out Now Prevents Eating In Later (to Save Money for Your Baby)
Homosexuality: You Can CHOOSE When to Adopt
or my personal favorite
Fisting for my Future
You kill me.
Heidi,
I’m not sure you realize quite how your opposition to these shirts comes across. You seem to imply that being labeled a “cocktease” is a horrific fate that women must avoid by either wearing burkas or putting out. Women ARE allowed to be “sexy” without being “sexual”…there is a distinction. Believing otherwise is a half-step removed from “The way she was dressed she was asking for it.”
Also, while having Usher on an abstinence message would indeed be stupid, more than half the slogans you quote are about staying in school not abstinence. I have no idea about Usher’s educational level, but if he graduated from high school, why not have him as a spokesman?
Finally, I read the Washington Post article you linked to. Despite the headline “Teen Pledges Barely Cut STD Rates, Study Says”, the actual numbers quoted in the article are: “Almost 7 percent of the students who did not make a pledge were diagnosed with an STD, compared with 6.4 percent of the “inconsistent pledgers” and 4.6 percent of the “consistent pledgers.” Bearman said those differences were not “statistically significant.”
WTF? That’s a 35% decrease in STDs between those who have not taken the pledge and those who have consistently identified themselves as pledgetakers and it’s not “statistically significant”?! If that’s the case, you have a really shitty sample size on your hands and every conclusion in the study is questionable.
Now, see what happens when I don’t feel like doing work on a late Monday afternoon. :-)
“First of all, it seems as if their mission is not to prevent teen pregnancy, but rather to prevent teens from abstaining from sex.”
I think you have a typo here…
Andrew you are entirely correct! I will fix it now.
I just wanted to comment on what Tom said about the difference not being statistically significant. There are published agreed upon criteria ( which amounts to lots and lots of annoying charts) for data to be considered statistically significant. This means the intervention (independent variable) being studied has a higher probability of being correlated to the change in the thing being studied (dependent variable) than just chance. So yes there is a difference between non-pledgers and pledgers but that difference isn’t enough to not be affected by a variety of factors that were not directly examined in the study. It could be the attention of the study itself or something inherently different in the families or social support of the pledgers. We just don’t know based on the study and therefore cannot say it’s the abstinence pledge itself.
Numbers can be manipulated to say a lot of things; for example I could say there was a 50% decrease in eating cupcakes in my sample due to this wonder system I invented so give me millions of taxpayers dollars to continue studying how it can impact obesity. 50% sounds like an awful lot, but there are only 2 people in my house and one doesn’t like chocolate cupcakes, which wouldn’t make it statistically significant. You hear all the time if it effects just one person I’m happy, but do you really want that criterion used when billions of taxpayers dollars, the psyche and sexuality of children is the variable? That’s why it’s important to reflect what the numbers actually say, i.e. not statistically significant, that what you want them to say i.e. 35% decrease in STD rates.
I also think you’re throwing in a red herring at the end of your first paragraph with this statement… Believing otherwise is a half-step removed from “The way she was dressed she was asking for it.”
I don’t want to speak for Heidi but what I read is she’s implying that buying into a silly and inconsistent message of manipulating people, thinking all your worth is directly tied to your vagina or penis, and attempting to subvert natural impulses without proper sex education and healthy alternatives that build teens self worth on things again based not on their genitals is both ineffective and dangerous (Holy run on sentence Batman).
Oh and Heidi I agree with you.
I do like your comments Tom. They’re thoughtful and interesting, even when the topic is pure farce.
Alicia,
I certainly agree with you that it is possible for a study to yield a 35% difference in effect and still not be statistically significant. But that is an indictment of the utility of the study as a whole. Again I would say in that case the sample size is too small to draw ANY meaningful conclusion from it.
To put it another way, the author of the study has no problem in the Washington Post article trumpeting his finding that those taking virginity pledges are more likely to engage in oral or anal sex. Now I haven’t seen the study…I don’t even know if its available yet. But I have a strong suspicion that the increase in oral and anal sex incidence among pledgers is less than or equal to 35% (that no numbers are quoted in the Post article gives me some indirect evidence of this). If so, then the author is obviously twisting the data to support his personal biases rather than declaring all of his results within the statistical margin of error (and as a result not getting a nice Washington Post headline out of it).
Regarding the shirt slogan, I certainly don’t Heidi actually believes women are asking for it but that is the logic with which the phrase “cocktease” is typically deployed. The shirts themselves are silly, but whatever. They are ultimately a direct attempt to counter-program an existing dominant message in the culture. Clothes with sexual slogans (and the implicit expectation of sexual activity) are entirely common among teenagers these days. So why not subvert the style of that message with your own content? It’s a time honored tradition (like changing the Jesus fish to Darwin.)
Actually, I was so focused on the oral and anal sex (just like always!), that I skipped over a central point on the Washington Post piece. The article is entitled “Teen Pledges Barely Cut STD Rates, Study Says.” It isn’t until paragraph 8 that the 35% decrease is noted and dismissed as statistically insignificant. If 35% is truly statistically insignificant, then the true effect could be significantly less OR greater. The headline is entirely misleading. The correct headline should be “Study Inconclusive, Study Says.” :-)
I just want to say, I would have loved to wear that tank top while in college. Not being a “cocktease” just saying I am sexy and you want it.
Ha, great slogans! BTW – you might like this resource:
http://www.adolescenthealth.org/PositionPaper_Abstinence_only_edu_policies_and_programs.pdf
Thanks, by the way, for commenting on the reviews for Skepticality podcast on the iTunes site. Skeptic podcasts need fair reviews. :)
I know this is way after the fact but I just learned of this blog.
(unprotected) Anal sex isn’t 100% effective for stopping pregnancy. It’s not the act, it’s the leakage which if proper clean up and/or precautions can be just as pregnancy causing as pulling out.