music
Finding Our Own Voices: Renée Yoxon and Gender-Affirming Vocal Therapy
How to Approach Sexual Fantasy and Desire on Your Own Terms
Scarleteen Mix #10: Pride (Good Trouble Edition)
Happy, happy, happy Pride, everyone! We're talking (and listening to) some good trouble right now. And if you're going to make some, you're going to need some anthems. Sam, Alice M., Izzy, Jacob and I crafted you a mix this time that's full of good trouble and we hope will power you up in all the best ways.
Scarleteen Mix #7: Friendship Is Magic
Whether your friends are your boyfriend, your dog, your best friend from almost the minute you were born, your third cousin, your booty call, your Dad, your guitar teacher, your downstairs neighbor, your brother, your girlfriend, your iguana, your teammates, your band, your Mom, your gaming group, your sister, your cat, your uncle, your cool new friend from work, your lover, your secret crush, your guardian, your gerbil, your stepmom, the kid you mentor, your choir director, your sponsor, your lab partner, your co-author, that cool person you always talk to the whole way home on the bus, your training buddy, the lunch lady, your locker next-door neighbor, or anyone else, this one's for them. And for you, friend.
Scarleteen Mix #3: We're Not Exactly Happy Right Now
In fact, like an awful lot of people, especially women, especially trans and nonbinary people, especially queer people, and especially survivor-people and survivor-advocating-people, we are furious; we are furies. We are mad as hell. Come rage with us on Apple Music or Spotify.
Scarleteen Mix #2: Shacking Up!
The second of this month's batch is all about moving in together: the agony and the ecstacy, the joys and the woes, the ups, the downs, the argh of who drank the last of the milk again for crying out loud and the ahh of the very sweetest of first-thing-of-a-morning-even-though-your-breath-is-actually-kind-of-rank smooches. We've got your soundtrack for everything from bringing daily life sweetness to another person to learning to clean up your own damn mess to the deep and amazing joy making a home with someone who already feels like home for your heart can be.
We love you so much, we made you a mixtape.
We made a few of them, actually. And we're going to keep making a couple of them to share with you over every month, because some of us love making mixes and all of us love all of you!
Even the Cutest Kittens: The Upbeat Song About STI Testing You Didn't Know You Needed.
When an email came into the Scarleteen inbox with kittens in the title, we were excited, of course (because kittens!) but unsure what to expect. What we got was this gloriously weird video for a cheerful little ditty about getting tested for STIs.
Scarleteen Confidential: In Defense of Teen Media
For two years, I worked in a bookstore that was aimed primarily at children and teenagers. It was a job I quite enjoyed, but I quickly discovered that when you work near books, people always want to tell you their opinions on said books. That's fine most of the time. But I noticed a pattern when parents or adults would refer to The Hunger Games series. They would express dismay over a child wanting to read the book, wondering what they saw in it, and either implicitly or explicitly stating that they thought the book was not good for youth to be reading.
What struck me about these conversations was that ninety-nine percent of the time, the adult in question had not even read the book they were criticizing. They dismissed it, either as inappropriate trash or as mindless fiction without ever actually seeing what it had to say.
Decoding Sex in the Media: There are No Blurred Lines When it Comes to Consent
For many young people, Robin Thicke’s hit single "Blurred Lines" has become the anthem of the summer. Recently topping the Billboard Hot 100 list and rising to the position of most-downloaded song on iTunes, “Blurred Lines” seems to be thumping out of every stereo speaker on the planet. And for good reason -- it’s a very catchy song, with a strong beat and ostensibly fun lyrics.
Like many artists before him, Thicke sings about a complex topic -- sex -- but he makes the mistake of ignoring a crucial underlying issue: consent.