A lot of us singletons make the mistake of thinking that finding someone is the hard part. And that once you do, you’re set. We tend to forget that there is — ideally — a whole life-time of Relationship Maintenance that follows. And if you believe that that’s easy, I’ve got a ticket to “Your Friends and Neighbors” to sell you. Basically, it’s the story of two couples in/from hell. How brutal is it? Makes “Private Ryan” look like “Air Bud.” For further evidence that the relationship is the hard part, see … all of my columns.

To put it another way (and to quote myself): having a boy/girlfriend is like having a car with air conditioning. It may be more comfortable at times, but there’s a whole lot more stuff that can go wrong.

That is just one of several things I would like to point out to the many fine folks who write me to ask,

Dear Breakup Girl,
Why Don’t I Have a Boy/Girlfriend?

(Hi, Breakup Mom, I know you just sat up a little straighter in your seat.)

And here’s the problem: the folks who ask me that are fine folks. I mean, if they were saying: “Dear Breakup Girl, I have a second head in the shape of Boba Fett, my gums bleed when I’m nervous, and Kenneth Starr is my hero…why am I alone?” well, then we’d have a clear place to start (eg “online dating”). So I can’t necessarily tell each of you precisely why. But I can give you some perspective. Which is something everyone should have beforethey have a boy/girlfriend, anyway.

1. Why no ragazzo/a?* No rhyme or reason. Why, just think of all the excellent, admirable civilians (as opposed to superheroes) who are single. Like Winona Ry– no … Antonio Band– no, Barbra Strei– no, Will Smi– no. Okay, different tack. There’s no nice way to say this, but BG has made the acquaintance of plenty of people who were not conventionally “good-looking” or “socially adept” or, well, “interesting” — and they had B/GFs. Go figure. So quit wondering if you’re “normal.” A lot of people have girl/boyfriends … who are mean to them, or for reasons like “I’m afraid to drive on the highway.” How normal is that?

2. Dawson’s Creek is not reality. Your first tipoff should be the guy in a rowboat wearing a sport jacket. Your second tipoff should be that the guy in a rowboat wearing a sport jacket has no idea that Joey is in love with him. Look, you all know this, but I’ll say it anyway. Movies and songs and TV — even CNN, these days — fetishize love. Like, did you ever see the doctors on General Hospital actually doct? All you see and hear are people who yearn for it, who have it, who had it, who wear funny ties for it. All love, all the time. Which is kinda sorta how we feel deep down — and is what keeps BG in business — but maybe we’d be able to override it better and maybe get something freaking done around here if everything in our culture weren’t this big huge blinding yellow stickie in front of our face that says: LOVE! GOT ANY YET? HUH HUH HUH?

3. I know it’s fall, but B/GFs are not school supplies. (Hey, grownups, just because I’m making Dawson’s Creek references doesn’t mean I’m not talking to you. First of all, shut up, you totally watch it. Second, even if you haven’t been to school in years, I know you’ve been to Staples to look at the cute new notebooks and highlighters. Third, high school, is a metaphor for life, in a Lord of the Flies sort of way. So my analogies and advice should communicate loud and clear to everyone.) The point here being: there’s a lot of pressure — in culture and in “real life,” which, in a Truman Show sort of way, are not unrelated — to “get” (your verb, not mine) a boy/girlfriend. Having one “means” you are cool, attractive, popular, legit. But listen: if you get/have one just for those reasons, then you are NOT in the In Crowd at BG High, okay? I know this is really really easy — if not totally obvious — for me to say, but if you look on a boy/girlfriend as your own personal Self-Worth-o-Matic, well, let’s just say that’s one of those gadgets with planned obsolescence.

4. Approchable is better than “Stunning.” If you don’t believe me, see the clever article on this very topic in this month’s Marie Claire (I think). “Stunning” makes certain people’s knees weak, yes — that is, too weak to dare walk over and start a conversation. You get my drift; I’m not going to get into the whole looks thing again. (Note: “Approchable” — unlike “terrific” and “such a pretty face” — is totally a sincere, legit compliment; it really means pleasant, inviting, attractive.)

5. “Shy” is better than Loud. Just trust me.

6. Cheesy bottom line: it’s about chemistry. Barring certain non-negotiable matters of personal hygiene, manners, and taste in superheroes, your “appeal” does not occur in a vacuum. Granted, yes, there certain things (Society, Culture, Boobs, etc.) that mean that certain people get noticed first. But as far as anything longer than one awkward empty conversation is concerned, it’s the Reese’s effect: you could have perfectly good chocolate, but go figure, only certain people are going to trip over you with the peanut butter (see grownups, I’m talking to you too: teens will not remember those commercials). I am talking about that elusive “click.” (NOT, may I remind you, that exclusive clique that requires a boy/girlfriend for entry.) So what to do? Don’t shrink back, stung and defeated, into a spiny shell; step out and go places and do things where the odds are higher that the chemistry/peanut butter/click person will be there, too. And while you’re playing the odds, have a little trust in fate. If you don’t believe me, see “Next Stop, Wonderland.” Which, bless its heart — and yours, in the meantime — also makes a powerful, lovely case for being alone, all to a balmy bossa-nova beat. Rhyme/reason? No. Rhythm? Yes.

* Italian for boy/girl and boy/girlfriend. Empirically, appears to be synonymous with “hottie.”

This column was originally published August 31, 1998.

Do reality shows like Teen Mom and 16 And Pregnant “glamorize” teen pregnancy? That standard hand-wringer has always struck me as weird. Because um, those shows don’t exactly make teen pregnancy/motherhood look awesome.  They (unlike, SORRY, Glee) actually make it look pretty crappy — a lot more so than, say, carrying around a sack of flour for a week. Even when cute teen moms glam it up for celeb magazines (which are guilty of overglamorizing post-teen motherhood), teens — who, turns out, are also better at condoms than grownups — still know what’s up.

And now we have the numbers to show it: according to two brand-new studies commissioned by The National Campaign To Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, “most teens (79% of girls and 67% of boys) agree that when a TV show or character they like deals with teen pregnancy, it makes them think more about their own risk of getting pregnant or causing a pregnancy and how to avoid it.” Other findings:

·         Among those young people who have watched MTV’s 16 and Pregnant, 82% think the show helps teens better understand the challenges of teen pregnancy and parenthood and how to avoid it.

·         76% of young people say that what they see in the media about sex, love, and relationships can be a good way to start conversations with adults.

·         About half (48%) say they have discussed these topics with their parents because of something they have seen in the media.

·         16 and Pregnant got young people talking and thinking about teen pregnancy─40% of those in the treatment group said they talked about the show with a parent, 63% discussed with a friend, and 37% discussed with a sibling.

·         93% of those who watched [a particular] episode agreed (53% strongly agreed) with the statement:  “I learned that teen parenthood is harder than I imagined from these episodes.”

This is all information we’re not so sure they’re getting in, say, abstinence-only sex ed — which, while we’re on the subject, glamorizes lies, shame, and fear. (And whose funding just got resuscitated, even as the Obama administration also awarded $155 million in federal grants to support evidence-based, medically accurate sex ed.)

Enough with the mixed messages, as Jessica Wakeman wrote at The Frisky, continuing: “If pregnant teen girls get their moment in the media’s graces, the least we can do is use it wisely. The alternative could be much, much worse.” Of course the media plays a role in the whole teen pregnancy ecosystem, but there are a whole lot of other reasons teens get pregnant, most of which are much, much more complicated and challenging than the simple notion of MTV cause-and-effect (which is exactly why we are reluctant to acknowledge and deal with them).  Teens are smarter than we give them credit for. Sometimes, in fact  — see phrases bolded above — they just want to talk.

Clearly, the grownups aren’t at all sure what to do about sexting. While legal scholars (rightly) ponder when, whether, and most importantly how to prosecute sexters, one Pennsylvania school/DA threatened kids suspected of sexting with child pornography charges unless they took part in an after-school program which, among other things, required girls to write essays on why their actions were wrong; the goal: to “gain an understanding of what it means to be a girl in today’s society.” Is it shaming in here, or is it just me? To be sure, sexting should be taken seriously (as harassment and abuse). But why do I suspect — perhaps cynically, yes — that this focus on “what it means” will not include a full exploration of the deep cultural factors that appropriate and contain girls’ sexuality and limit their worth and self-expression to “hotness”? (Maybe it will; I hope I’m wrong.)

But as theoreotical counterpoint — and to counter the oft-peddled image of teens doing nothing all day but re-watching Twilight, playing Kill Everyone, and forwarding around naked photos of the French exchange student, I offer this: a reminder of many of the positive and, dare I say, actually empowering, ways that girls use social media.

As eleventh-grader Nadia Tareen — as part of a video series on media issues called Girls Investigate, a joint project of The Women’s Media Center (WMC) and Girls Learn International®, Inc. — writes:

Adults are often too fast to condemn teenagers’ use of technology. We aren’t as “clueless about online threats as some adults believe – Two-thirds of the teens who have created profiles have used privacy controls to limit access to them.” Also, I suspect that my parents and teachers are unaware of everything that my peers and I accomplish online. For example, social media is a great tool for activism. As the leader of my school’s chapter of Girls Learn International®, Inc., I have found that e-mail and Facebook messages are invaluable for organizing and spreading awareness. Teenagers even use social media to make their dreams come true. As an avid YouTube-watcher, I can cite at least a dozen teenagers who posted videos of their musical and comedic talents on the website, to then be discovered by industry professionals. If social media is used intelligently, it can yield endless benefits.

On the one hand, the whole guys-with-lady-parts brand of humor is, you know, not so fresh. On the other, neither are tampon ads featuring girls dressed in white riding horses. So these sneaky ads — which, yes, are from the Tampax people — seem pretty promising as viral marketers, and menstrual demystifiers to boot. Bonus: scrufftastic cutie!

From the New York Observer:

“Last week, I got dumped on the Lower East Side,” [Nate Westheimer] told The Observer. Mr. Westheimer, the 26-year-old head organizer of the NY Tech Meetup, had just ended his term as an entrepreneur in residence at Rose Tech Ventures. He fiddled with his iPhone, and said he wanted to create a mobile application designed for wallowing—one that could queue up classic New York–based breakup scenes from movies like Annie Hall and Kramer vs. Kramer. “I was like, I really want to see all the scenes about heartbreak that happen on like the Lower East Side,” he said.

And yes, they just may have an app for that.

Mr. Westheimer was explaining to The Observer why he had decided to return to the start-up game as vice president of product at AnyClip, an Israeli-based tech company that is planning to battle YouTube and other piracy sites in the free-media market by creating a competitive, legal database of movie clips for application developers. Only this one might cost ’em: AnyClip is hoping they can become a kind of iTunes for film scenes.

OK! So, just to plan ahead, what clips would you look up — and play over and over and over and over again — to tell the story of your breakup (only with people who look fabulous even when they’re miserable)?

Science Daily: “New research by psychologists at the University at Buffalo and Miami University, Ohio, indicates that illusionary relationships with the characters and personalities on favorite TV shows can provide people with feelings of belonging, even in the face of low self esteem or after being rejected by friends or family members.”

I could have told you that. (But I told Liz Lemon instead.)

If you haven’t been paying attention, Current TV, Al Gore’s user-generated news channel (“cable access for wonks”), has begun interrupting its endless stream of QuickTime clips with something called “tv programs” — so last century! Not that we’re complaining; One such foray into less-new media is infoMania, a collection of satirical bits by regular contributors (Daily Show-meets-YouTube) which has given us the lovely Sarah Haskins. Her Target Women series skewers how the media reaches out to women, and her newest target is holiday Jewelry commercials:

There’s nothing that says “I love you” to a woman like a diamond. Nope, not even the words “I love you.”

Advertising Age reports that The Parents’ Television Council (PTC) is wagging quite the stern finger at broadcast networks for undermining marriage, they say, by making affairs look much more interesting. Networks show sex between married couples as “boring, burdensome or nonexistent, while depicting extramarital sex as positive,” according to the PTC. “[Prime-time] verbal references to nonmarital sex outnumber references to sex in marriage nearly 3 to 1, and scenes implying sex between unmarried partners outnumbered similar scenes between married couples 4 to 1.”

Sure: Shows such as Desperate Housewives, Lipstick Jungle, and Sex and the City certainly have their philandering plot lines, even if they end up with Carrie ending up with Mr. Big. Sunday’s episode of Mad Men showed Don Draper having ho-hum coitus with his wife, while sultry, unmarried Joan Holloway had anything but. And let’s not even get into the implications of Swingtown. Of course, in fairness to writers — TV and otherwise — a happy marriage makes a happy couple … but maybe not so great a story. (At least once the reality-wedding show ends.) But still: have we come so far that it is no longer risqué enough to merely say “Sex Sells,” but that “Forbidden Sex Sells”? And does it not just sell, but also, you know, drive us to seduce the pool boy?

(more…)

It is on, people. The Frisky wants your picks for the hottest, people, places, music, books, and Nathan Fillions. Vote early and often…even if you don’t second BG’s (and the super-bloggers’) own noms!

Remember the story about Iraq war veteran Marine Sgt. Tyler Ziegel and his post-homecoming wedding? If you don’t remember the story, you likely remember the photo — and not the one at the right: the groom in military dress, bride at his side, his face brutally disfigured by a suicide bomber.

The story, alas, does not have a happy ending, even by depressing TV-movie standards. According to the UK’s Times Online (in a story I, and, it seems, much of the US press, missed until now), Sgt. Ziegel and his wife have divorced after just about a year. What’s lovely here, though, is the Times story itself: respectful, thoughtful, compassionate, clear-eyed in its recognition of reality — and its finding of a silver lining. Read it all, but here’s a highlight (slash, spoiler):

The fairy tale, as we know it, was not meant to be. They were too young to be married. Too young to process the possibility that what led them into a lifelong commitment was a desire for certainty in an uncertain world.
There is no mystery, no implosion, no tragic conclusion. There were factors that added up. Factors that at the time they could not have foreseen. That a marriage would not offset the consequences of Ty’s injuries. That it would not compensate for the loss and the grief felt by a young woman losing her father.
Everyone suspected it was too soon — that maybe it wasn’t right. But nobody spoke out. Others, strangers, projected onto them what they needed to believe.
They were larger than life. When we heard their story, we put ourselves in their shoes, imagining what we would do in the same situation. Renee personified the courage and strength we hoped we would have. But she was 18 years old. And neither is prone to introspection. They weren’t people who asked why. Between the two of them, they had so much life experience, but the emotional narrative of their lives never caught up.
What made us think it would? Why did we have such high hopes for them in the first place? Nobody really ever knew Ty and Renee. Not even Ty and Renee.
But this is not the end. They emerged from the marriage with warmth and affection for each other — not anger and recrimination.
She was there when he needed her most; she showed up and stood by him. That is more than many people will ever have in a marriage. It is something they will always share.