Sexuality is the most profound meeting place of nature and culture. At its best, sexuality allows us to give ourselves over to feeling, to other people, to the world, to say yes to ourselves and to our bodies. But sexuality is also where we experience most intensely the demands of religion, morality, and culture in general.

Popular culture, I would insist, has a profound influence on teenagers' sexuality. That's where they get their ideas about what is attractive, what's feminine, what's masculine, what's cool,what's sexy, what's romantic. Melrose Place is not just a soap opera; it's an instruction in how to be. And images of sexuality play a large part in that instruction. People may respond to these images in different ways, but noone exists outside them, in a bubble of cultural immunity. We are all--parents, peer groups, rick, poor, black, white--inhabitants of this culture.

Parents and church may provide verbal instruction and prohibition--but we need to realize that people no longer learn primarily through verbal instruction in this culture, but through pictures and images , which get directly at fantasy and desire, and feed the hunger for stimulation and excitement.