Yes, there’s more sex than there used to be on TV shows that teenagers watch, but it’s a new kind of sex: It’s safer sex, with more mentions of consequences and abstinence, and more relationship sex, as opposed to one-night stands.
As seen on recent TV:
A high school senior on a daytime soap opera tells her mom she isn’t ready for intercourse with her boyfriend. A college freshman in a nighttime drama stops by a Kmart for condoms on his way to a first date. A rapper on another drama, sent to a hospital after a fight, learns he has tested positive for the HIV virus.
Could it be that television producers are coming to believe it’s OK for their characters to say, “Not yet” to sex, or “Not without protection” or “Oh my God, why did I do that?”
That’s what a new study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, an independent health analysis organization, suggests.
Among 1,100 shows of the last TV season that depicted or talked about intercourse, 26 percent made some mention of safe sex–nearly double the proportion of a similar Kaiser analysis four years ago.
Dale Kunkel, communications professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara, and a team of researchers examined network and cable shows. They discovered an almost equal rise in the three messages they looked for: waiting to have sex, taking precautions with sex, or getting in trouble because of sex.
Of the shows most popular with teens, nearly half of the ones including intercourse made at least a mention of the risks of sex. Another positive bit of news, according to Kaiser, was this: Characters having sex were more likely to be older and in serious relationships than during the 1997-98 season.
Although television hasn’t all become “The Wonderful World of Disney.”
TV may be talking more about abstinence and condoms, but it’s also showing more sex. Four years ago, slightly more than half of the shows contained some kind of sexual content. By last season, that had jumped to two-thirds of all shows–and four-fifths of shows most watched by teens.
Writers and producers argue that it’s not whether they show sex, it’s how. And on that score, attitudes are gradually changing.
Jessica Klein, former executive producer on Fox’s lusty “Beverly Hills, 90210,” remembers an early conversation with series creator Aaron Spelling over whether character Kelly Taylor, on her way to a date, could slip a condom into her purse.
“She’s not a slut,” said Spelling, squelching Klein’s idea.
By the time Klein left several years later, almost all the sex scenes showed condoms, she says.
Yvette Lee Bowser, executive producer of UPN’s new comedy “Half & Half,” sees the same changes. Two nights ago, her show featured a young woman worried that she might be pregnant after she had unprotected sex with an old friend.
“If you don’t deal with what is going on in the world,” says Bowser, “you don’t have an audience.’
