"Mommy, What's a Blow Job?

First I thought i would open my post with an anecdote that goes hand-in-hand with what Douglas states in her chapter "Sex R Us." At one point, she discusses the Clinton-Lewinsky sexcapade which launched the sexual proclivities of the President and his intern into prime-time news. By continuously discussing that matter on television spanning all hours of the day and evening, it was to be expected that younger children would inevitably be exposed to material and sexual acts which were inappropriate. One of my mother's most angry moments took place because of President Clinton's behavior. Apparently, as my family often retells, one day 7 year old Hillary returns from a day at school, everything is normal as I bounce off the bus and walk into my kitchen to greet my mother after a long day of extensive 1st-grade learning! My mother is used to hearing an immediate stream of questions which i feel immediately harass her with once i return home. She expects me to say something along the lines of "Billy told me that girls have cooties, is it true?" or "How come Kelsey gets to drink soda and I cant?" or something along those lines ... But on one fateful day I nearly gave my mother a stroke with the question that came out of my 7-year-old mouth: "Mommy, what's a Blow Job?"

I asked the question with an innocent look on my face not realizing the magnitude of the words which just escaped my mouth. My mother, now enraged, asked me where i heard about a "blow job." When i told her that my classmate told me that the president got them my mother could barely handle the news. It was as if she saw my childhood come to a close and i was now forced into the world of sex and all that comes with it.

If you ask my mother about it now, she embellishes (i hope!) when she adds to the story by saying she "damn near picked up the phone to call the White House and have that (*insert expletive here*) President of ours explain to my 7-year old what he did!"

While it is comical to look back on now, I can only imagine how my mother felt to hear her daughter come home from school and wondering about sex and blow jobs. It is a truly frightening realization when one considered the sheer mass of sexual references and innuendoes which constantly enter the lives of children. It seems that at a younger and younger age, our population is becoming highly sexualized to the point that young children are wearing makeup and exposing their midriffs and practicing catching the eyes of the boy heartthrob in the back row of the second grade classroom. I think that this is one of the more meaningful, and immediately pressing, issues which Douglas had brought up thus far in her book. If children are constantly inundated with sex, it is no surprise that children are becoming sexually active at a young age and derogatory practices are instilled earlier and earlier.