Yeah, this is one of those things that feels awkward now that I'm an adult but felt totally normal at the time. Not really sure what, if anything, can be done about it. I also wonder if it's not, on some level, good?
Let me explain. I knew lots of awkward homeschool/Catholic school kids through high school sports and once I got to college. It's pretty obvious lots of them struggled with relationships (both friendly and romantic) because they weren't socialized the same as "regular" kids. I think parents go out of their way nowadays to prevent this issue as best they can but getting back to the topic--we kind of just accept as a society that shared experiences growing up in America make kids more "normal". I think these weirdly sexual high school dances are part of that. Now whether that's a good thing or not is up for debate. But puberty is an awkward ####### time. Slow dances in middle school made being interested in classmates more grounded in reality and less intimidating. Grinding at high school dances felt like another step that made the natural sexual stuff you explore in high school feel less taboo. Which made losing your virginity at a "normal" age more natural (and that age for most is high school also). Which made for smarter, more comfortable experiences in college. Which led to the well-adjusted adult relationships we've since had.
Most teenagers, including us back then, refuse to be kept in a purity bubble. It's part of growing up.
Idk if I'm making my point clearly here, but we talk about how prude America is compared to lots of the rest of the world all the time--how we care about nudity in media more than violence, how we shame sexuality and then feel the need to sexualize everything bc it's edgy. Is it possible that giving weird pubescent high schoolers on the edge of adulthood, who are on the verge of a scary amount of sexual freedom in college anyways, this safe-ish space to normalize how horny they all are and mature a bit in this way...is actually healthy?
