Mixed Signals : Do pop culture images reflect a sexually confused generation? Or do they just give youth the freedom to talk about their feelings?

Ludwig, 20, is calling to talk about some homosexual experiences he had two years ago.

Dr. Drew Pinsky, better known simply as Dr. Drew, host of KROQ-FM’s “Love Line” talk show, delves into Ludwig’s past.

“Is this the first time . . . you had sex with a man?”

“Yeah.”

“And then prior to that, no bisexual feelings or experiences?”

“No. I mean, not like strongly or anything. Maybe, like, minor. . . . That doesn’t make me gay or anything, does it?”

“Perhaps this is sort of the beginning of your homosexual feelings, or maybe this was just experimentation, or maybe you’re truly bisexual, I don’t know.”

“I mean, I don’t really strongly feel that way, though.”

“You sound kind of confused more than anything.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

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The caller’s question is much like others Pinsky has been getting recently. The South Pasadena internist, who fields queries on everything from dating to AIDS prevention, reports a recent increase in calls from young men and women grappling with issues of sexual ambiguity.

Some tell of getting drunk and having sex with someone of the same gender. They wonder if they’re gay, or if they might have been infected with the AIDS virus. Others say their homosexual feelings clash with their desire to be straight. And some, like Ludwig, feel attracted to men and women and wonder what it means. The KROQ lines light up for two hours five nights a week as callers try to sort through the tangles.

Some experts believe that a growing number of adolescents and young adults are acting out feelings of sexual confusion. That behavior, they say, is reflected in pop culture’s homosexual, bisexual and sexually ambiguous images: Madonna’s infamous “Justify My Love” music video, featuring the singer kissing a woman dressed as a man; a recent Vanity Fair cover that has leggy model Cindy Crawford shaving an un-closeted k.d. lang; the film “The Crying Game,” with a plot twist featuring Jaye Davidson in a gender-bending surprise.

But others argue that the numbers are not growing, that adolescence and experimentation are inseparable, always have been, and that such images are merely creating a more open atmosphere for talk about sex.

Society’s growing acceptance of homosexuality and bisexuality is unlikely to propel anyone to experiment who isn’t biologically predisposed, the experts say. And some cite fear of contracting HIV and sexually transmitted diseases as a barrier to experimentation.

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KROQ’s Pinsky says he hears firsthand the products of a confused generation.

“I’ve never seen objective corroboration of it,” he says, “but my sense is that (more teen-agers and young adults are experimenting with homosexuality and bisexuality). All of a sudden, about a year, year and a half ago, it just became the topic. First I noticed that it was not just considered OK (among teen-agers), it was endorsed . . . it was cool.”

He theorizes that “a lot of the acting out and the emotional chaos is the result of childhood trauma, primarily sexual and physical abuse. Why that group of individuals’ (behavior) is being reinforced as cool by the community, I don’t know. But they’re sort of setting the trends. . . . When you see young people acting out emotional turmoil, you end up with more emotional turmoil, and more chaos and more pain and more confusion. To have ambivalent feelings about your sexuality is just fine, but I think to act on them, just like any other ambivalent feelings, can create more problems.”

Stan Ziegler, a Beverly Hills psychologist who writes an advice column for the national teen newspaper Noise, says he’s seeing more experimentation, too.

“The world has become a more complicated place in a lot of ways. If we look at sitcoms in the ‘50s, there was one wage-earner and the wife was behind the picket fence. . . . Teens are entering a world now in which how a man becomes a man is much less clear. Some of the lack of clarity is exciting, it allows us more room to express parts of ourselves.

“So a lot of those questions young men and women are asking is reflected in sexual experimentation, and what that is saying about who they are in terms of sexual human beings.”

Noise published one letter from a Thousand Oaks 17-year-old who identified himself as straight, but he added that he had had too much to drink at a party and had sex with another guy. After that letter ran, Ziegler said he received similar ones.

“They are trying to understand what these feelings are,” he says. “I know that 25 years ago, our society didn’t give young people the permission to ask those questions. And I don’t think that this is going to change statistics about what percentage of the population is primarily heterosexual or homosexual. But in the process of (becoming comfortable with sexual orientation), our society is making it more comfortable to ask questions and experiment.”

But others who work with youths doubt that pop culture reflects an increase in experimentation. Rather, they see the images as signs of an unprecedented openness about the various forms of sexuality.

“It is a topic that people can put words to, more than they could 10 years ago,” says Louise Douce, director of counseling and consultation services at Ohio State University. “I’m seeing students coming in (specifically) to discuss sexual identity issues. Before, they’d be with a counselor for a while before that was brought up. Whether or not they’re acting out their feelings, I don’t know. But there is less shoving away of feelings. . . .”

Says James Babl, a psychologist and therapist at UCLA’s Student Psychological Services: “It might give people more permission to portray themselves more androgynously, but how you dress is very different from how you act in bed. I think for the person who is gay or lesbian or bisexual, the more permissive the culture, the more likely they are to come out. But it won’t make heterosexuals into homosexuals.”

David Stewart, a USC marketing professor, sees a chicken-or-egg relationship between the media’s images and how the culture is grappling with them.

“The advertising and media we’re exposed to really reflects the greater variety (of expressions of sexuality) in the culture,” he says. “That, in turn, legitimizes the opportunity for people to experiment. If the media represents people who wouldn’t have been considered mainstream years ago, people who are experimenting with their own sexual identity, that legitimizes experimentation for other individuals. That further changes the culture, which is again reflected in the media.”

But Paul Abramson, a UCLA psychology professor who specializes in human sexuality, says what we see in videos and on magazine covers is not a true reflection of what’s going on with teen-agers and young adults today.

“I do not believe that this necessarily mirrors a difference in overt behavior, but a reflection of the true nature of human sexuality,” he says.

Abramson adds that information about sexuality is spreading--via television, films and print media--across the globe and that forms of sexuality that seem foreign to one culture may be perfectly acceptable to another.

“A lot of what’s being reflected,” he adds, “is the cultural variability. Before, our ideas about sex (were) closeted. So what you’re basically seeing is a greater expression in a conceptual way of what sex means.”

Abramson says the exchange of ideas “allows people who have confusion or conflict to discuss these things. . . . I think it will actually be more refreshing for them and less confining. It provides an opportunity to let the true person unfold.”

USC senior Mark Malan, 22, is encouraged that more celebrities like k.d. lang or Andy Bell, of Erasure, are either coming out or exploring the different sides of their sexuality.

“People are finally being who they are, rather than . . . hiding behind the facade of a straight person,” says Malan, who oversees the campus’s Gay and Lesbian Assembly for Student Support. “For me, it’s encouraging to see the cover of Vanity Fair. It’s finally giving me role models who are public.”

Paulino Tamayo felt enough of a sense of tolerance at UCLA to come out in his freshman year.

Now a 19-year-old UCLA junior and co-chairman of the school’s Multi-Cultural Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Alliance, he attended an all-male private high school where homophobia was strong.

“College is certainly an opportunity for many people to express their ideas . . . and it has an atmosphere that allows people to deal with issues that you could never deal with in high school. . . . I see a lot of people taking advantage of (the openness), calling this office and using the support networks.

“In terms of people experimenting more, I would say no. I definitely feel, though, that people are talking about (sexuality). They’re exploring it as an issue, and it’s something they’re no longer afraid (of).”

Linda Coffman, a 31-year-old USC senior and executive co-director of the Gay and Lesbian Assembly for Student Support, sees good and bad in the media’s attention to sexual ambiguity.

“My perspective is that mainstream America has just discovered a whole new side to sexuality,” she says. “I think, on the one hand, the exposure for our community is good, but on the other hand, I see it as trendy, a bit trivializing.”

And how does she see this new generation coming to terms with sexuality?

“My impression is that they go through the same feelings (that I did). But they have better information now. We have better support systems, better role models and more of them than, say, a decade ago. These people I speak with are just as confused, and I identify just as much with what they’re going through.

“Someone like k.d. lang is very successful, and it has nothing to do with her sexuality. . . . Role models are so badly needed. To the despairing gay youth, something like that has got to mean so much.”