Sexcess comes to those who wait

There’s a billboard partially responsible for my previous post, “I don’t want your X-K for now,” and which was recently featured in the local newspaper.

It reads, in Spanish and English, “Success comes to kids who wait to have SEX,” with the final word being significantly larger than the others.

Comments on the street, paraphrased, ranged from “It’s a positive message” to “It’s confusing because the word SEX is so big.” Well, yes. That is confusing. No more confusing than Dr. Phil describing on his show, in lurid graphic detail, some act of sexual abuse perpetrated against a child, perhaps; no more confusing than the ham-fisted jokes identified as “funny” by the laugh track on Two and a Half Men; and certainly no more confusing than associating appealing, bikini-clad women with sports cars so small you’d be lucky to fit one average-sized person inside—but confusing, nonetheless. It is one confusing message among many.

Add to this the fact that I had to read the sign four times before realizing that it did not say “Success comes to kids who have SEX.”

I, for one, think that what this billboard needs is some disambiguation. Tell a teen that they’ll achieve “success” if they wait for sex, and all they’ll see is the giant word plastered at the end. Kids who care about abstract concepts like “success” are already neurotic enough to be careful.

Tell a teen they’ll be paid $500,000 and a Ferrari (complete with bikini-or-Speedo-clad model) for every year they remain virgins, and you might get a few takers.