Welcome to Well, That Sucked, our weekly compendium of exactly what it sounds like. Thrown in this week’s garbage: sexy teens and the people that sex on their bodies.
Everybody has their kink. Some people are into bondage or role-playing. Others carry on affairs. But me, I’m into teens.
Sexy, sexy teens.
From the ages of 11 to 18, they are often hot masses of sweat and ingrown hairs, seemingly incapable of standing up straight or washing their faces with appropriate vigor. Truly, they are the worst generation, second only to the current crop of 20-somethings. (It is universally known that anyone in their 20s at any period in time is regarded officially as “The Worst,” so this is not up for debate.)
But when teenagers get sexy, they get sexy.
They’re Snapchatting their underdeveloped junk to each other, seducing their teachers—we all know who actually starts those affairs—and swapping venereal diseases.
It’s not all good news, though. It turns out that being hormonal coitus-demons has a downside. A new study from York University found that teens who start dating sooner rather than later disrupt the normal pattern of romantic development, something that I suspect is not a real thing that can be measured, as well as develop behavioral problems.
Those behavior problems measured include lying, cheating, starting fights, disobeying, and running away. So, basically, all the things that teenagers do right around the time they figure out who Elliott Smith is and start smoking even the teensiest bit of weed. (“I’M NOT LIKE YOU, DAD. I’LL NEVER BE LIKE YOU!”)
The “early” group of students in the study started dating at 11.6 years old, on average, while the “late bloomers” didn’t get there until 14.9 years old. In the alternate reality where this study was done, dating at 15 is considered “late.” Did they survey the kids from Gossip Girl? Is the high school where all these kids go to actually just a party boat stuck in international waters?
At 15, I was in no way prepared to start interacting with the opposite sex. I was still begging my mom to explain to me how to insert a tampon without feeling it poke into my abdomen. (If any of you know how, please email me your detailed instructions. My mom still won’t tell me anything.)
The study is, like so many studies before it, useless. (For one thing, it claims to focus only on dating, not sexual activity. Boring!) It’s one of those nonsense reports that suggests having teeth increases your risk of biting your own tongue. It puts forth that dating sooner somehow puts teenagers at more risk in the long run without really taking into account other variables that could alter the outcome. Getting in an abusive relationship early on will be damaging. Getting pregnant at 14 will be damaging. Going out with some guy in your physics class for three weeks and then being dumped via ICQ will only make you stronger. (“sry this isnt working c u in class lol”)
I didn’t date. From 12 to 13 or so, most of my time was spent building my Orlando Bloom Fan Club, perhaps the only burgeoning Orlando Bloom Fan Club in the Woodbine area of southwest Calgary. We had three members, one of whom was my brother, and I sent a weekly newsletter largely composed of descriptions of what Orlando Bloom’s hair looked like that week. (It looked good. It always looked good.)
I’m no scientist, but I bet that kind of limited interaction with real, live boys, and extreme interaction with, say, a poster that you gaze at while listening to Mindless Self Indulgence is actually a far greater risk to a girl’s development.
Maybe there’s something to be said about why dating young is a good idea. The sooner boys and girls can learn how to treat each other properly, the better. And of course, it’s always best to have your heart broken early in life so that you can spend the rest of your days bitter and churlish about the unfairness of your existence on this dumb planet, finally realizing that true love does not exist, and the only thing you can count on in this cruel world is the sweet release of death.
Kids, there’s always something to look forward to.
Well, That Sucked appears every Friday.
