Allison claims to be a nymphomaniac. She and the others goad Claire to
"just answer the question"-the question being: Are you or are you not a 
virgin? Have you ever "done it"?
Allison: "It's kind of a double-edged sword, isn't it?"
Claire: "A what?"
Allison: "Well, if you say you haven't, you're a prude; if you say you have, you're a slut. It's a trap. You want to but you can't and when you do you wish you didn't, right? Or are you a tease?"
Andrew: "She's a tease. All girls are teases."

"Let's talk about sex, baby/ Let's talk about you 'n' me/ Let's talk about all the good things/ And the bad things that may be/ Let's talk about sex." Salt-'n'-Pepa.

The scene's pressure builds until Claire finally yells "No! I never did it!" Allison then admits, "I never did it either. I would do it, though. If you love someone its okay." By the end of the movie, Allison and Claire have both formed unlikely pairs-with Andrew and Bender, respectively. Viewing The Breakfast Club and other films in the genre, Sarah Crichton argued on the pages of Ms. that all teen movies are, in the final analysis, about teen sex. "Did the deb and the punk do it in the storage closet?" She leaves him with her diamond earring, after all, and "What girl gives diamonds for good necking?" (Crichton 90). The feminist critique it that first-time teen sex, a hopelessly messy affair, is portrayed as not only good but redemptive for the previously cold and hard-hearted girls: "The deb . . . will break free from mindless popularity; the basket case will flower into a tender woman. . . . And all the girls will be beholden to their sweet saviors" (Crichton 90).

"[T]he only realistic thing about teen sex in their movies is that no one uses birth control. And the movies end before anyone can see the result" (Crichton 91). The teenage pregnancy "epidemic"-"babies having babies"-was not really quite so epidemic as the media made it out to be, but lots of Breakfast Clubbers had more than a scare (see Males, Holtz). And lots more picked up a sexually transmitted diseases, including AIDS. In 1985, AIDS still seemed like something that only inner-city IV drug users and gay men (and a few recipients of blood transfusions, like Ryan White) could catch. Certainly not The Breakfast Club in their safe white middle-class Chicago suburb. So even if Claire and Bender did do more than make out, it all seems somehow innocent in comparison to the relationships of Breakfast Clubbers today and probably a lot simpler that it ever was.

We can resent the old images of carefree casual sex, we can practice "serial monogamy," we can long to reestablish-at least as individuals-stable lasting marriages, but we can't make sex as simple as a romp in the closet. Allison's right: "If you love someone it's okay." If not it's just not worth it-the danger, the potential cost, is just too high. We know the images of odd-couple hook-ups in The Breakfast Club are fantasies; we knew it then, too.