Shailene Woodley arrives at the 18th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards show atthe Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles on Sunday, Jan. 29, 2012. (Al Seib/Los
Angeles Times/MCT)
This past year, it felt as if the world couldn’t escape the wrath of Shailene Woodley. Between “The Fault in our Stars” and “Divergent,” she was everywhere we looked.
In a recent interview with Elle, the actress was talking about sexuality, which usually gets stars into a bit of trouble. Especially with how quick Woodley is to state her opinion, I mean, she did tell TIME she’s not a feminist because “I think the idea of ‘raise women to power, take the men away from the power’ is never going to work out because you need balance.” That, however, is an entirely different issue.
It seems as if Woodley was having flashback to her days as pregnant teenager Amy on “The Secret Life of the American Teenager.” When she was chatting with ELLE, she said, “In school, rather than teach you about sex, they tell you about abstinence, which doesn't work.”
Woodley does have a point, but, the general public can thoroughly misconstrue what celebrities say, into something they didn’t mean at all. Therefore, there is a time and a place for such things, and ELLE magazine, which could get into the hands of an intellectually underdeveloped 13-year-old girl, is not one of them. This young girl's thought process could go something like this, “Shailene Woodley said abstinence doesn’t work, so I might as well do whatever I choose with whomever I choose.”
No, Woodley didn’t mean to go practice sex in an unsafe manner and she is certainly not the only celebrity to touch on this issue. However, Woodley is gaining a lot of attention as of late and the eyes of budding young girls are fixated on her. She has the power to sway their opinion.
Woodley’s opinion is not wrong; sexual education should be expanded. It was the way she phrased it that seems questionable. Someone young can easily take what she meant in the wrong light.
The actress also had another interesting point in her interview when she stated to ELLE, "Part of the reason I love Europe is that sexuality is no big deal there. … (In America) sex is something that's not talked about — yet it's in our faces more than anything else.”
Yet again, she does have a point. If sex wasn’t some sacred secret that can’t be talked about, interviews such as this wouldn’t have coverage on virtually every major magazine’s website. These issues need to be talked about, and the fact that it made news is part of the process of making it a topic of interest. It was the way that Woodley said it, an issue that has somewhat been present in countless other interviews, that raised concern.
If she had elaborated more than simply saying “abstinence doesn’t work,” the interview could have been a great way to raise awareness on the issue of which she was actually talking about. Scientifically speaking, abstinence does work; expecting teenagers to only practice that, however, does not. If Shailene Woodley would have said something along those lines, I would be less worried about young, easily influenced, teenage girls running around getting those two scenarios mixed up.
Reach the columnist at dpharias@asu.edu or follow @Dpharias on Twitter.
Editor’s note: The opinions presented in this column are the author’s and do not imply any endorsement from The State Press or its editors.
Want to join the conversation? Send an email to opiniondesk.statepress@gmail.com. Keep letters under 300 words and be sure to include your university affiliation. Anonymity will not be granted.
Like The State Press on Facebook and follow @statepress on Twitter.
