So, since Katie over at
NFP and Me gave me a little bit of
motivation, I decided I will write a commentary on last night's Glee episode.
Now, to start things off, I will say that I don't normally watch
Glee. I have seen maybe 3 episodes total. I don't follow the story arcs and I
know only a little about the overall premise. This is actually kind of
surprising since, though I was never a theater kid in high school, I harbored a
total theater kid envy and constantly entertained ideas of my whole life suddenly
turning into a giant musical number.
Be that as it may, last night as I was perusing the internet in
the evening, I ended up watching the newest episode of Glee. At first I was
sort of just having it on as background noise, but I got a little sucked in. I
re-watched it tonight on demand, since I had missed some parts of it and I
wanted to make sure that I had gotten the entire thing.
The premise of last night's show was that the high school was
putting on a musical- Westside Story (full disclosure: I haven't seen the
musical since I was probably in Jr. High and I didn't like it). Rachel and
Blaine are playing Maria and Tony and in the very, very beginning of the show,
Artie, the director, tells them both that they lack passion because they are both
virgins. And while he "supports their strained aversion to fun," they
can't really "sell" the sexual awakening as someone who hasn't been
sexually awoken themselves. The rest of
the show concerns Rachel and Blaine attempting to lose their virginity in order
to perform more authentically. Glee has been pointed at by many in the Catholic
media as being a somewhat “damaging” show, if you will, because it is targeted
at a younger audience. The main reason for this is because of the gay storyline
between Kurt and Blaine. To be honest, this doesn’t bother me at all. There are
plenty of young people out there who have same sex attraction, who are ashamed
of it, who feel isolated, and who may be bullied or attacked. I think in some
ways, it can be good to have an openly gay character on TV that people can
identify with and might make them feel less isolated in their own lives. It’s
also nice that, based on what I saw in this episode, Blaine and Kurt have a
normal teenage relationship and, at least until this episode, weren’t engaging
in sexual activity.
The thing that bothered me was there was no talk as to why the characters were waiting in the
first place. It was more of “well, we better be authentic, time to take care of
this little annoyance.” At one point, Rachel calls a committee of girls, and
they all tell her to wait, except one, who expounds on the fact that she and
her boyfriend had discussed it, and they were each other’s first love, and that
the moment will always be perfect for her. This is the deciding factor in
Rachel’s decision to go for it.
This, to me, is more damaging than anything I saw happen with Kurt
and Blaine in this episode. This attitude is so prevalent in today’s society
that I fear how it will impact young people. I know how it impacted me.
Maybe I’m just bitter because I didn’t get a chance to discuss it
with my first love and have it be a perfect moment that I will remember for my
whole life. Instead, it’s a terrible thing that I will always feel ashamed of
for the rest of my life. Because I waited, too, just not long enough. And my
reasons weren’t well-formed enough in order to stave off advances. When you get
to a certain age (which apparently now is senior in high school) in today’s
secular society, it’s expected of you to have had sex. And if you haven’t,
you’re almost more damaged goods than someone who has with everyone that walks
by. I found myself at 20 years old as a virgin and being completely
un-dateable. I was not practicing my faith, so what option did I have? I could
date Christian boys (which wasn’t an option as I didn’t identify as Christian)
or I could date guys who didn’t value me. And what was the big deal anyway?
Everyone else had had sex, what difference did it make if I did, too? That’s
how it was presented to me, anyway, and I was dumb enough to think that someone
who would say that to me actually cared enough about me to consider it in the
first place. So what’s the big deal? I mean, if you want to be an actress,
you’ll eventually be playing people who aren’t virgins, so you can’t possibly
be a virgin and authentically play a non-virgin. It’s only natural, right?
What I would have liked to see, just once, is a character with
some moral fortitude- but maybe I’m just looking for something I didn’t have. I
would have liked to see someone who maybe thought about it, and then decided
against it. Maybe not for religious reasons, but because they decided to be
above that. To do something that was right for them. I dunno, maybe I just
wanted to see an actual discussion of how many, many girls (and possibly guys,
but I can’t speak from a position of knowledge there) feel when they DO lose
their virginity, and then go on to be sexually intimate with every person with
whom they have a relationship afterwards. I would like to see a discussion of
how that impacts their future marriages, their trust, and their self-worth. I
would like to see an honest discussion from the flip side. Not just that “sex
is good! It feels good, it’s natural, everyone should be doing it—all the time,
with whomever they want!” Or even, “sex is a true expression of love for
whomever you feel like you love at that moment.” Because, I’m sorry, but this
message that is being peddled out to our culture, our young people, is a lie! I
can think of only one of my friends who is still with the person she lost her
virginity to. And I can remember all the pain and heartache that occurred in
the wake of the breakups for the rest of them. Except my own, because I was so
messed up, I ended up in a therapist’s office and on antidepressants, so I have
no real recollection of it. Even Hubbs will say that when he really thought
back on his life, he realized that not one good thing ever really came about
from his previous attitude toward sex. It was a lot of selfishness, low self-worth,
and somewhat of an addictive behavior. It was also a harbinger of problems in
the relationship, especially when it’s compensating for any kind of real
intimacy or love.
I know that today’s society has a schizophrenic relationship with
sex. We are puritanical in one sense, and over-sexed in another. What I want to
see on TV, what I want told to young people everywhere, what I wish everyone
would just understand is that we’ve made sex too important. So important that
we have tried to downplay it to the extent that it’s mundane. It’s a classic
Catholic both/and. But the Catholic Church has made sex unimportant. So
unimportant that it’s the most important thing in the world. The Catholic
Church teaches us to value ourselves and each other by respecting our basic
dignity as human beings. Not animals who have to give in to our instincts, not creatures
to use and be used by others.
And would it be so crazy to point out that, since Westside Story
is a retelling of Romeo and Juliet, Tony and Maria got married before they had
sex? Just sayin’.
