Spring Break Flings: A Great Thing, or The Greatest Thing? Part 2 - Women Campus

Spring Break Stereotypes: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

What is the first thing you think of when you think of Spring Break? There are the annual MTV Spring Break specials, with absurd contests that border on pornographic if it weren't for that thin layer of salt-stained lycra, such as whipped-cream-bikini-licking tournaments.

There are also the countless Girls Gone Wild videos: Wildest Spring Break Moments, Beach Babes & Forbidden Spring Break, Spring Break Orgy, Best of Spring Break, Spring Break Sex Riot – wow, that last one sounds really unique and different from the others.

Let's state the obvious: these media images of Spring Break are extremely sexualized and exaggerated accounts of what it is like to be a college student on Spring Break, perpetuating the stereotype of the "Spring Break fling" as a noncommittal one-night stand that is almost completely enabled by excessive consumption of alcohol. Spring Break is portrayed by pop culture as an escape from reality, where real world responsibilities, consequences, social norms, and apparently the existence of STDS, seem to be temporarily removed.

However, these snapshots from "reality tv" are not all absurdly over-acted: according to an article on CollegeNews.com, female Spring Breakers in Cancun consume an average of ten drinks a day and around 40-50% of these girls drink until they pass out or vomit.

The article also cites a disconcerting statistic from the American Medical Association: "more than half of college students know friends who were sexually active with more than one partner during spring break and nearly 3 out of 5 women know friends who had unprotected sex." Moral of the story? College students do engage in promiscuous sex during spring break, though it is safe to say that the girls on MTV's stage and in the Girls Gone Wild bedrooms are not your "typical" college women.