Listen up, horn dogs, because I’m only going to say this once: If you’re not sexting these days, you’re doing it wrong.
According to a study by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, of 1,280 13- to 26-year-olds, 1-in-5 teens and college-aged people have sent a semi-nude or nude picture of themselves over the phone or posted one or more online.
However, that means that four of your five closest friends are left out of the circle, so if they’re considering it (or if you are), think of this as your handy-dandy guide for safe and considerate sexting.
• For the love of all that is good and “sexty,” make sure she isn’t underage. You can be prosecuted for transmitting child pornography over your phone, even if it’s inadvertent.
• Be creative. If you’re going to send pictures of your breasts to a guy, make sure they’re not flopping around like piñatas at a quinceañera.
• Use intelligent language. Hard to believe, bros, I know, but girls actually don’t much care for a guy that can’t articulate past “I want u nao u so hot.” Not sexty. You know why Shakespeare was such a ladies’ man? Because he could write a damn good sonnet, that’s why. Seriously, bust out some iambic pentameter. See what happens.
• Make a joke out of it. Sexting partners often respond best to humor, and as culture’s newest expression of human sexuality, it pays to be lighthearted. Nothing kills excitement more than a heavy-handed statement like, “Take off your clothes.” A pithy pun about automatic machine guns and how you don’t shoot blanks, however, might get you somewhere.
• Be fair and trade evenly. This should be the sexting equivalent of the Silk Road. Trading pictures or sexty messages requires a certain level of trust, especially if neither of you wants your future spouse to come across any of it on the Internet. In this case, it pays to have mutual insurance. Make like Marco Polo and make it a rule: no trade, no go.
• Have some dignity. If you’re not comfortable with a request, suck it up and say so. If you are comfortable with a request, well, then you’re on the right track. In that case, are you free at 7?
• Accept the consequences. We’re all adults, and if you can’t accept a cease-fire when someone gets a new girlfriend, or if your friendship is never the same afterward, it’s best not to get involved.
• Pull a Brett Favre. If you’re in a committed relationship, don’t send illicit pics to everyone you know, OK? You’ll quickly become known as the slimeball who can’t keep it in his pants, not to mention there’s also a fair chance you’ll alienate more than a few friends. No touchdown there, champ.
• Be too pushy. There is, in fact, such a thing as sexting rape. If she says no, she means no. Just like in real life. Crazy, right?
• Drunk sext. Self-explanatory.
Moving on …
No, but seriously, don’t drunk sext unless you want to explain to the pent-up beast in your English class why you thought it was a good idea to suggest having a naked whipped cream and Nutella bath together.
• Be a petulant child. If you get rejected, man up and shut up. Remember that we go to an incredibly diverse university with a rather sexually-liberal student body, so if the hot blonde from organic chemistry thinks you’re as tasteless as plain white rice, it’s quite possible her best friend might disagree … passionately.
• Play the pity card. No one cares if you just got broken up with; this isn’t sex therapy, kids. If you’re a 20-year-old virgin, that’s all well and good, but it pays to understand that fact alone isn’t going to get anyone with self-respect into your phone memory card. Have some character, some class, and good things will happen.
— Joe Dusbabek is a senior studying linguistics and French. He can be reached at arts@wildcat.arizona.edu.
