A public school education leaves quite a few things to be desired. Take sex education, for example. Like many Tri-state area school districts, Sex Ed began with the infamous female quarantine of the fifth grade. In the middle of a lesson on the geography of New Jersey, the girls are furtively dismissed from social studies and forced to watch a mystical "educational video" from the early 1970s. Through the Technicolor didactics of a Farrah Fawcett look-alike, I was taught that in two to three years my body was about to undergo some sort of terrible wolverine-like transformation.
I would emerge from this metamorphosis with inverted nipples and toxic shock syndrome and (cue harkened angels singing) breasts, alas!
I learned that body hair is normal and that tampons should be removed after four hours. Removed from where exactly, or why they had been put there in the first place, was left a baffling mystery. Somewhat shaken, we returned to our tainted pre-pubescent existence fully equipped with the lamest goodie bags in the history of party favors: tampons, mini deodorant samples and a coupon for "training bras" (if my middle school lingo archives serve me correctly) for our soon-to-be-developing breasts.
As it turns out, that Farrah Fawcett chick was a liar. Incidentally, breasts do not work like pop-up turkey timers set for age 13.25, and some of us, remarkably, will never develop T.S.S. By the time high school Sex Ed rolled around, I was utterly indignant at the misinformation we had been spoon-fed from the beginning.
I remember learning about STDs through a coloring book and cringing as a substitute health teacher (who also happened to be my mother) explained that oral sex is something "married couples do." I remember sleepless nights pondering whether a dental dam was an upgraded version of the palate expander.
If it weren't for a copy of "It's Perfectly Normal" and an unexplained family subscription to Skinimax, I wouldn't have known how lesbians and gay men have sexual intercourse, I wouldn't know about wet dreams, and I wouldn't have any idea where the G-spot is, let alone what it is. Our public school sex curriculum, much like our self-conscious teenage relationships, left much to be desired.
Fast forward past second base, a few X-rated movies and several issues of Cosmo to my arrival at Dartmouth, an institution dedicated to fostering that ivy-towered liberal arts curriculum. Among our most educationally elite student population, a pre-med '12 could probably tell you what chlamydia looks like under a microscope, and a sociology major could wax eloquently on Third-wave feminism, but ask about scissoring in the middle of a WGST freshman seminar and suddenly, you're the freak.
Are we tongue-tied because we do not know the answers? Or are we simply too prudish to speak up?
I find it astonishing how many girls I've spoken to who don't know how to have an orgasm, or know how to obtain birth control, or have never even seen a gynecologist.
Furthermore, I find our general lack of knowledge regarding the female anatomy staggering. Hey Dartmouth dudes, contrary to popular belief, ovaries are not, in fact, undescended testicles.
Even when we do talk about sex, our dialogue consists of nonchalant remarks, "Yeah, they banged," crude speculations like "are they making out?" or obliquely-coded -- as in the infamously ambiguous "hooking up."
While our sexual terminology takes on a wide variety of semantic forms, ultimately, there's very little exploration of the meaning behind our words.
In direct opposition, of course, there's the radical alternative side of Dartmouth. There's the side that has spawned the Dartmouth Seven and gratuitous streaking at every organized event. There's a Dartmouth that wholeheartedly embraces vagina monologues and dance party make-outs.
Our sexual dialogue is schizophrenic, oscillating wildly from the most liberalized explicit depictions, to squeamish censorship, to downright ignorance.
Quite frankly, it all reminds me of a game we used to play in middle school, fondly referred to as the "Penis Game." This recess diversion would start with one member of the group whispering the word "penis," and with each subsequent round the group would grow louder and louder, until they'd reach a muted shout.
Okay, so maybe I didn't have very cool friends in middle school, but the point is that the "Penis Game" is perhaps a poorly-conceived metaphor for sexual dialogue at Dartmouth.
We're all either whispering with embarrassment, or shouting loud enough to drown out our own shock value. Yet regardless of the volume of our phallic utterances, there's never any substantial meaning behind our words.
So who's responsible for our sexual anti-education? I believe there are several culprits on hand -- I blame the innate, socially-maladjusted geek in all of us, I blame BlitzMail for exasperating our own self-imposed language barriers and, most importantly, I blame Farrah Fawcett's boob job.
And the expression "late bloomer" still makes me wince. Damn you, genetics.
