Why adults are misled by slut culture

The popularity of thong underwear or pop music lyrics such as Britney Spears' "Gimme More" cannot tell us much about the actual behavior of adolescents, as young people became more and more chaste during the same time period when thongs came and went (which therefore shows no correlation), and as Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, and The Pussycat Dolls have risen in popularity (which shows a negative correlation).

Looking back, it should have been clear, as slut culture really consists of items associated with 20-somethings rather than adolescents -- one-night-stands, for example. Adolescents have too much of their lives ahead of them to accept the one-night-stand ways of 20-somethings and beyond. Rather, a female teenager will only start having sex if she is in a long-term relationship and cannot control her emotions around her boyfriend. So, when teenagers give a guy a standing lapdance in a club, or sing along to "Dirrty," it's just a goof to them, and you often see them smiling and laughing while doing it, as they're not serious about it.

One thing I never see at the teen dance club, or at the college-kid '80s night, is slow-dancing. On the dancefloor, girls will do the most raunchy things imaginable to your crotch with their ass, but just try threading your fingers with theirs without even having spoken to her. Since she hasn't fallen for you, it ain't gonna happen. Fast-paced slutty music may get them bouncing around, but that hyperactive state of mind is not conducive to falling for someone. (It is conducive to distracting a 20-something long enough to get her back home for the night, though.) Wearing down the defenses of a teenager requires the intimacy, especially the prolonged eye-contact and head-on-the-guy's-shoulder positioning, that slow-dancing affords.

Adolescent females may be able to identify with the aggressiveness of slut culture, as teenage social life is more dog-eat-dog than it is for adults. However, slut culture is fundamentally about being in total control of one's emotions, about being strong and a bit butch. Well, if there's one thing that teenage girls are not, it's emotionally tough. Imitating what they see and hear in slut culture is as likely to turn them into actual sluts as mimicking the words of an Obama speech will bring a verbally clumsy person into political office.

Indeed, typical female teenagers do not have sex by clubbing a boy over the head, or by acting on a whim with a total stranger, like a club slut does, but by falling hard for a boy and losing control. Her boyfriend will always be pushing for sex, but it's only once she's emotionally gone that she surrenders.

So, don't worry if your daughter is singing and dancing along to Britney Spears. Be more afraid if you hear "Angel Baby" behind her locked door, a song that, by the way, the singer Rosie Hamlin wrote when she was 14 and recorded when she was 15. (I wouldn't be surprised to find out that female pop music stars are getting older, as there was a fairly good discussion at Steve Sailer's blog on aging male rockstars.)