After seeing Twilight this weekend, I realized that abstinence can be sexy. Based on the book by Stephanie Meyer, it tells the story of a teenage girl who falls in love with a teenage-looking boy vampire.
The movie won the box office this weekend with more than $70 million in ticket sales. Teenage girls were largely responsible for that success.
Physical intimacy is so complicated for the happy human/vampire couple that abstinence is the result. So when the mother asks the girl a certain question, it undoubtedly got my attention.
The mother asks the girl about the boys in her life. The girl finally reveals that she indeed is seeing someone, but has to hastily get off the phone. The last question the mother asks: "Are you being safe?"
The audience laughed out loud, reacting to the double meaning of the line. The mother is asking about safer sex yet the circumstances the girl finds herself in actually require a more basic form of safety.
Abstinence-only sex ed has been a failure. However, promoting abstinence in and of itself hasn't been the problem. Prioritizing abstinence over safer sex and often excluding safer sex education altogether have been the problem.
It was a pleasant surprise to witness a mother ask her daughter about safer sex in a movie with abstinence as a theme. Bravo, Twilight.
Watch the movie trailer:
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