Lock up your daughters, Ira Glass will lead them astray
 
Did some one commission a video tailor-made to rouse the moral panic of my conservative grandpa? Let’s see: liberal arts darling National Public Radio? Yup. The acknowledgment of teen sex? Check. Balloon animals (or really, any artistic pursuit that isn’t portraiture of dead Europeans)? May god have mercy on our souls!.

The video is from Rookie, a culture blog (and now book) by and for teenage girls. Rookie regularly creates these awesome videos of adults answering teen girls’ questions with a gentle candor, including regular segment, “Ask a Grown Man,” and the companion “Ask a Grown Woman.”

It’s strangely hypnotic though, to watch a man listen and speak to teenage girls with such frankness and sympathy. It’s generally at the teen years when men become uncomfortable with girls, either due to seemingly volatile changes or the insinuation of impropriety that looms so heavily in our culture.

I’m reminded of when the protagonist of the 90s teen drama, “My So-Called Life” laments the growing distance between her and her father, saying, “My breasts have come between us.” Or in the Virgin Suicides, when the patriarch of a gaggle of daughters becomes nervous and distant as puberty appears to transform them into strange, mercurial, unrecognizable creatures.

Regardless, it’s refreshing, sweet, and honest to hear a dude tell a teen girl her crush doesn’t like her, but that it’s ok, and that blow-jobs really don’t need an elaborate introduction. I mean, I literally can’t remember a time when I thought they did, but I know blow-job etiquette was a mystery at some point, and god bless the godless liberal media informing the youth of today!