Sex: Caught your attention, didn’t I?

Sex: it seems like it’s everywhere these days. From every channel you turn to, to every rap song you listen to, to even some carnival on The Rock, whatever that was all about.

Casual sex has become as common in our culture as eating at McDonalds, and sometimes even more than that, it’s just not that big of a deal.

I was recently watching a movie and it occurred to me how most of our chick flicks nowadays are about adults falling in love instead of young people. Part of this is due to the fact that now, people often put their careers first, but I also wonder if part of it is due to our loosened views on sex. People don’t just “settle down” anymore, they “try out.”

It seems to me that we have made finding love more like a car dealership, where you can test drive every car instead of deciding to buy one and stay with it.

It is more acceptable today than ever to live with someone you are not married to, to have sex with a person you are dating, or to sleep with whomever you meet at the party that night. It’s like sex is just viewed as part of the dating process instead of anything meaningful.

I realize that some people might genuinely just be out to get some booty. To those people, I don’t know what to say other than please don’t share your gonorrhea with me. And for those who just took that statement as a serious diss, please don’t. I’m not ripping on people who sleep around and I’m not even going to try to tell you what you should or should not do. My only goal is to make you think for a moment about what our society says is acceptable and suggest that maybe it shouldn’t be.

My dad always used to say, “Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?” In other words, why would anyone commit to you if they are already getting all the benefits without it? Casual sex is giving away for free that should be paid for with the other person’s love and commitment. If you are giving it away for free then you’ll never find someone who will pay for it.

I believe that we all, somewhere inside of us, really want to be loved by someone. And it seems to me that sex has become our cheap imitation of love instead of our expression of it. Perhaps it appears that I am making too big of a deal out of sex, but perhaps that is because society is making too little of a deal out of it.

“Free love,” like the hippies always used to say, just doesn’t exist. Love comes at a price, and that price is what a person is willing to give, not what they are trying to get. People will never value what they don’t have to pay for, so why give it away for free?

Kendra Moll is a sophomore majoring in psychology and religion. She has an awesome roommate and can be reached at k.moll@umiami.edu