Sexting Gone Right

NBC's Parks and Recreation puts its characters in many crazy situation, not limited to the taboo and controversial act of sexting. In the season 4 premiere episode, "I'm Leslie Knope," an unknown sender emails every woman that works in city hall a picture of his penis.

*Unfortunately, I can't find a video of the related scene. On Netflix, the scene runs from 3:45 to 4:45.*

The scene is not much of a learning opportunity for young viewers about sexting because the characters mostly make the picture and the incident a joke, and because the picture was unwanted. It does show that unwanted sexting is wrong, however, when Chris (Rob Lowe) and Ben (Adam Scott) apologize to the women employees of the City for the gross misconduct.

A subsequent scene does give a relatively positive spin on the sexting incident. Ann (Rashida Jones) - a part-time nurse and part-time City Health employee - found an abnormality in the picture and was able to make the sender aware that he had mumps. Brown et al. tackles the topic of sexting within their article Sex, Sexuality Sexting, and SexEd. They play around with the idea that "sexual self-expression on the Internet [including sexting] can be functional for adolescents" in that they can find like-minded peers and experiment with sexuality in a low-risk way (Brown et al., 2009, pg. 13).( Of course there are risks for sexting in this day and age, such as having pictures of one's body distributed without consent.)

This incident within Parks and Recreation - likely without meaning to do this - shows that good can come out of sexting. Not the kind of good that Brown and colleagues are going for, but with similar importance, that of health - which they also touch on as being important in today's adolescent sexual discovery utilizing social media, the Internet, and texting. "I'm Leslie Knope" shows both the good and bad of sexting - with maybe a bit too much nonchalance mixed in.

Brown, J., Keller, S., & Stern, S. (2009). Sex, sexuality, sexting, and sexed: Adolescents and the media. The Prevention Researcher, 16(4), 12-16.