Remember when you used to come home from high school, exhausted and starving? Lunch had been at like 10:30 that morning, and so by the time the afternoon bell rang, your stomach was growling so loudly you had to sit hunched over to dull the gurgles.

Home meant snacks. It might refueling yourself for sports or theater club or smoking stolen cigarettes under a tree while sneering at all organized things. Afternoon snack was an event I looked forward to from kindergarten to twelfth grade.

Hell, I still look forward to it!

Sadly, today’s teenage girls aren’t allowing themselves the joy of snack time – or any meal – at all. A report from the UK’s Independent Online showed that over “a third of 13 to 18-year-old girls” polled for a study indicated they had been on a diet or were currently dieting, and “45 per cent [ate] less than 1,200 calories per day”, which is below the healthy amount for growing women.

About a quarter of the boys in the survey admitted to eating less calories than the daily recommended amount, but girls were the ones worrying researchers most of all. Read More »

If you live in Thailand and feel a little embarrassed about buying condoms, just take out a home loan.

Kasikorn Bank recently launched a “condoms for confidence” campaign at around 60 branches in Thailand, hoping free prophylactics will help raise awareness of HIV/AIDS in the “generally conservative” country.

An unidentified bank spokesman explained the thinking behind “condoms for confidence” was the revival of a government awareness campaign that has “fizzled out”, leaving many Thai teenagers in the dark about sexual awareness. Read More »

Every day someone muses about how fast kids are growing up in today’s society; how sexually charged their lives are, how full of mixed messages.

“Kids don’t get to be kids anymore!” is what everyone seems to be saying, “They’re becoming inexperienced adults!“

I don’t usually buy all our hyper-sexualized tween hysteria (I’m pretty sure most of this stuff has been going on for decades—just without YouTube), but after coming across this story, I can’t help but wonder what the hell is going on.

According to sources, a 6-year-old boy was recently caught running a ‘sex club’ out of his elementary school in Melbourne, Australia.

The boy has recently been placed in counseling for allegedly urging another 6-year-old to “perform a sex act” and “expos[ing] himself in front of other students.”

It’s hard to tell if parents and school officials are blowing an innocent act of kindergarten rebellion out of proportion (as we are want to do these days), or if our culture has really and truly gone off the deep end in terms of sexual exposure. Read More »

When we first got a computer—and the internet—my sister and I pitched a fit. At age 8, I was sure that this thing called the “web” my mother was so engrossed with, was a passing fad. My mother has always been technologicaly minded, I mean the woman was getting New Zealand pen pals for her fifth grade class in ’97. Now she’s assigned homework to 11-year-olds via her webpage and getting her class to create podcasts. Which is why, in this day and age, it is a bit easier for my mom to keep tabs on my whereabouts day in and day out.

I’ll have to admit that I’m horrible about calling home. For the most part, my life is just so damn busy and by the time I think to call, its way past their bed time. Fortunately for my mother (who has just learned to text… she never could get cell phones) she can harass me lovingly in about five different technological forms.

Point in case:

Mom 6/6/07 10:28 am: Hi call me!

Mom 6/6/07 1:33 pm: Please call me and let me know how u r! Read More »