During the spring break the guys create a temporary HIGH demand(a bubble) for looking/staring at girls. That kind of a false demand would boost the confidence level of any girl who has a pulse or who otherwise would stay virgin for the rest of her life! When the break is over, the bubble burst and girls start dreaming about the next spring break.

Sent by Homayoun Samadi | 2:41 PM ET | 03-25-2008

Why isn't anyone asking about "Boys Gone Wild"? Why are women singled out for their behavior? I doubt that the boys behavior is any better...

Sent by Pam Farrar | 2:47 PM ET | 03-25-2008

The entire allure of spring break is to have a "time of your life" that students are under the assumption completely disappear post college. The urge comes from movies, pop culture, etc.

I've done spring break and it pretty much blows.

Sent by David | 2:47 PM ET | 03-25-2008

Wuold you say that it is a lack of parental, moarl and ethical standards, and the fact that we are inandated with sex advertisement and such in all of the television we are and subject ouselves to? Also, do you think the lack of "love" and supervision of uor children that this type of behavior has become the normal standard?

Sent by Angel | 2:48 PM ET | 03-25-2008

Yes we "can we really blame these women for seeing their sexuality as their only currency"! These women are equally part of the problem; if you think there is a problem. The shallow and superficial, behave in shallow and superficial ways. They are not victims of beauty obessed culture, they ARE the beauty obessed culture. The boys who go to spring break are also in the same shallow boat and are also expected to be hot.

Sent by Scott Millar | 2:49 PM ET | 03-25-2008

I have been told by some young women that they consider using their bodies to attract men as a way to exercise their "personal power." I honestly don't think alcohol is the problem here, I think media and Madison Avenue have filled us with unhealthy ideals and attitudes about sex, self-esteem and male/female relationships. Unless you teach a child to stand for something, she'll fall for everything...

Sent by Joni Golden | 2:50 PM ET | 03-25-2008

How much do these young women get sexual pleasure from these experiences? Young gay men do a lot of this and seem to enjoy it to an extent.

Sent by Julia | 2:53 PM ET | 03-25-2008

Isn't this, really, a form of exhibitionism?

Sent by Brian Emerson | 2:55 PM ET | 03-25-2008

Ulla sings, "When you've got it, flaunt it," in Mel Brooks' Producers. Women who say they don't care for this type of behavior are simply jealous or insecure. Enjoy yourself girls!

Sent by MO | 2:55 PM ET | 03-25-2008

Is there a sense that girls have gotten "wilder" because of the advent of "Girls Gone Wild" and MTV spring break specials? Did this phenomenon originally begin as marketing for videos and television, which later turned into reality?

Sent by Chris | 2:55 PM ET | 03-25-2008

If this is a way for these women to build thier selfesteem, why is it they feel the need to do it this whay? Better yet, why do they feel the need to build thier selfesteem? I believe that if you have given the girl love and affection, reasureance, and praise form BOTH parents sometimes more specifically theri father, they will not feel this need. THey may actually have higher standard to which they even look at a "boy" or "Man". Finally, where are they at spirtually in thier lives?

Sent by Angel | 2:56 PM ET | 03-25-2008

I have lived in Miami for about 26 years. In the 1980s, this area and several other areas of Florida actively organized to drive the spring break away. Hotels found that it was more disruptive to paying tourists to have these armies of beer drinking dodos.

When I was in college, I went to Mississippi to register people to vote at risk of my life during Spring break. Another year, I stayed in DC and worked with civil rights groups in Mississippi.

The other thing that strikes me as a college professor is the big division among students. Most of my students are working class youth who have been in the job market for a few years or just got out of the service. They all tend to either have children or be taking care of an elderly relative. The money they spend to pay for books and tuition even at a public community college is breaking their backs. Every year I have had students who have had nervous breakdowns or attempted suicide due to the strain of going to college, working, raising a family, and other stress.

So it seems a big contrast that students are spending thousands of dollars for these vacations, vacations that most working folks cannot afford

Sent by Tony Thomas | 2:56 PM ET | 03-25-2008

I've been on spring break twice - once to Cancun and once to Jamaica - and I've never taken my clothes off or wrestled another girl in a vat of pudding. As the host said, their are plenty of girls that don't go to these places and "go wild," but there are also plenty who do go and don't behave in this manner.

Sent by Stephanie | 2:57 PM ET | 03-25-2008

This conversation sounds like nonsense to me. Kids (who want to have fun) want to party together and have fun together and that includes raunchy sex and behavior. Most of you sound like prudes who have no confidence in your sexual selves. Sure, the kids could waste time doing something else that didn't involve debauchery, but not I. If I'd had the money or time I would have loved a big party like that. You people have issues.

Sent by Nick | 2:57 PM ET | 03-25-2008

We shouldn't forget the effect that corporate media has on the mindset of college students. As a UCSB student (a school not exactly foreign to binge drinking, or MTV for that matter) I witness this effect daily. To try and answer Ms. Daum's question, I would like to point out that not one of the shows I have seen on MTV holds intelligence as a standard of achievement. And why should they? Smart kids are less likely to blackout and make TV-worthy spectacles of themselves, and certainly less likely to sell ad space.

Sent by Clark Willison | 2:57 PM ET | 03-25-2008

If the women are feeling so confident (and the men for that matter) why do they need to drink so much? Our sexualized culture may drive the behavior, but I think the drinking is masking insecurity and the "secure" feeling they have comes many times from "liquid courage", i.e., alcohol.

Sent by Kelly | 2:58 PM ET | 03-25-2008

One consideration is peer pressure. I have the feeling that 60% of the people that go crazy like this on spring break, only do it because everyone else is behaving in the same way.

Sent by Kevin | 2:59 PM ET | 03-25-2008

Think how different it would be if these young people had generally had access to truthful, rational, humane sex education. Then imagine them in a society in which they learn about how persons can enjoy a glass of wine, or become an afficianado of cocktails, or even of the fun and wild times of having a drink or three and partying hearty. Think about learning these things in controlled environments, closer to home.

Think there'd be so many bizarre behaviors on break and embarrassed regrets after spring break?

Sent by davy B | 3:00 PM ET | 03-25-2008

If you are going to quote "Sex and the City" do it correctly. "Chose my choice" was a reference to the charactor Charlette York's choice not to work after marrying her first husband. The show is not just about sex.

Sent by HJK | 3:01 PM ET | 03-25-2008

How about it's just fun. How about risk is exciting, sexual risk is more exciting, getting inebriated is fun. Why do we automatically have to look at the suspect underpinnings to what some people consider morally questionable behavior instead of just using Occam's Razor: girls go wild because it's fun and exhilarating.

Sent by K.S. Haddock | 3:04 PM ET | 03-25-2008

Very sad commentary on how our society is in a state of moral decay and decline. It is not just the current generation but the past two or three. The wrong message is being sent to young women that the most basest of human functions is what gives them value.

Sent by jack | 3:04 PM ET | 03-25-2008

Do you think that "Spring Break" activities are also economic choices? Our family has limited income resources. Our younger son is fortunate to attend one of the nation's top research universities within a 2 hr drive from our home at in-state tuition costs. His part-time campus job allows him to earn just enough money to cover some of his groceries; scholarships, grants, and our family income help cover the rest of his expenses. He spent his spring break working 2 days at one of the campus research laboratories (doing what he really enjoys but also earning his "grocery" money) and the balance of his spring break he came home to visit his relatives, prowled through a used record shop, drove to the mountains with friends for a day hike, and went to a fine arts museum in Charlotte, NC (waiting until 5 pm on a Tuesday for the free admission evening hrs to begin). Spring Break doesn't have to be expensive to be enjoyable. Perhaps if some of the students mentioned on the show had their credit cards taken away or "allowance money" withdrawn they might find less self-centered activities on which to focus.

Sent by Catheryn Maier | 3:04 PM ET | 03-25-2008

What are these women going to do when they age and their beauty fades? Will they no longer be confident in themselves?

Young women who are all beauty and no brains or common sense are boring and worth no more than a roll in the hay.

Sent by Frybread | 3:04 PM ET | 03-25-2008

If you think about it, there isn't a large difference between this and New Orleans' Mardi Gras, with grown men shouting "show your t_ts" in exchange for cheap beads. Somehow, women do it and seem to think it's fun, rather than degrading. All the while, hundreds of cameras capture all...
(I also think that this show focuses on girls, because boys don't drop their pants for videos during spring break. ...Or at least not videos that are on cable tv ads constantly. An insider's note: a friend of mine -- a guy in video production -- told me that videos are often made with hired strippers or prostitutes who pressure the spring break girls to join them in taking off their clothes, etc. Not exactly a voluntary, empowering situation with clear ethics.)

Sent by G Burton | 3:05 PM ET | 03-25-2008

Ms. Daum seems bound and determined to see these women as victims, somehow, instead of what they are: young women in the time of their life where experimentation with sexuality, power, and social relationships is appropriate. The boys involved are walking around with five times the legal limit of testosterone in their bodies and confer a temporary social status on some girls based on their sexuality. Is it all that shocking that these young women would condescend to compete for male attention when they are at their physical peak? Or should they wait until they are 40, have a graduate degree, and attempt to impress them with their well-reasoned debate? This is a birds-and-bees issue, nothing more.

Sent by Terry Mancour | 3:07 PM ET | 03-25-2008

Everyone refers to the spring break attendants as "girls" and it seems as though they're not quite considered women yet. Once you are truly considered a woman (ie meaning an adult) you must consider the implications of your actions, and that you might have children someday who will find out what you did.

I had an aunt who had the opportunity to be in a rap video but for whatever reason didn't do it. And looking back at it, I often wonder what her two sons would have thought if they had seen their mom shaking her butt in spandex (it was the early 90's) on TV.

Sent by Tarah | 3:08 PM ET | 03-25-2008

I don't understand how everyone is missing the most obvious reason for this kind of behavior: Showing your body to a group of hot men makes a group of hot men approach you. For women who are plagued with things like "dignity" and "shame" in their real lives, acting crass in a city 100s of miles away on spring break makes it convenient to have easy, consequence free sex without ruining your reputation or damaging your social life.

Sent by bunny mcintosh | 3:10 PM ET | 03-25-2008

I am the 38 year old mother of a 6 year old girl and I am absolutely appalled at the direction young women have "chosen to take" in the idealism of sexually permissive behaviour. I grew up in the 70's and 80's and remember the women's liberation movement and, following that, the difficulty many women had in finding their own voices and achieving balance as career holders, independant women, wives, mothers and daughters. I battled with eating disorders and poor self image and have mainstream media, established social patterns, an admitted addiction to fashion magazines and ultimately MYSELF to blame for how I viewed my body for many years. It is very apparent to me that globally and societally we have not yet begun to deal with teaching our young women to have healthy views of their roles and their bodies in today's world. In order to cease the perpetuation of a culture that rewards young women who bare it all and exhibit sexually permissive behavior, we must demand more of our media and entertainment. It also falls on the shoulders of EVERY mother and EVERY father of young children, beginning at the tender age of 5, to instill in their daughters and sons the empowerment of PERSON, body and mind, rather than of sexuality, to build confidence. If we are able to build a strong value system in our children as parents, educaters and leaders, a healthy attitude toward sex and sexual development will follow in our children and our culture.

Sent by Christine | 3:18 PM ET | 03-25-2008

This is not just a problem with spring break. This is a much larger issue. The direct cause of this confusion in young women in the U.S.(and young men also, to no lesser degree) is the media's portrayal of beauty as a consumer product. Everyone wants to be more beautiful, skinnier, more tan, etc. Noone, however, is telling us that we don't need to change to be appreciated.

Sent by Alex | 3:38 PM ET | 03-25-2008

@Julia
That is a great point! Maybe we are really using traditional standards to say woman promoting their sexuality is somehow wrong or inappropriate. The op-ed did seem to have a moral tone to it. Gay people especially seem to flaunt sexuality and have fun with it and people don't seem to focus on that much. Unless the moral police are just so repulsed they haven't got around to being specific yet. Give them time!

Sent by Scott Millar | 4:22 PM ET | 03-25-2008

I am surprised that Ariel Levy's book "Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture" (can be found at amazon.com) has not yet been mentioned in this discussion. In the after-word of the paperback edition she concludes that what this society needs is "idealism." She is right. It has been banished in favor of all of this "wild" nonsense, whose aftermath the future generations will be paying for. It is indeed time to take our media and our culture back (or, at the very least, in another direction), setting examples for future generations that (to loosely quote from the movie "Animal House")"... Getting drunk and stupid will get you nowhere in life." This generation, is, unfortunately, about getting nowhere in life.

Sent by Lori | 4:25 PM ET | 03-25-2008

This is simply an extension of campus life at any large public university, where 30% of the students are attending college because they are told that they have to go to college in order to get a good job. These students are totally uninterested in academics, and begin the weekend partying on Thursday nights.Spring Break gives them, and even some of the more academically-oriented, the opportunity to party where there are even fewer self-imposed or societal restrictions on behavior, and they have the disposable income necessary to go to beach resorts. People commenting are primarily shocked at the behavior of the young women because we feel that this is a bastardization of the goals and struggles of the modern women's movement. But we cannot control where revolutions lead. Many of us helped break societal sexual norms in the 60's---and this is where it has led. It is our culture---we helped create it, even the aspects we are appalled by today.

Sent by Gary Sanders | 5:30 PM ET | 03-25-2008

I listened to ToTN on the way home this afternoon and had to comment. Our children know Spring Break (and college in general) may be their last hurrah before they are forced to conform to our perverse American moral standards. Look at many countries in Europe or Asia? They are way more open about sexuality and drinking yet we are the ones with the problems. We Americans are told sex and drinking is dirty while violence is glorified. Let the kids have their few days of fun without over-analyzing their behavior.

Sent by Not Prudish | 6:45 PM ET | 03-25-2008

@terry mancour:

All due respect, when have you ever witnessed a group of 40+ year old women feeling a need to express their sexuality by stripping down to their bikini bottoms, having their friends husbands lick jello shots off their body parts, engage in foam and mud wrestling and recreate explicite sexual acts for an audience ... all in their hostess's living room?

Don't confuse healthy sexuality with voyeurism, misogyny and a competitive atmosphere in which to judge the comparative physical presentation of genitals. Given that the animal kingdom has this one pretty much wrapped up, even they have a tad more class.

Sent by jake | 7:01 PM ET | 03-25-2008

Well, if I had a killer physique, which I don't, alas, I'd be more interested in getting tan and showing it off too.

Drinking is popular amongst college students too. Go figure.

What's the issue here again?

Sent by Ed | 8:29 PM ET | 03-25-2008

How disgustingly prudish and moralistic.Young people should be able to have fun. If the write think's everything is exploitation then she has a problem and shout join a convent.

Sent by Don | 8:49 PM ET | 03-25-2008

This is not a new phenomenon in Atlanta there is a spring break party called "freak-nic"which by it's name alone represents debauchery and iniquity. I have heard of orgies and the like that are particpated in. It is so sad and appalling that women and men alike do not respect themselves and don't have enough pride in themselves in the first place than to put themselves in a situation that can come back to haunt them in the not so distant future

Sent by neda al damietta | 9:02 PM ET | 03-25-2008

The problem with the "gone wild" phenomenon isn't the sexuality, it's the exclusiveness (looks, money, which school you go to, etc).

Im in my 20s and go to a highly sexualized gay nude beach from time to time to blow off steam. The culture for the specific beach I got to is as such where personality and being comfortable with your self can get you further with another guy than being of a certain physical standard. Even age is less a factor; and you'll have guys in their 20s showing off for guys in their 40s or more.

Sexuality, especially on the beach, should be about communication and making positive connections with other people. Not about being judgmental, exclusive, and knocking other people's self esteem.

==========
@ Scott Millar

Are you kidding? People are not offended by gay expressions of sexuality? What planet have you been living on?

Sent by Beach | 9:49 PM ET | 03-25-2008

So what else is new??? This was all so shocking 20 years ago, 40 years ago, and probably in some other form and at some other venue, 100 years ago. The same basic issues of self-image, self-esteem, making oneself a sex object, and being rowdy are all as old as the hills. No doubt some 100 B.C. Romans viewed trends in orgies and bacchanalia with disapproval. Tell me something that is "wrong with kids these days" that wasn't wrong when YOU were 19.

Sent by Sam | 11:36 PM ET | 03-25-2008

Of course it's pleasurable to be naked with a bunch of beautiful people and to engage in guilt free sex. That's not the point. The reality is, the fun does not last and carries with it the risk of STDs (including HIV, Hep B), unwanted pregnancies, the feeling of being used and abused, and difficulty adjusting back to "normal" life and relationships.

Sent by Mr. Khan | 11:37 PM ET | 03-25-2008

This interview was another example of Americas infantile attitude towards sexuality and by extension nudity. These young people are behaving normally for their age, their hormones are screaming at them to procreate and to do so you have to attract the opposite sex. Casual nudity and bikini waxing is not sex, its a means to an end. Off course they are mostly too smart to get pregnant, but they are doing what their instincts are telling them to do and it's fun, mostly harmless (skin cancer, tattoos, diminished liver function and STDs excepted) way to satisfying those primitive universal urges.

Our society is not sexualized unless you mean it is obsessively hostile to sex. Any nudity is suspect and sequestered, lest our precious children get a whiff of the thing they are most curious about. I would be more sanguine about sex education if our schools demonstrated a competence in other areas of instruction, like reading, but I am afraid they'll simply pass on the party line, that sex is dangerous, dirty and degrading (for women). Like Woody Allen said: It is if you're doing it right.

Our news and media is fascinated by the state of Brittany Spears under ware, Paris Hilton's sex life and the peccadillo's of various Chief Executives in New York state, then rings its hands over their fall from grace, the modern equivalent of The Rake's Progress.

The right wing rails about abstinence and immorality(that'll work) while tapping their toes in mens rooms. The left wing clucks about sex in a superior manner and suggests that mature intelligent people only have mutually satisfying encounters, bloodlessly and calmly negotiated over cheap white wine. No one ever admits they like or ever had hot monkey sex, in handcuffs on the kitchen table or a luggage carousel at the airport, lust is something for callow youth, something NPR listeners, commentators and guests never were. Its a lie, people of all ages have secret kinks and politically incorrect fantasies they indulge in if only in there minds.

The idea that this somehow damaging shows how infantile and puritan we remain. Getting tattooed or experimenting with drugs can have long term consequences, stripping off and being photographed on a drunken weekend in their youth shouldn't, unless we tacitly agree. However a Doctor worked his or her way through college, or what they did as teenagers is less important than their final class standing.

It is wonderfully hypocritical in this post feminist time that a woman's professional reputation is hostage to her sexual reputation. A woman, no matter how accomplished, must be as above reproof as Caesar's wife if she is to be respected at all.

In the end we all snicker along, congratulating ourselves about how we mature and advanced we are while anticipating our next peek under Hestor's petticoats.

Sent by Sejanus | 2:53 AM ET | 03-26-2008

Loved how Meghan said it was pretty much just kids from "party schools" and went on to assert that she did not go to a party school. Glad a snob found at spring break what a snob would assume about spring break - just a bunch of drunken state-school educated heathens writhing in the sun. Must be nice to have your newspaper foot the bill to go to Cancun, walk around all the parties these middlebrow "party schoolers" throw with their own money, and point fingers at a bunch of kids trying to enjoy themselves before they go on to become wage-slaves to the same corporations employing Meghan to make them feel ashamed in their 30's of what they did in their 20's. What a snob and a buffoon. Who writes anything about spring break and doesn't even consider the possibility that these kids were acting out of their societally-imposed moral boxes?

Sent by GetOnMyMap | 12:46 PM ET | 03-26-2008

I noticed no one mentioned that the statistics show that 1 out of every 4 women has an STD. Thinking about Spring break behavior, I guess it's not that surprising.

Sent by Concerned | 2:18 PM ET | 03-26-2008

I've been mezmerized by this phenomenon for 5-6 years. It boggles the mind. It's not about prudeness, or demonstrations of sexuality that stumps me --- has no one questioned: THESE ARE THE DAUGHTERS OF THE WOMEN WHO FOUGHT FOR THE WOMEN's MOVEMENT. Where are these moms now?

It's not only in the Spring Break arena - it is a very real element, feeling distinctly like embedded misogyny, that can be witnessed in on-line forums, male-dominated sites where inevitably discussions of women are relegated to explicit descriptions of body parts, and reflect the type of raunchy interplay once confined to a 12-year-old locker room. And the girls who object to the debasing discussions are verbally flogged and treated as prudes.

Hasn't anyone bothered to remind these "independent" little girls that SELF ESTEEM is not about making your body more appealing to an short-term, attention-deficit, immediate gratification audience? Nor does it ring with an element of common sense: this absurd obsession with defending the voyeuristic element by saying, "It was my choice, therefore - freeing and empowering."

All due respect (or lack thereof) - horse cookies! Empowering decisions are about doing something for your psyche, soul and intellect - FOR YOURSELF - NOT for a (bring-on-the-hotter-babe) audience.

And, since when did voyeurism and subsequent frequent date-rape (noted in the author's comments today) represent necessary sexual education and freedom? Sweet Mary and Joseph - wasn't that EXACTLY what we were trying to turn around from the 50's mentality?
When did young girls forget that physical self-absorption and physical demonstrations of sexual acts are not a measure of self-worth, confidence and value.

Wasn't this the same generation who's mothers fought to clarify that their self-worth was not tied to their physical appearance??

"Gee, Ward - what's happening in the world?"

Contrary to popular belief, this feels distinctly less like 'progression' in women's empowering - than it does like a MAJOR step backward.

Sent by rob | 4:09 PM ET | 03-26-2008