Teen Girls Discuss Their Sex Lives
May 17, 2006 — -- What happens when 14 teenage girls get together for a sleepover?
Naturally, they tell secrets about their lives, and some talk about their first sexual experiences.
"I didn't really like the person that I lost my virginity to," said Tiffany, one of the girls at the sleepover. "I'm kind of shaky about it. He really started ignoring me. And I was just, 'What the heck is your problem?' And then we got in a fistfight, and we stopped talking for seven months."
"Primetime," along with Seventeen magazine, recruited a group of girls to participate in a sleepover to talk about what sex means in their lives. Their parents also participated, by joining the group later to see what their daughters had said.
The parents said that, for the most part, they had an open relationship with their children and talked about sex.
According to an ABC News poll, about 90 percent of parents nationwide say they've spoken to their teens about sex. Only half of their teens agree. So whatever parents think is "the sex talk," it doesn't seem to register with their kids.
Atoosa Rubenstein, Seventeen's editor, says girls today are forced to grow up faster than in the past.
"Everybody always wants to be accepted by boys," Rubenstein said. "And everything is accelerated and more intensive. But I don't think it's any different than when we were younger and we wanted boys to like us. It's just today boys are asking them to do things that just weren't part of the picture back then."
The 14 girls assembled for the sleepover were ages 13 to 17 and had a range of sexual experience or inexperience. Only four said they had sex -- but what some teens don't count as sex may shock you.
Ruby, 13, of New York City, was one of the youngest girls at the party. She came with her sister, 15-year-old Betty.
"I dislike the word 'sex,'" Ruby said. "It's kinda like really weird to say, for me. I mean, I'm still like not there yet, you know what I mean?"
Only 32 percent of teens say they get most of their information about sex from their parents, but Ruby said she was one of them -- she gets most of her information from her mom, she says.
But Ruby wanted to know something from her sister -- "how to kiss a guy."
Betty said earlier in the year she had her first kiss, and she was wondering how she did. "Well, I'm just like worried that it's not a good kiss," she said. "Because you read all these magazines."
For many girls, kissing -- still known as "first base" -- begins at 11 or 12. While several studies say that actual intercourse among teens is on the decline, there is an increase in other types of sexual activity -- including oral sex. By 16, nearly a quarter of teenage girls have engaged in oral sex.
The girls at the sleepover were divided as to whether oral sex qualified as "sex."
As one girl Natalie said: "We just consider it to be like another thing to prepare you for actual intercourse."
Most of the girls seemed to agree that if you had oral sex with a boy, you could still be a virgin.
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