are trying to extricate cigarettes from movies because of the effect it has on young people. It turns out that watching your hero smoke increases your chances of starting. A lot. If you have stock in Phillip Morris this pleases you. If your father died of emphysema, as mine did, it doesn't. 

 

Casual sex has become the new normal on television and in movies.  It still hurts me to see a woman whip off her clothes for a man she has known for three days. Or three hours. But this is standard procedure on screens in 2012.

 

Perhaps this is why hooking up has become prevalent on college campuses. When you are saturated with the message and images of sex divorced from commitment it can change how you behave.

 

Tobacco companies are mute about the aftermath of smoking. They pretend there are no repercussions. By the time you have an unshakable cough it is too late. It turns out there are good reasons to keep your fingers empty.

 

There is pervasive silence about the effects of hooking up. In the excruciating book Unprotected

the author, who first published it anonymously for fear of losing her job as a campus psychiatrist, unpacks the depression, self injury and emotional unravelling of women caught in moral free fall.

 

It turns out there are good reasons to keep your pants on.