The Situation Loves Abstinence

OK, today we’re taking the day off from salvaging your sex life to talk about something serious.

First, watch this:

Abstinence is probably one of the most dangerous messages we’re feeding our children. It’s, hands down, the worst form of birth control out there (look how well it worked for “B. Palin”).

Yes, it’s nice that there’s someone telling kids who aren’t physically or emotionally ready for sex that it’s OK to wait until you’re responsible enough, but the message can’t end there. Safe sex has to be more than just an afterthought, which is how it’s treated in this PSA.

Most kids aren’t going to wait till marriage to have sex, which makes abstinence pretty unrealistic. And when they stop living in the fantasyland where sexual desires are something to be overcome, they don’t know how to protect themselves from the very real consequences of unprotected sex.

Trying to prevent pregnancy with abstinence is like trying to lose weight by limiting your diet to carrots. It works when you stick with it, but it’s unsustainable in the long run, and when you do start craving “sugar,” you don’t have the tools (like portion control and calorie counts/condoms and oral contraceptives) to indulge without destroying your waistline.

Then there’s the absurdity of having Bristol Palin as a spokesperson for abstinence. But not because she got knocked up two years ago, which seems to be everyone else’s complaint, but because it’s absurd to believe that she’s back to saying no today.

How many people do you know who have sex and then swear off it? If sex wasn’t an enjoyable pastime, the human race would be in serious trouble, and if people could decide it just wasn’t for them, China wouldn’t have to tell its citizens to do it less.

There’s no way this girl is “not going to get into a situation before she’s married,” which means she’s probably practicing safe sex herself. For someone who’s realized that safe sex is the better alternative to push young girls down the path she’s already been down (i.e., saying no until you do and then not using a condom to pretend it isn’t real) is fucked up.

Refusing the condom at the end is probably the worst part. Having condoms doesn’t make kids have sex, but it does protect them if they end up in situations they didn’t plan for.

Having sexy ads coupled with abstinence PSAs is the worst thing a company can do. It’s selling kids sex and then telling them not to have it. Which message do you think prevails?

Snookin' for Love

Snooki had a rough week.

Luckily, her guy friend (we’ll call him Mike because that’s what we think his name was and we’re too lazy to rewatch the episode) comes to visit, and when, in a shocking turn of events, everyone ends up at a bar that night, he and Snooki start making out.

They head home a few hours later, and Snooki’s “ready to hook up.” She decides to “test” Mike by offering to let him get out of the cab in front of a club and go look for other girls. And, surprise, that’s just what he does!

We can be a little hard on Snooks sometimes, but she actually recovers quite well from this incident. When he comes home later that night, she doesn’t throw herself at him, and she doesn’t try to hook up with him.

But why would she tell her guy to go look for other girls?

We understand the impulse. You want to look like the “cool” girl who’s so laid back that she doesn’t care. And this image actually isn’t a bad one to project.

There are situations (no pun intended) in which this line might actually work. But it’s not going to work on the cab ride home when you’re not sure if you two are on the same page.

When Snooki said, “You can go look for other girls,” what he heard was, “If you come home with me, I will have sex with you.” And when you make yourself that available—so available that, in fact, it seems like you’ll be waiting for him at home if he can’t find anything better to bone at the club—it’s a turnoff.

You might think that guys are looking for a “sure thing” in a one-night stand. And by 2 or 3 a.m., they probably are. But if they were really looking for something that sure at the beginning of the night, they’d skip the bar and call a hooker. When you factor in the bar tap and the pre-bar GTL (gym, tanning, and laundry for the uninitiated/unmoronic), they can probably pay for sex and still come out ahead.

There’s no need to blow your chances by acknowledging the situation (LOL!). Don’t let on that you’re a sure thing, or he’ll jump out of the cab and go look for someone who isn’t.

Sammi, on the other hand, had a much more successful night. She and Ronnie got into a huge fight because (and we’re not making this up) Ronnie joked about her having a big toe. It’s not even clear that Sammi actually has an abnormally large toe, but, regardless, she saw his joke as an attack on her personal appearance and decided that the relationship was over.

Did we mention that both parties were pretty much blackout at this point? Anyway, Sammi basically dumps Ronnie and heads up to bed. She doesn’t stand around and argue about what he’s done. She doesn’t try to justify her being pissed off over a comment about one of her toes. Instead, she just leaves the room and waits for him to come to her.

And he does. He comes upstairs and begs for her to take him back. He drags her out to the roof deck (with a stunning view of the highway below) and pulls his signature move (the crying/yelling combination).

Ronnie starts trying to defend himself and calls Sammi out on being a huge bitch (and we kind of are on this side at this point). But Sammi realizes that this is getting her nowhere. Her BAC has to have killed at least half of her brain cells, but she still realizes that her actions are pretty hard to defend, even to a slobbering drunken Ronnie, so this conversation is getting her nowhere.

And, again, instead of trying to defend herself, she heads back to bed. Ronnie warns her that, if she walks away, he’s not chasing after her. She keeps walking. Ronnie storms off to the bars, but he comes back about an hour later. And here’s the crazy part: he heads back to her room and apologizes. He doesn’t care that she called him “a fucking piece of shit” in the cab on the way home from the bar. He doesn’t ask her to apologize for throwing a fit over nothing. Instead, he begs her to take him back. And it works.

So what can we learn from this? When you’re fighting with a guy, sometimes it’s better to walk away. Let him come crawling back to you. The more you try to defend your side, the more he’s going to feel the need to prove that he’s right. But the minute he feels like he might lose you, he’ll do anything to get you back.

PS:

In case you haven’t heard, The Situation will be “making an appearance” at Mad River in Baltimore on February 11. Boh’s and O’s has the scoop here.

And DJ Pauly D will be throwing down some “house techno” at McFadden’s in DC on January 19. UPDATE: JWow will also be there (who cares?).