This makes me a lot less cool than I like to think I am. Apparently, sexuality has gone open slather among the hip and the young and heterosexuals are suddenly like, so….straight. Square. Nerdy.
The cool kids are all hetroflexible, polysexual, ambisexual, pansensual, bi-curious, bi-queer, metroflexible, heterosexual with lesbian tendencies—or just sexual. All gender bets are apparently off.
Labels and boxes need not apply. It’s all about keeping your sexual options open, people. You never know who you might want to grope tomorrow.
In one New York co-ed high school, there’s an informal daily gathering called the Cuddle Puddle, where boys and girls meet between classes to loll about on the floor draped all over each other while kissing and cuddling. Boys and boys, girls and boys, girls and girls…..there are no pigeon holes here.
These teenagers don’t feel they have to define their sexuality let alone that their sexuality has to define them. Times have changed and for some, it’s no longer about being gay or straight or lesbian. It’s just about being….whatever.
Seventeen year old Cuddle Puddler, Elle uses herself as a window into this new sexual dynamic, describing to New York magazine how she met her boyfriend at a recent party: “I kissed five people and, like, hooked up with two going beyond kissing. One of them was a boy and one of them was a girl. The reason I started hooking up with the guy is because he was making out with this other guy and he came back and was like, ‘I have to prove that I’m straight.’ And I was standing right there and that’s how our relationship started.” Wow. That’s, like, so romantic.
Back when I was at high school, few things would have been more socially ostracizing than rumours of same-sex tendencies, let alone actual gay pashing in public. But happily, many of today’s teens are a whole lot more accepting of sexual diversity, both in others and in themselves. And why wouldn’t they be?