Thursday’s episode of the Tyra Banks Show , titled “Pressure to be Promiscuous,” featured guests who were both virgins and sexually experienced. The show began with a reference to a New York Times article from January, called The Myth of Rampant Teenage Promiscuity . 

The article states that the rates of teen pregnancy are up. They attribute this, not to a rise in teen sex, but rather to a decrease in the use of contraceptives. It talks about the fact that so many people are focusing on the “bad” and not the “good.” Not every teenager is having sex, and apparently in focusing so much on “what’s wrong,” we’re forgetting that most teenagers are not having sex and babies.

 “Health researchers say parents who fret about teenage sex often fail to focus on  the important lessons they can learn from the kids who aren’t having sex.”

While I agree that it’s good that more teenagers are waiting until they’re ready to have sex, I’m nervous that some people will read this article and say, “Oh, I guess it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was. No need to panic and give kids comprehensive sex education.” I also agree that we can learn a lot from the teens who choose to stay virgins. But I think it’s important that if we really want to understand why teens are sexually active and why some have unprotected sex, we can’t just ignore the nearly half of teens that have had sex. Writing them off as some kind of lost cause is not only ridiculous, but dangerous, and frankly, an ignorant move for someone claiming to want to understand the issue. By the way, I’m not saying that’s what this article is doing. I’m just commenting on what may be inferred from it.

If there was one thing that stood out most from Tyra’s show on Thursday, it was the importance of self-esteem.

Her first guest, a 14-year-old girl named Jessica, was there to tell her mom about things she had been doing. She had lost her virginity at 13, and had, since then, had unprotected sex with 4 other boys. She had also posted revealing pictures of herself on a private MySpace account, some of which Tyra was not able to show on television. To top it off, she may or may not be pregnant. She said that after having sex, she didn’t hear from most of the guys again. After telling her mother all of this, her mother asked, “Why do you feel you have to do this?” Jessica’s response: “I like the attention I get. It makes me feel good about myself. I don’t think I’m beautiful. I don’t think anything good about myself.’

Still doubting this is largely about self-esteem?

The next segment of the show featured five teenage girls who are virgins, who Tyra described as feeling “embarrassed and pressured to have sex.”

Here is some of what the girls said about being virgins:
 

 “I feel like the only virgin left on the face of the earth.”- Veronica

 “There’s a stigma attached with being a virgin.”- Brie (19)

 “There’s big downfalls to being a virgin. You can’t find someone who wants you  for you.”- Paris (16)

 “I’m afraid I’m not going to be liked by other guys.”- Becca (14)

Then the guests were joined by friends and boyfriends. When Tyra questioned the boyfriends, (both of whom had been sexually active in the past) they said that they were willing to wait until their girlfriends were ready. One guy, Kenny, (Veronica’s boyfriend) said,

 “She’s shown me you should wait to be with the one you love. If I could take it  back, I would. I’m afraid that she’ll leave me to be with a guy who’s a virgin,  because he could give her something that I can’t.”

There were two female friends of the girls, though, who were sending different messages.

 “I think she should just do it and get it over with.”- Justine

 “She tries to make it a big deal, and it’s not.”

So what can we learn from all of this? One thing that stood out to me, based on what guest psychologist Gail Saltz  said, was that it’s very important who is giving girls the positive feed-back. Who is telling them that they’re beautiful? If they hear it from their family and their friends, and have positive self-esteem reinforced by the people who truly care for them, the chances that they will believe the false attention from guys goes down. They will be more likely to know that having sex with a guy they barely know, especially unprotected sex, is not a good idea and will not make the guy stick around and care about them. At a time when emotions and hormones are all over the place, thinking clearly is absolutely important.

Now, I’m not saying that levels of self-esteem and the rate of teenage sex are directly, 100% linked. I’m suggesting that, in most cases, they’re related. And really, having good self-esteem is a plus whether you’re having sex or not, so even if this isn’t about sex, increasing someone’s opinion of themselves is always a good thing.

~Samantha