I’m sure most people think they know everything about sex, being college students and all. However, for being a country with such a sexualized culture, Americans tend to shy away from the topic as often as they can.

Nowadays, however, the taboo topic is woven into our society, which is obvious when we take a look around a mall, watch 15 minutes of TV or listen to the radio on the way to school.

It is no surprise that sex sells, but it is a surprise what it sells. Nearly nude women can be seen in ads for anything from burgers to cars to beer. Women want to be her and men want to be in her. Despite all of the sex that surrounds us, it is customary for our society to not want to talk about it – especially to our youth.

In “Let’s Talk About Sex,” a documentary by James Houston, the filmmaker takes his camera around the world and learns how other nations have been dealing with teens and sex. Houston explores how teenagers in Europe are given sex education and how parents talk to their kids about it early on. They are taught what a condom is, how to use it, to always have one on you – everything from what goes where to what diseases they can get if they’re not careful.

This may seem illcit to some people, especially because we live in a society where children are sheltered from sex until they are suddenly slapped across the face with it once reaching puberty. But here are the facts: The United States’ teen pregnancy rate is over four times that of the Netherlands and more than three times that of Germany and France. And here’s a shocker: 19 million Americans are infected with sexually transmitted diseases annually, yet only half of these people are aware of it.

As Americans, we tend to think that Europeans have more of a sexual culture than we do. In a certain sense, they do. But what does it say, the fact that HIV rates in the U.S. are almost as high as France, Germany and the Netherlands combined?

There is a scene in the documentary where a woman is interviewed and asked “Do you have a condom with you now? Where is it, can you show us?” to which she replies, “Always, in my wallet. Yes of course.” She expresses that if a guy doesn’t have a condom on him, she automatically says, “Bye, see you later. Nice to meet you.” Houston then asks the same question to girls in America, and what is their reply?

“If I met a guy and he had a condom in his wallet, I would run. I would think he’s a pervert.”

Girls that always have condoms on them are seen by men as being a slut, easy and even described by one American guy as being “really loose.”

Perhaps the issue here is that we are looking at being safe (isn’t that the number one concern?) as something that happens when you avoid the subject altogether. The problem with the American way of going about the topic is that we refuse to introduce our children to it – and let television, song lyrics and advertisements do all the talking.