While I’m typically not an Oprah Winfrey watcher — and, to be fair, I’m not much of a television watcher regardless of the program — I did happen to see the start of today’s Oprah show. The topic was a carry-over from the day before when Dr. Laura Berman, a sex educator and therapist, said something that I guess a fair number of people found shocking.
Berman told Oprah that mothers should instruct their teenage daughters — roughly age 15 — on how to pleasure themselves. The thinking behind this was that when the girl later found herself in a steamy situation, she would understand her own body’s response and be better able to set logical sexual limits for herself.
Before I move on to what I want to talk about in this post, let me first say that I have no problem with this advice. It might be somewhat embarrassing for the mom and daughter to have the conversation, but I believe it is a healthy one nonetheless.
On the panel today, Oprah was joined by Mark Consuelos (husband of Kelly Ripa), long-time friend Gayle King and another woman I didn’t recognize. As the group began to discuss what happened yesterday, Consuelos was asked about teenage boys and masterbation. Without so much as a blush, he jokingly admitted to spending several of his teen years in the bathroom. Gayle then stated that she knew this to be true about teenage boys, but that she didn’t believe the same was true of teenage girls.
My experience (as a former teenage girl with lots of teenage girl friends) is that all teenagers, regardless of gender, masterbate. In our society, however, I think it is more acceptable to acknowledge that men do so. For reasons I still don’t fully understand, women aren’t expected to be sexual creatures — or maybe that only certain women are allowed by society to be sexual creatures. For this reason even adult women tend to discuss masterbation in whispers with one another.
For this reason alone, Dr. Berman is right. As mothers, we are responsible for the health of our children. “Health of our children” includes the sexual health of our daughters. If we cannot get past the silliness of masterbation being abnormal, then we will continue to perpetuate confusion for our daughters.
Boys understand nearly from the beginning of puberty that their body and all of its reactions to stimulus belong to them. Such knowledge has obviously not prevented the male of the species from making and maintaining lasting commitment with a partner. It has not tempted men to forsake intimate activity with others. Given all of that, I don’t understand why we don’t teach young women the same lessons.
