Whoopi Goldberg | 06/03/2009 11:00 pm

Whoopi Goldberg's Romantic Summer Reads

In response to: The wowOwow Summer Reading List

I’m not reading live authors at the moment, but for beautiful poetry, The Selected Poems of Federico García Lorca. For me they are bits of family conversations, or bits you hear when passing folks in the street.

I just re-read The Water Is Wide by Pat Conroy, to remind me about what we can offer the world and why we should try.

Also a book by a young lady [Sharlene Azam] who spent all this time with these young girls and self-published a book called Oral Sex Is the New Goodnight Kiss. The girls she’s been talking to start at age ten and the title, sadly, means just what it says.

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At ten I was still playing hopscotch and tag with my friends and didn’t even know what oral sex was. My how times have changed. Someone should tell these kids that mouth cancer is increasing at an alarming rate and that oral sex is not “safe” sex by any means.

By Judy K. on 06/04/2009 1:14 am

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And this thought - I bet the oral sex is for male gratification. So the girls think they are better off than having regular sex. The boys will still talk about them. Is this the new whore?

By Judy K. on 06/04/2009 1:18 am

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i too was playing hopscotch and tag at ten, but sadly yes, times have changed too much. i’m only 25, and i feel old, kids are growing up way too fast now, it scares me, i have a 2 year old daughter. my mom told me when i was old enough, that if i wanted ppl to talk about me, then have sex. because i would tell her what other girls were doing. i listened to my mothers advice, no one talked about me. i think the girls do it for male attention, albiet it is negative, it is attention none the less, its just sad, that it is done at all.

By Maleney Thibeault on 06/04/2009 3:20 am

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It makes me physically sick to think about these young children doing the things they do. I raised 7 children and even when they were 16 they did not go out of the house unless they had a place to go and I checked on it but my grandchildren have been having sex since they were 14-15 thankfully they do talk to me about these things I have nine grandchilren 14-23 but it just sickens me. I think dicipline and just spending time with your kids is at fault

By Effie Velardo on 10/12/2009 5:17 am

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I think the kids have created an elaborate web of lies to have girls be able to deliver a sexual experience for the guys and still pretend they are "innocent virgins" simply because they have not had vaginal sex. I think the kids are more concerned with being able to say they are "virgins" than in protecting their self-esteem and not allowing themselves to be used sexually.

I was talked about as a kid. A lot. But it was for having good grades and a shining future. No one was placing bets on how many STDs I’d have, or "if" I would ever graduate from college. These girls need to learn that success isn’t limited to their looks and sexual performance… having brains does not make one a nerd. It makes a girl have better choices for her future, not to have to settle for trying to "marry well."

By Anne McElvain on 06/04/2009 12:37 pm

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Isn’t it interesting that being a good, smart kid isn’t the norm but a subject to be talked about. I never even remember self-esteem being talked about when I was a kid but now it is something to strive for rather than a fact of life. Good for you, Anne, that you rose above it and did well. Hopefully, more young women will have such goals and that "innocent virgin" is just that and not a euphamism.

By Judy K. on 06/04/2009 12:55 pm

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I’m not sure that this is what the feminist movement had in mind back in the 60’s and most surely something has been lost, hasn’t it? I live beside one of the great Canadian waterways, often walk the river path and today, sharing a bench with two friends, we discusssed the glory that is summer after a truly awful winter, pelicans flying the wind tunnels coming off the river, and the overwhelming sense of entitlement that characterizes our culture, yours and mine, this thing of ‘I want this so I can have it’, often reworked to ‘I want to do this so I will do this’ … reinforced, or so we think, with the media and videos and whatever that feeds us with action and death and violence and god knows what … without consequence. Afterall, where’s the consequence when you can push a pause button or a stop button or simply walk away … the mind, the heart, filled with garbage without benefit of consequence. Something here to do with a learning experience and what’s to do with learning when all is come and gone by virtue of buttons and game gear. Our conversation touched on the post traumatic stress veterans, yours and ours, coming back in droves from the contemporary battlefields … the no consequence violence of the media et.al replaced by the horror of watching someone die, quite possibly by one’s own hand … no consequence bumping into reality. Am I rambling? Just thinking as I type, that’s all … these little girls coming down on little boys … playing out what they see … and what they see does not include consequences … (took a long time but finally got to where the thoughts were leading … good grief …).

The huge price of entitlement … ‘I want, I will’ … without consequence … and perhaps the upside of these harsh times will be a harsh look at entitlement, a culture, yours, mine, growing up, maturing … when little girls ‘doing’ little boys will be looked at for what it is … a people, a culture, lost it’s way.

By Harriet Shoebridge on 06/04/2009 2:57 am

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I love the way everyone here immediately jumped on "THE NEGATIVE" about the oral sex. Yes, this is a terrible situation and one that could be corrected with better teaching and discipline by parents at home.

I would like to read "The Water Is Wide" and the poetry book as they seem more interesting and MORE POSITIVE READS!

By Luanne Tobias on 06/04/2009 4:53 am

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Ah, the first two sound good…you may also like "The Shadow of the Wind" by Carlos Ruiz Zafón, it was a bestseller in Europe and "Our Lady of the Lost and Found" by Diane Schoemperlen ("A Novel of Mary, Faith, and Friendship") My most recent favorite is "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society " by Mary Ann Shaffer (Author), Annie Barrows (Author) It is set in post WW2 England, written entirely in the form of letters, correspondence between the characters.

As for your last book, I will only say, like the problem of "sexting", there are a lot of young girls who WON’T do that

By Dutch 163 on 06/04/2009 6:00 am

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I read the English version of "The Shadow of the Wind" and was so taken by it, that I looked forward to relishing in the language of the novel by reading it in the original Spanish. It didn’t disappoint me. Now Zafon has a new book coming out in English, "The Angel’s Game". I read the Spanish version, "El Juego del Angel" and it left me with this reaction: "What the hell?"

By O E on 06/04/2009 1:24 pm

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thank you for this information! I read it in English..I have the Spanish version but have not read it. I will look for the "Angel’s Game /Juego del Angel" The funny thing was seeing a poster for it in German when we were in Germany in 2007!

By Dutch 163 on 06/04/2009 3:52 pm

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I think this oral sex epedemic is a step back for womanhood. It has been happening for quite a while I was in junior high in the mid 80s and a lot of girls I knew were giving oral sex to boys . I always thought it was gross but it certainly wasn’t unheard of. Then they hid it. Nowadays I really believe the "goodnight kiss" comparison. It seems young girls really believe that it shouldn’t be something that we should try to discourage because it is "safe" compared to other sex acts. I have a younger sister who is in high school now and she tells me most girls she knows have given oral sex. I asked her why they are so into it and she told me they usually do it because the guy really wants it , they don’t want to get dumped so "what ever keeps HIM happy" . I know what a sad state of affairs. I never hear about young boys being pressured to go down on girls , why aren’t our girls more aggressive to have there sexual needs fulfilled? I don’t think anybody at this age should engage in this sexual behavior but I hate that it is so much about satisfying the boy.

By M Noski on 06/04/2009 7:33 am

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That’s the problem with oral sex. It is not safe compared to other sex acts. Mouth cancer is not fun and girls think that because they are not smoking and having regular sex that it is OK to pleasure the boys to be in the in-crowd. This is definitely one time being on the outside is really a good idea. I don’t think parents want to admit their little darlings would even do such a thing but I hear that there are bracelets of different colors that the kids wear that tell their circle just what they will do based on the color. Kids don’t think about consequences as they feel their parents are old-fashioned and nothing will happen to them. Think again kiddies, life isn’t fair and you are not getting away with anything.

By Judy K. on 06/04/2009 9:45 am

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By the way, they are called jelly bracelets and supposedly blue is the color that indicates "Will perform oral sex on a guy." The downside is that a child might be wearing these bracelets in all innnocence and not know why some of their peers might be snickering.

By Judy K. on 06/04/2009 9:58 am