Restless Virgins makes a great gift for parents, teenagers, and everyone in between.  You can order the paperback on Amazon and Barnes and Noble, or pick it up in your local bookstore.  Happy holidays!

When I was a little girl, my parents exposed me to many sports to see what I liked best. Ice skating didn’t last (my skinny legs caved after a few minutes), and basketball was a total disaster (I was on the defeated team). Eventually I found my athletic niche when I picked up tennis in elementary school and squash in seventh grade. Over the years, my talents became clear: individual sports were my thing.

I went on to play varsity squash at Dartmouth, and I continue to play today, but how much better would I have been had I started playing years earlier? What if there’d been a way for my parents to know which sports I’d excel at most? Now there is.

With a simple mouth swap, a controversial new test tells parents which sports their children should play. DNA analysis of the ACTN3 gene identifies whether your child is better suited to speed and power sports, like football and sprinting, or endurance sports, like long distance running, or both. For details on the science behind the test, read the New York Times coverage from last week.

Experts are divided over the study. Some see it as an exciting development, with the potential to help parents steer their children in the right direction. Others are wary of its effects. Youth sports are notorious for over-involved moms and dads living out their own athletic dreams through their children; this test would only magnify the pressure and expectation surrounding success. And now with growing pressure to gain an edge for college admissions, the test could mean that the overachiever experience starts younger and younger, with less enjoyment along the way. One scientist says the test will be far more important for elite athletes rather than five-year olds with parents looking for that future college edge.

What do you think? Personally, I’d be intrigued to know what the test says about me now, as a young woman in my twenties, but I’m glad my parents let me find my way as a young girl. Based on those initial failings on ice and in team sports, I have a hunch I would have ended up on the squash court anyway.

When I lived in the U.K. for a year during graduate school, I encountered the following assumption: American women hook up more casually than British women, and are far more likely to perform oral sex. I heard it time after time from my British friends, but it turns out that stereotypes don’t always stem from fact.

A new study found that Brits are the most promiscuous of the Western nations. The United States came in sixth, behind Germany, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, and Australia, in that order.

The study measured one-night stands, sexual partners, and attitudes to casual sex. According to the Times, researchers say that women are now just as socially liberated to engage in “no-strings sex as men,” and they’re certainly correct, but I never would have guessed that Britain would lead the pack. Would you? Check it out here and let me know.

Over Thanksgiving I spent some serious time in my parents’ attic going through boxes of things I’ve collected over the years. I was trying to get rid of stuff, but I ended up finding such gems that I had a difficult time doing so. Gems that weren’t even mine to begin with! Like Emily Post’s original tome on etiquette. Or this priceless book from Benjamin Darling: Tips for Teens. Parts of it are absurdly outdated, but I found this bit timeless, found under the “Petting Particulars” section:

“Your Own Feeling of Rightness and Wrongness”

“You can gauge where to stop by how you feel after various kinds of dates. If you feel embarrassed about what you did on last night’s date when you wake up in the morning, you probably overstepped your own sense of what is right. If you find it hard to look into each other’s eyes when you next meet, then apparently you both feel that what you have done was not quite as it should have been. But if you awaken after a date with a feeling of happiness and joy of living, if you find yourself eagerly looking forward to seeing your date again, if you like being together, working together, sharing all sorts of things with each other, then it probably means that your physical love-making is not out of hand.”

Thank you, Mr. Darling, for this old-school yet solid advice.

Highlights