Articles or storylines written for teens tend to focus on heterosexual sex only, describing it paradoxically as both something to be desired and something to be feared, while primarily focusing on male pleasure and leaving female sexual desire unacknowledged.
Adrienne Rich (1986) has stated that “compulsory heterosexuality” norms are maintained as women receive daily messages through societal myths and conventions. Indeed, in Carpan's (2004) comprehensive listing of over 1600 teen romance novels, a mere 20 books feature gay, lesbian, or transgendered protagonists. A diverse selection of teen romance stories is not widely available (Christian-Smith 1988). Similarly, Carpenter (1998), Durham (1996), and Garner and colleagues (1998) all found a presumption of heterosexuality to exist in popular teen magazines, including YM, Teen, Seventeen, Glamour, Cosmopolitan, and Mademoiselle, published between the 1970s and 1990s. In her analysis of sexual scripts in Seventeen magazine over three decades, Carpenter (1998, p. 164) observed that “normative” sex was presumed to be vaginal, heterosexual intercourse, an “either/or decision” rather than a continuum of possible activities. Lesbianism and masturbation were increasingly discussed over the decades, but editors described these as less satisfying than heterosexual sex.
Mainstream publications typically privilege heterosexuality in specific ways. Through editorial advice and storylines, writers promote rigidly circumscribed circumstances for sex, which is depicted as something to be both feared and desired. Furthermore, writers typically focus on only masculine pleasure during sexual encounters.
