While searching for Asian background templates for my PowerPoint presentation on Pakistan and Taiwan, I typed in the keyword "Asian" in the Yahoo! search textbox.
I clicked on the "images" tab, innocently expecting to find some cool Middle Eastern or Oriental images I could use.
Instead, I got porn.
Not just a couple images mind you, but many, many pornographic pictures.
Not exactly the Asian background I was looking for.
Discouraged, I turned on the television, went channel surfing and found myself watching the E! channel. The "Howard Stern Show" came on, with some girl who -- big surprise -- ended up topless with her chest blurred out. The girl just giggled and begged Stern to touch her.
At this point, I was disturbed and disgusted. I changed the channel to Comedy Central only to catch the end of a disclaimer on how the following images may not be suitable for children -- just before a happily naked, drunk girl appeared.
It was "Girls Gone Wild, Spring Break" Volume 1 billion of a truly never-ending spring break.
From your typical "Desperate Housewives" to rich teens on "The OC," people are having sex left and right.
All this hype should lead to one thing: more sex education for children.
According to the National Campaign to End Teen Pregnancy, 75 percent of adults and a whopping 81 percent of teens wish that young people were better educated about contraceptives. The campaign also cites the U.S. as No. 1 in teen pregnancies and births out of all Western industrialized countries.
Teens are acknowledging the problem and spelling out the solution: better sex education.
But the parents and sex education groups might not be listening.
According to The Associated Press, a Health and Human Services Web site (www.4parents.gov) has earned scrutiny for promoting abstinence and criticizing contraceptives.
The site, specifically designed to help parents discuss sex with their children, emphasizes that, "abstinence is the healthiest choice" and depicts condoms as imperfect with tendencies to break or tear with improper use.
Monica Rodriguez of the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the U.S. told the AP there's nothing wrong with promoting abstinence, but also emphasized the importance of safe sex.
"There's this misconception that giving young people negative information about contraception will encourage them to not to have sexual intercourse when all it will do is encourage them not to have contraception, so the strategy backfires," Rodriguez said.
And does it ever backfire. At the beginning of the month, the AP reported a study that found one in five adolescents have engaged in oral sex, and many don't believe oral sex is as risky as intercourse. Other studies have found some respondents believe anal sex is another safer alternative to intercourse.
I remember stepping out of the movie theater after watching "Closer" -- yet another sexually charged product of Hollywood. The first thing my girlfriend (who said she voted for Bush for moral values) told me was: "That movie just shows how bad moral values are in America."
As a conservative Republican, I agree that moral values are on the decline, but I surely wouldn't rely on Bush, the media or Hollywood to teach such values. While it's easy to blame media outlets such as The State Press for its sexual coverage and to attribute sexuality to the works of the devil, let's be realistic.
Almost all of us know of that girl who suddenly ended up pregnant at too early an age; in my case, it was a 13-year-old friend of mine in junior high.
Telling her contraceptives are ineffective didn't stop her from having sex. Maybe suggesting them would have kept her from getting pregnant.
Lily Yan is a journalism and political science junior. Reach her at lily7174@msn.com.
