Unzipped

Unzipped

In the expository text Unzipped- everything teenagers want to know about love, sex and each other, Bronwyn Donaghy has written about the facts and consequences of teenage sex.

By doing so she has presented us with her old fashioned ideologies and her strong ‘anti-teenage-sex’ values and attitudes. As the audience Donaghy has tried to scare us into believing and following these attitudes, which are very evident throughout the entire text. Virginity and abstinence is the way to go.

This text is targeted at young youths who are curious and want to explore their sexuality and their parents who Donaghy thinks should be open and willing to educate their children on the subject. In order to do this she has employed the use of three different writing styles: These being narrative, expository and real life accounts.

Between chapters and further the different sexual topics, Donaghy has split the information up by an ongoing fictional story, which runs through the entire book. It is a narrative story about two inquisitive and curious adolescent teenagers who fall in love and start to get ‘full on’ but then decide against the idea of sex as it is simply too complicated. Donaghy has done this by using very ‘down to earth’ language that she thinks teenagers can relate to and a simplistic story line. However by trying to relate to teenagers at what she perceives is their level in my opinion gives the story very little realism in regards to reality as she simply cant ‘pull it off’. The story is made to almost look superficial. Within the story it is made very clear that abstinence is the way to go, reflect Donaghy’s ideologies. As the writer she does not even try to hide this attitude of hers and at one stage, through Ben’s mum is able to vocalise this:

‘ Love is a wonderful thing…. Sex on the other hand, can be very dangerous in the hands of the young and inexperienced.’

She then goes on to say:

I sincerely hope you wont’.

This is in relation to Ben and Lucy’s sex life. By creating this story Donaghy tries to manipulate us as the audience to accept these ideas and her values as being right. To further shape our response towards this very strong attitude Lucy and Ben adhered to Ben’s mum’s opinion and further Donaghy’s ideologies. She developed these characters in order to express her perception of what teenage relationships should be like in her eyes.