Sex in the Oreos

This essay is about how Christian school stole my innocence. 

There was a period of time in my education that was dominated by talk of sex.  Not by my classmates, although they were all too eager to participate in the discussion once it started.  I attended a Christian high school, and during the early 1980’s several groups were making the rounds of churches and Christian schools preaching the evils of advertising and rock music.  We had several assemblies at school, and I remember one meeting of the young adults at my church focusing on this topic. 

These groups came to us bearing a slide-show containing obscene pictures.  I can’t imagine them getting away with this in a public school.  First, they told us that companies were using sex and subliminal advertising to affect our buying habits.  They showed us how, at movie theaters, brief images were projected on the screen before and during the shows, undetectable to the conscious mind, but subliminally telling us we were hungry and wanted popcorn.  Or we should drink Pepsi.  Well, my parents always fed us well before movies because there was no way they were paying for overpriced popcorn and pop at a movie theater.  Being raised a good Dutch girl, I rarely indulged in offerings from the concession stand for just that reason.  In fact, I usually smuggled in cheap candy bought at a drugstore before the movie.  So I wasn’t overly concerned that I was being brainwashed by movie theaters to buy their goodies.

Next, these perverts showed us slide after slide of advertisements containing vulgar images.  Advertisements for our favorite junk foods were printed in a dot matrix spelling “sex” all over the images.  The ice cubes in the vodka were arranged so you could find both male and female genitalia floating in the drink.  Yucko!  Is that meant to get you to drink it?  No, thanks!  In case we couldn’t find the images on our own, these presenters of porn had blown the images up and outlined the offensive images.  “Did you notice anything strange about this photo?” they asked, showing us a couple on the beach in a magazine ad.  Nope.  Nothing.  Happy couple.  Appropriately clad for the beach.  Swimsuits not overly revealing.  “Well, notice that their bathing suit bottoms are switched?”  I couldn’t really see much difference in the bottoms.  “It’s meant to imply that they were having sexual relations, and their bottoms got switched accidentally.”  Really?  I thought they were overestimating my imaginative ability.  “And notice the sand in the background between her legs?”  Why are they asking us to look between her legs?  Seems inappropriate.  I looked over to see if the teachers were wiggling uncomfortably in their seats, but it was hard to tell in the dark.  “Well, notice a face in the sand?  It looks like it’s blowing air towards her crotch.”  Again, dis-gust-ing.  Slide after slide, they pointed out sexual images—ta-tas in the clouds or the profile of a naked man in the camel’s leg.  They also helped us to note the sexuality of product packaging—what does that two liter Coke bottle remind you of?  Nothing.  A breast!  Again with the ta-tas!  These people were really perverse! 

I’m not sure what exactly these presenters meant to accomplish.  I suppose they wanted us to be informed consumers.  Maybe they wanted us to boycott the products they showed us or get us to refrain from buying the alcohol and cigarettes that were so prominently featured.  The effect they achieved—sending many of us to the library to peruse magazines for pictures of genitals and “sex” written on Oreos.  Who knew there was so much pornography in our school library?  Awesome!

The next attack came on popular music.  Presenters came to tell what the lyrics of our favorite songs REALLY meant, and to instruct us on the art of finding Satanic messages in the songs.  They told us we could hear Satanic messages in the song “Stairway to Heaven,” so we all went and bought the single and played it on our home stereos, attempting to make it play backwards.  Many a parent probably sent out their own subliminal and evil messages to these jerks when they had to purchase new record needles.  When we heard that “Another One Bites the Dust” contained backwards messages about how fun it is to take drugs, it put new meaning into the pep band playing it during basketball games. 

I admit that I was quite naïve about sexual matters when I was in high school.  These presentations really opened my eyes about the songs I listened to and enjoyed.  They told me about Rod Stewart’s “Angel,” which I thought was about a guardian angel.  It’s really about sex!  When he says she “spread her wings high over me,” I was imagining a pretty white angel with wings, flying in the sky.  Beautiful!  But, I was told, he’s not really singing about “wings.”  It’s symbolic—he’s talking about her legs!  Oh, gross!  Ruined that song for me.  One of my favorite songs at that time was “Nobody Does It Better” by Carly Simon.  It’s a pretty song, and it’s also one of the James Bond theme songs.  I was a big fan of James Bond movies.  The chorus goes, “Nobody does it better, makes me feel sad for the rest. Nobody does it half as good as you.  Baby, you're the best.”  I thought “it” referred to kissing, or maybe spying.  No, you stupid girl!  It refers to sex!  Again?  In fact, about every song I liked turned out to be nasty, perverse, or decadent.  “White Wedding” is about heroin, not matrimony?  “Let’s get ‘Physical’” isn’t about doing aerobics? “She Works Hard for the Money” isn’t about secretaries?  I’m still not sure about their objectives, but what these people accomplished was giving me a dirty mind.  I was looking for the double meanings in every word of every song now.  “Pass the Dutchie” probably had nothing to do with Hollanders, and “Little Red Corvette” had nothing to do with speedy Chevrolets. 

One of my teachers really got into this debate.  He decided to prove a theory he had, which he shared with us, that even the most innocent of popular songs would induce sexual thoughts and feelings for teenagers.  Well, after all these presentations, what wouldn’t?  So, he told us, he was going to play some popular rock songs for us, and we were supposed to write down everything that we were thinking as we listened to the songs.  Then, he would collect all of our papers, which would remain anonymous, and read them aloud to the class.  He promised to read everything we’d written verbatim, without censorship.  Oh, no.  Even I knew this was a poor idea.  He played about four songs.  I remember one was “Sailing” by Christopher Cross (Well, it’s not far down to paradise, at least it’s not for me. If the wind is right, you can sail away and find serenity.  Oh, the canvas can do miracles.  Just you wait and see.  Believe me, it’s not far to Never-Never land, reason to pretend, and if the wind is right, you can find the joy of innocence again….Sailing takes me away…)  I wrote about how I imagined sailing on the ocean in a beautiful sunset, with the breezes just blowing away all the stress and worries of everyday life, etc.  Another was “Light My Fire” by The Doors (You know that it would be untrue. You know that I would be a liar, if I was to say to you, “Girl, we couldn't get much higher.” Come on baby, light my fire…. Try to set the night on fire.)  I tried to get into the deeper meaning of this one, and I wrote about how it seemed like the guy was trying to convince his date that they should take their relationship to a higher level, maybe implying greater physical intimacy.  I thought this would be a mistake since the guy didn’t even have the sense to say “if I were,” not “if I was.”  This song did seem a little sexual, but my teacher was going to read this aloud, so I tried to be delicate, not raunchy.  However, I knew most of my classmates would not be so kind.  Looking around the room, I realized what a huge error in judgment he’d made, using this group for his little experiment.  And what an enormous mistake it was!  The teacher collected our papers, promising to read them aloud the next day in class.  (Play theme to “Jaws” in your head here.)

The next day the teacher said he’d decided to read just one response from each paper to save time because everyone had written so much.  I recognized my own response along with one of my friends with an equally innocent perspective and desire to spare the teacher great embarrassment.  By telling us his theory ahead of time, he had implied a specific expected response, and most of the class obliged.  The sailing song became a metaphor for sex, at best.  Mostly, it just made horny teens want to hop on a sailboat to get away from adults so they could engage in inappropriate behaviors, which they described in detail.  In fact, all of the songs elicited similar responses, leaving the teacher blushing and stuttering and finally throwing the papers away in complete disgust.  He didn’t read all of them as promised.  Thank God!  This was supposed to be a Bible class. I wondered how many nasty phone calls the teacher was going to get that night. Poor, naïve guy. 

So that is how a Christian education corrupted my mind and stole my innocence.  Now, I think I’ll watch a nice innocent movie, like Toy Story 3.  Hey, I'm hungry.  Anyone else want some popcorn?