How to Have “Sex Talks”–Plural–With Kids

What’s the right age for parents to talk to kids about sex? Is it overstepping boundaries to have that talk with a child of another gender? Sex educator Heather Corinna, founder of top-ranked sex-advice site Scarleteen, shared her feminist advice for parents on that diciest of subjects: “the sex talk.” This is part 2 of [...]

Heather Corinna Goes Beyond “The Sex Talk”

Heather Corinna is the founder of Scarleteen, the highest ranked website  for sex education and sexuality advice, and author of S.E.X.: The All-You-Need-To-Know Progressive Sexuality Guide to Get You Through High School and College. Heather spoke with Ms. about the current, not-so-evolved state of sex ed in the United States and which messages about teen [...]

90210 on 9/02/10

When I think about growing up in the 90s, I always return to one particular place: Beverly Hills, California. I never actually stepped foot in the zip code (until recently, when I came to work as an intern for Ms.), but I watched Beverly Hills 90210 every Wednesday night at 8 p.m. I followed the [...]

Teen Botox Epidemic? What That Really Means

After reading reports that Charice Pempengco, an 18-year-old singer who recently landed a part on Glee, got Botox treatments for her TV debut, I proceeded to bang my head against a wall–ironically achieving the same goal of altering the shape of my face through frustrated self-inflicted violence that Charice accomplished with poisonous injections. No, in reality [...]

We Heart: Penelope Cruz Speaking Out Against Teen Mags

Penelope Cruz recently opened up in a Daily Mail interview (which seems to be missing from their website), saying she struggled with self-confidence when she was younger. But we especially heart her for her quote on teen magazines: I would close down all those teenage magazines that encourage young girls to diet. Who says that [...]

High School Blogger Unmasks Seventeen’s Fairy Tales

Some of you might have already heard of Jamie Keiles. The 18-year-old high school senior from suburban Philadelphia has made a feminist splash with her blog The Seventeen Magazine Project. Keiles’s blog documents her 30-day experiment to follow at least one piece of advice from the teenage girls’ bible, Seventeen magazine. What’s remarkable about Keiles’s experiment is, [...]

Grrrls-Eye View of The Runaways

Twilight stars representing an influential all-woman rock band? I hate Hollywood. That was my initial response to learning of the new feature film about the famed band The Runaways, written/directed by Floria Sigismondi and starring Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning as Joan Jett and Cherie Currie. The film follows a group of young women who defy social standards [...]

What’s the “Scoop” About Groping?

What’s the “scoop” on sexual groping? There is no scoop. Getting felt up or fondled is old news. Ask any girl. Yet, on March 1, Los Angeles TV station KTLA 5 ran a news story titled “Scooping: Sexual Assault or Schoolboy Prank?” The report: An 11-year-old Castaic middle school student says she has become part [...]