The following originally aired on KCBS.

By: Meisha Sanders

Not everyone likes to date outside their race, but race doesn’t matter to me.

When I asked my dad what he would do if I dated outside my race he told me, “I don’t rock like that.” That made me question who I should or shouldn’t bring home. He doesn’t want someone else’s family to be judgmental towards me.

But race isn’t a factor to me when I date. When I meet someone I just look at their personality traits. If a guy has a sense of humor and lets me have space, we could have a great relationship.

My aunt and uncle are not the same race but they click. I always see them talking and making each other laugh. Sometimes when my aunt and uncle walk down the street they get funny looks but they don’t care about anybody else’s opinion.

I agree with my aunt and uncle that race doesn’t matter. I only wish my dad felt the same way.

The following originally aired on KQED-FM.

By: Rachel Krantz

“You guys have been dating 5 months? And you're going to live out of a car together for how long?” That was the reaction we usually got when we told people about our summer plans.

Staring out of opposite windows in Minnesota, it was starting to seem like a valid concern. My boyfriend Ethan and I were just 2 weeks into our romantic journey, but the honeymoon was definitely over.

We'd come up with the idea just a few months after we'd met: What if we took all summer to drive cross-country and collected America's first love stories? The idea was simple and lovesick, like our new, seemingly flawless relationship.

The following originally aired on KCBS.

By David Villamarina

Recently I saw a friend of mine who was furious at a woman for giving him an STD. In his rage, he plotted his violent revenge. Listening to his threats I thought to myself - is it really her fault or his?

According to the Center for Disease Control, teens have a higher risk of getting sexually transmitted diseases. So why aren't we preventing them?

It seems like every time the conversation of getting tested comes up between two people someone takes offense. “You think I gave you something?” Wanting to be safe doesn't mean you don't trust your partner, it shows you care about them, as well as yourself.

Try saying “Hey, I’ve been thinking we should get tested because I want us to be healthy.” It may be an awkward conversation to have, but with this being sexual health awareness month - bring it up and face the objections. I don’t think a few moments of pleasure are worth a lifetime of health issues.

Technology is nosing its way into our love lives.  With Valentine’s Day around the corner, romance is pulsing through cyberspace. Two love-related tech innovations are worth taking a look at.

“Heartbroker”
This online match service claims that your friends know you better than you know yourself.  As a user, you choose a friend to be your “Heartbroker.”  This person creates a profile for you, and rates you on attractiveness, intellect, humor, kindness and “outgoingness.”  The idea is that friends will be honest, so the danger of ending up with someone who doesn’t fit their profile, is less likely. The idea is to move away from “self-promotional” language found on other dating sites, and put the social aspect back in dating, according to Social Times.

According to the article: “Once you approve the testimonial from your Heartbroker, it is displayed on your public profile, which can then be viewed by other Heartbroker users...The attribute ratings, on the other hand, remain confidential to encourage honest feedback, and are used to determine compatibility with others. Friends can also try their hand at playing Cupid with Heartbroker by suggesting matches to their single friends.”  The site is currently exclusive to Facebook. 

Google for Weddings
Google has released a site to help you plan your wedding.  Wedding planner Michelle Rago helped design the site and the templates that are available. 

With the tools on the site, you can create invitations, engagement announcements, and photo albums.  In addition, there are Google Doc spreadsheets that allow you to budget your spending, your time, and the responsibilities. There is also a sweepstakes to win $25,000 and the wedding of your dreams, planned with the assistance of Michelle Rago. 

This commentary originally aired on WAMU, American University Radio in Washington, D.C.

By Katisha Frederick

So I’m texting a guy at night. You know, having a general conversation about nothing. And somewhere along the way he asks a very simple question: “Do you smoke?” For a second I’m stuck -- why is he asking me this? But then I decide not to put too much thought into it and just respond with the truth. “No.” Then comes his next text: “Good,” he writes, “it’s not ladylike.”

There’s that annoying word again. Ladylike. Every time I hear it, I picture this imaginary woman. She wakes up in the morning and puts on a skirt, a pretty little blouse, a pair of heels and make-up. She crosses her legs when she sits and speaks in this soft gentle voice.

If my image of being ladylike seems outdated, that’s because it probably is. I’ve never met anyone like that and probably never will. And even though I don’t really want to be that woman, sometimes in small ways I find myself trying to live up to this standard. If I’m talking to a guy and he tells me he prefers me to look more feminine, I’ll choose a skirt and flats even though I’d rather wear jeans and tennis shoes.

But if I step back for a second, I find it strange that I – and people my age – still care about being ladylike, considering how far we’ve come in other ways. Like in school -- we’re all equals, and we’re all taught to dream big.

As a high school senior, I’ve already sent out my college and scholarship applications, and am now waiting for acceptance letters. My family, friends, and mentors expect me to succeed so that I can live out my dream of becoming a graphic designer. And it’s good to know that I’m going through the same tough process as my guy friends.

So why is that even though we’ve made so much progress in school and with our careers, some of us still hold onto some old-fashioned definition of femininity?

I can’t help but wonder how this standard will affect my future. Fast forward 7 years and I’ll be 25. Maybe I’ll have my career and a family -- and what will being ‘ladylike’ mean then? Will it mean that I’m expected to cook, clean, and practically raise a child on my own WHILE working?

That’s definitely NOT a standard I want to hold myself to.

These commentaries by D.C. area teens are part of a collaboration between WAMU's Youth Voices program, Youth Radio and the Latin American Youth Center.

This commentary originally aired on WAMU, American University Radio in Washington, D.C.

By Joel Carela

I've always been put off by TV shows and movies that glorify casual sex. Like the "American Pie" movies, whose main characters are always in search of a quick and easy hook-up. They make the guys who can separate sex and emotions seem normal and emasculate the ones who develop feelings beyond the mattress.

As an emotional person, I never liked that message -- but I guess somehow it seeped into my brain.

This commentary originally aired on WAMU, American University Radio in Washington, D.C.

By Destiny Jackson

It’s normal for teenage girls to get messages on their Myspace or Facebook pages from guys they don’t know. They say things like, “Hey, you look good.” Or simply, “Wats good?”

I always play it safe and ignore these guys -- I don’t know who they are or what their intent is. But one day last year, my best friend found a stranger’s message waiting on her page and she replied.

They started writing back and forth and she realized he had first written to her because she was cute. When he wrote messages like "Baby, you the one for me," she began to feel he truly cared for her. Pretty soon he wrote, "When are we going to see each other?"

I told my friend I was very suspicious -- how did she know this guy wasn’t a grown man who planned to kidnap her? But she met him anyway, alone. Turned out, he was just another teenager from outside DC.

Still, he worried me.

I worried that while my friend said the relationship was serious, she never introduced him to her parents or friends. I worried that no one knew him or even had a connection to him. On dates, they would meet alone at the movie theater or at his house, in a part of Maryland we didn’t know well. And I worried that this 15-year-old guy only wanted one thing from my 14-year-old friend -- sex.

One day she told me she was going to skip school to go to his house. I told her it was dangerous to sneak off without telling someone exactly where she would be. She didn't listen.

After first period music class, the school alerted my friend’s parents that she hadn’t shown up for class.

Then, about half an hour later, my friend called the school crying. Her boyfriend had hurt her and tried to rape her, she said. And she needed to get away from him. Her mom drove to pick her up and the school called the police.

In the end, he didn’t cause much physical harm -- just a few bruises she got while struggling to escape. Things could have been much worse. I could have lost my best friend that day.

For adults, Internet dating has become more and more normal and probably nothing to worry about. But teens may be putting themselves in danger when they seek romance online. If you’re dating someone you know only through the Internet, be honest with your
parents or another adult you trust. Because as teens, our online communities may be growing every day, but the only space where there is reliable accountability is in our real-life community.

These commentaries by D.C. area teens are part of a collaboration between WAMU's Youth Voices program, Youth Radio and the Latin American Youth Center.

Facebook watch out. There’s a new social media cowboy in town. No parents. No alumni. No employers. Just students.

After hearing complaints that students couldn’t be themselves on Facebook because employers check profiles before interviews, or parents check up on your social activities, Josh Weinstein set out to rectify this problem. He is the founder of CollegeOnly, a social media site that is only for college students. “You don’t have to worry about hiding what you’re doing. Just be yourself,” he told Youth Radio.

With the catchy slogan, “Connecting Student Bodies,” the site is launching at various college campuses in time for the 2010 - 2011 school year.  In fact, it launched at University of Pennsylvania today.  Weinstein’s first online social venture was the dating-focused GoodCrush.  He chose the schools to launch CollegeOnly based on how many students were active on GoodCrush.  “We’ve gotten 300 requests to bring CollegeOnly to their campus, but we like to have a connection with someone there.  Students can fill out an application to be a student representative.  We’ll send them t-shirts, wristbands, etc. to help spread the word.”

Weinstein described CollegeOnly as, “an all-purpose social club.” They try to have parties once a month on participating campuses to connect people in person as well as online.  “I created it with the intention of creating real-life connections, and making campus more fun.  We want to get people together figuratively, and physically.”

Some of you may be familiar with Craigslist’s “Missed Connections” section, where people can describe memorable moments or people that passed too quickly, in hopes of re-connecting with that person. CollegeOnly has a Missed Connections section as well, with a unique double-blind feature.  Weinstein said, “It’s like Craigslist, but not as creepy.  With the double-blind feature, you can post anonymously, and people can respond to people anonymously.  You can carry on an anonymous dialogue with another person.”

Weinstein said he knows someone who responded to a Missed Connection post on CollegeOnly that read, “I’m a guy looking for a date,” and they’ve been dating for a while now.  “It’s weird, but awesome,” said Weinstein.  

Weinstein has been fielding many questions about security issues related to CollegeOnly.  He does think that people should separate their public social resume from their online social identity, but students shouldn't have to worry about putting up pictures of their Saturday night celebrations.  A major concern is how to keep alumni off the site.  He responded in a recent blog post: 

A: There is a repository of email addresses that we can cross-reference

A: Our users will be able to submit a list of email addresses (teachers, administrators) to be permanently banned/blocked from the site

A: We have moderators – including current students on-campus

A: We display users’ email addresses (currently to all users, though we may change this to only our moderators) to help crowdsource the solution to this

A: Many schools have prefixes to the school’s email suffix to help weed out unwanted folks (e.g. alumni.princeton.edu, aya.yale.edu, post.harvard.edu)

The Tiger Woods cheating app is now available. Ok, not really, but if you’re the type that dates A LOT of people there is a new app that can help you juggle those romantic meetings, so they don’t overlap.

DateMate serves as a digital planner, the kind that keeps you're booty calls and potential partners organized. The app lets you rate a date and allows you to keep track of how many times you’ve been intimate with ALL your dates and then breaks it down in a graph form.

The basic idea of DateMate is that it allows you to enter details about your partners—birthdays, contact information, silly things that you should recall—and track your encounters with them. The app offers a calendar so that you can keep track of whose bed you were in on which night and a way to rank the dates and create notes about them. Once you've got a bunch of dates under your belt, you can even generate graphs of your activities and compare frequency, quality, and progress.

via Gizmodo

With this app being a player can get easier.
 

Chad Ochocinco is not the "average" NFL player by any means. Aside from being one of the NFL's dominant receivers, he legally changed his last name TO Ochocinco so that he could wear it on his jersey, and was recently on the hit TV show “Dancing with the Stars.” Since we all need more Chad in our lives, we won't have to wait until Sunday to watch him. Chad is set to start his own reality dating show, which is entitled the "The Ultimate Catch." (Note: If you thought “The Ultimate Catch” was the name of a spinoff of “The Deadliest Catch”, you’re not alone)

After reading about the show,I noticed there is something special about this. Is it the fact that 85 women will be placed in a bracket for a single elimination tournament, NCAA style for the star wide receiver's heart?

Or will it be the fact that Chad is already trying way to hard to show his sensitive side?

One thing I want to know is how this show came to life. I can only wonder about it, but were some VH1 executives sitting around and decided to replicate the success of "Flavor of Love", adding in the craziness of "The TO Show", and one man stood up and proudly declared "I KNOW CHAD OCHOCINCO!"? I mean what other NFL player would you rather have on a reality dating show?

And before you say Big Ben please remember that this is on cable, not pay per view. Travis Henry, Kurt Warner (for an extreme wife makeover), Matt Lienart, and just to say it, Karl Malone all would be capable candidates from a comedy standpoint, none are as big right now as Ochocinco, thanks to his recent showing on Dancing With The Stars, and the fact he already was an NFL star before then.

I really want to write more about this, but I can no longer handle reading about this and knowing it's real. I think the show will be just as bad and have forced drama like all the other shows in the Flavor of Love, but once the NFL comes back into the spot light, I will get back on Ochocinco's bandwagon.