Do Teenage Girls Actually Want To Have Sex?

Written By Cooper Valko

I have a feeling that teenage girls are covertly uninterested in sex. This idea may seem counterintuitive; is sexual curiosity not a natural consequence of adolescent hormonal and physiological development? It is, however, I believe that teenage girls aren’t actually seeking “sex” itself, but rather intimacy, validation, and belonging— desires that are conflated with sexual performance. Premature sexual behaviors, then, are less indicative of biological libido but rather of a learned sociocultural script, derived from media and peer socialization.  

Misogynistic narratives are spun back and replayed infinitely to the point that they’ve become unobtrusively normal. Permeative to popular media, they’ve influenced to how women are persistently depicted in film, music, literature, and advertising. Take Marilyn Monroe for example: an ordinary woman transformed into Hollywood’s most iconic sex symbol through a focus on her perceived sensuality. How often do remnants of her image continue to appear, in Andy Warhol’s Marylin Diptych or in the mystifying blonde archetype? And how often in our childhoods did we inadvertently listen to music like Cake By The Ocean by DNCE, a song that euphemistically references sex; or watch movies like Alien (1979) with scenes that linger on women’s bodies under the guise of storytelling? These quietly titillating portrayals of women instruct young girls to believe that sexual aptitude is beautiful, desirable, and important.

That isn’t to say that women aren’t also overtly sexual. I think that these cases wield the most influence on adolescent girls. In middle school (2020-2022), I remember being captivated by obscene music from artists like Megan Thee Stallion, Doja Cat, and Ariana Grande who consistently dominated my annual Spotify Wrapped. Looking back, I realize that this music was my first introduction to the carnal world.

After consuming this media catering to the “male gaze”—or for the misogynistic, objectifying perspective of heterosexual male viewers—I believe many teenage girls approach sex subconsciously oriented to male precedence. By prioritizing behaviors presumably attractive to male audiences like excessive grooming, performative responses, and physical vulnerability, sex is reduced to a spectacle shaped by optics. I think that an early, crass introduction to sex is especially harmful for adolescent girls who, instead of gradually developing their sexual identity, are subjected to a repressive formula that often contradicts their emotional intuition.

Beyond influential media, peer persuasion and social reputation play significant roles in whether teenage girls choose to have sex. Whenever I’d find myself at a group function that had fallen into an awkwardly paralyzed silence, the reviving conversational anecdote: “How did you lose your virginity?” never failed to reignite the room.

The most frequent response I’d heard from teenage girls is a flat, “Just to some guy.”

I slowly realized that nearly all of my friends told the same story: some guy, at a weird time, for an arbitrary reason. Granted, there are variations to this statement. Some friends were with significant others, special friends, or prospective targets, but most often, the guy wasn’t around much afterward, and the interaction went unspoken of— simply done and gone.

When asked, “Why’d you do it?” their answers were almost always the same: “Well, I just wanted to get it out of the way,” or “I was tired of being a virgin.”

For some, this mindset developed after interacting with older peers who light-heartedly teased or demeaned virginity. Others felt ostracized for not having the experience to relate or contribute to coital conversations. The anxiety of feeling excluded from what is deemed an “essential” youth experience and cultural rite of passage pushed many of my friends to have sex for the first time just to “get it out of the way.” I believe this pattern extends beyond my own circle, and I can’t help but wonder whether so many teenage girls would have sex prematurely if that pressure didn’t exist.  

Alternatively, I’ve been following an online conversation about Gen Z’s cultural absurdism. Commentators have connected the digital generation’s nonsensical slang and chaotic humor to Dadaism: an early twentieth-century Swiss art movement that mocked “high art” with ironic, deliberately meaningless objects. In the face of looming civil and economic calamity, Gen Z has adopted an overtly sardonic social culture, one that I believe extends into our perceptions of sex and sexuality. Much like how the phrase “YOLO” (an acronym for “you only live once”) came to justify reckless behavior, our generation has normalized a similar mindset toward high-risk, emotionally volatile experiences. As a result, sex is stripped of its sentimentality. When nothing is taken seriously, there are no difficult emotions to confront and no second thoughts to linger on, making it easier to justify having sex just for the sake of having it. Young women, specifically, face a unique social pressure that is acutely critical of female sexuality. In response, what teenage girls often frame as a preference for casual intimacy, I think, is actually a learned attitude—one shaped by a culture that reacts to tumult with cognitive detachment and unseriousness.

I also think that many teenage girls believe romance and sexual activity are one in the same or that one will naturally lead to a stronger sense of the other. A study conducted at Indiana University examined adolescents’ positive motivations for sex, aiming to improve STD and pregnancy prevention education. The study surveyed 637 ninth graders about their relationship goals and how they believed sex would fulfill those expectations (Ott). Using three measures, intimacy, sexual pleasure, and social status, the responses revealed a clear gender divergence. Compared to males, females placed significantly greater value on intimacy than sexual pleasure. This finding might suggest that teenage girls are more likely to approach sex as a means of emotional connection, sometimes misconstruing physical intimacy for romantic partnership. In reality, what many teenage girls are seeking is affection and companionship, and during adolescence, I don’t think that sex should have to establish or command that connection.

All this to say, I encourage you—especially if you are a teenage girl—to consider why you want to have sex or why you’re already having it. Think about what you are truly seeking in intimate relationships: Are these vulnerable experiences authentic to your own growth, or are they rather something you feel expected to do?

Cooper Valko
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