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"I'm sixteen. Looking at linoleum makes me think about sex."
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Teenagers in real life are susceptible to hormones, but have plenty of hobbies, interests, and concerns outside of their sex lives. In fiction, though? Expect every teenage girl to melt into a panting, whimpering puddle as she chases after her crush or every teenage boy to drop dead of horniness the second a girl in a miniskirt crosses his path. All these characters can think about is making out, getting laid, looking hot in order to achieve these things, and the Porn Stash they keep under their bed.

This can veer into Unfortunate Implications when this is portrayed as so normal that any teenager who isn't obsessed with getting laid or staring at naked people is considered "weird" or "babyish" or "a geek." If one of those teens is the main character, the "solution" is for their friends to give them a makeover or set them up on a blind date to "fix" them, or developing an interest in dating or sex is seen as them "growing up".

It can be doubly unfortunate if these horny teens are LGBT. While it's certainly okay and normal for LGBT teens to feel horny, depending on how it's written it can play into the "predatory queer" stereotype, especially if the LGBT character endlessly lusts and chases after a straight one who is decidedly not interested,

(Younger) Sister Trope of All Women Are Lustful and All Men Are Perverts. As with adult characters, there's no such thing as Asexuality, and there are almost always No Bisexuals, especially among teen boys.

This trope comes from the same sort of mindset as Everybody Has Lots of Sex, since both tropes assume that involvement with the opposite sex is highly important to everyone, but usually not alongside it except in a particularly risqué depiction of the high school setting.

Though this is taken to severe extremes in fiction, many adults and even some teenagers (and this DOES vary by community) will agree that this is Truth in Television far too often.

Its opposite is Chaste Teens.

Examples of Hormone-Addled Teenager include:


Anime and Manga[]

  • Iceland from Hetalia. In the 2010 Christmas Bloodbath he gets distracted by Germany's muscles, and in the 2011 one he appears to have an Erotic Dream about Turkey.
  • Sailor Moon: Minako Aino is quite boy-crazy, and so is Makoto Kino in the first anime.
    • Usagi herself has this when it comes to her main squeeze Mamoru, even going so far as to fantasize about him shirtless in the manga. She also has a bit of an eye for cute girls.
    • The Rei from the first series was like this at times, even if not as much as Minako and Makoto. (Keyword being, "as").
    • Ami, especially in the first anime, was a huge Covert Pervert.

Film[]

  • Played straight in Mean Girls, of course, but the movie is also a satire.
  • She's All That turns the female lead partly into this, complete with Unnecessary Makeover. It still possesses a good Aesop about staying true to who you are, though, even if it's slightly undermined by the implication that you still need to look like everyone else.
  • The Bratz movie is a particularly Egregious offender on the fashion-obsession front, but that movie is an Egregious offender against humanity.
  • Thirteen Going On Thirty, though not so much on the dating front. Definitely fits the fashion-obsession angle, though.
  • Amy Dolenz's character in the Tony Danza film She's Out of Control.
  • Male example in the film adaptation of The Dark Is Rising. In the books, Will is a thoughtful eleven-year-old who's described as 'wise for his years'. In the movie, he's a fourteen-year-old Jerkass who immediately wants to use his newfound powers to get a girl.
  • The daughter in Legion before all heaven breaks loose.

Literature[]

  • Played straight in Dean Koontz's Phantoms, where it's specifically said that the fourteen-year-old girl is 'at that stage where most girls were obsessively concerned with boys, boys above all else' and opens the book with her arguing with her older sister about dating. She gains more personality as the story goes on, however.
  • Played extremely straight in Twilight; all Bella does is obsess over Edward and how perfect he is. Most of the other female characters aren't much better. Edward is just as bad (if not worse, given his stalker-ish tendencies), and practically every other male thinks about little besides Bella.
    • One of the harshest criticisms leveled against New Moon is Bella's reaction to Edward leaving her, which includes pages left blank for the first four months he's gone, implying that without him her life is literally nothing.
  • Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.. In all fairness, it was written in 1970, when discussing things like periods and puberty outside of health class was still somewhat taboo. Judy Blume was somewhat notorious for tropes like this, which gave a coronary to the Moral Guardians of the day, but back then the intent was to show girls that was all OKAY.
  • In A Song of Ice and Fire, Daenerys suddenly starts acting very hormonal in A Dance with Dragons.
  • Used heartbreakingly in the Lois Lowry YA book A Summer to Die--Molly, the elder sister, is obsessed with boys and the idea of getting married, to the severe annoyance of her younger sister Meg (who is secretly jealous of Molly's boyfriends and good looks). Molly gets sick and Meg at first resents that all her parents' attention is paid to her sister, until she realizes Molly's illness is something serious (it turns out to be leukemia) and she's going to die. Thoughts of boys and weddings help Molly keep some semblance of an idea that she's still a person, not just a terminal patient.
  • In the Discworld "witches" plotline, both Magrat and Verence fall under this trope. As in many of the Discworld books, it's Played for Laughs (and Verence and Magrat are both presumably out of their teens, if not by much.)
  • The Dresden Files (of course): Molly Carpenter is a Perky Goth version of this. When she first becomes important to the story, she's dropped out of school, gotten a bunch of tattoos and piercings, started hanging around with the wrong crowd, and dresses like, in the protagonist's words, "Frankenhooker." She avoids going home whenever possible because any conversation she has with her mother turns into a shouting match inside of ten seconds, and develops a bit of a crush on Harry mostly because her mother hates him. She also started using Black Magic; this, naturally, does not go well. On the plus side, when she ends up as Harry's apprentice, she has to follow his rules moderating the worst of her behavior.
  • In The Red Tent, Dinah looks forward to having her first period (and thus becoming a full-fledged member of the Red Tent's inner circle with her mom and aunts), and undergoing the mysterious Ritual of Opening so that she is considered a woman and not a little girl. When that finally does happen, she actually looks forward to getting her period every month and the New Moon rituals in the tent done at that time.
  • Played painfully straight in Carter Finally Gets It, which is a book about a suspiciously Xander-like boy who's absolutely obsessed with BOOBS, as are all his male friends.
  • Stacey McGill in The Baby Sitters Club. Heck, the second book from her POV is even titled "Boy-Crazy Stacey", wherein she spends two thirds of the story fawning over a hot lifeguard who's way too old for her and has a meltdown when she spots him kissing a girl his age.

Live Action TV[]

  • Given that the murder victim in Twin Peaks is one, it's only natural that the scenes focusing on her high school peers would play out like a high school soap opera about Hormone Addled Teenagers.
  • 8 Simple Rules. Just 8 Simple Rules. The elder daughter in particular is almost as stereotyped as you can get, and a complete airhead to boot.
  • Pick a Disney Channel show. Any Disney Channel show.
    • Hannah Montana.
    • Lizzie McGuire, when it was on.
    • The female guest stars on The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, which also makes the titular twins interested in girls even before they've hit puberty.
    • Downplayed on Girl Meets World. Farkle had the hots for Riley and Maya, Riley had it bad for Lucas, and Maya panted after Josh, but the show kept the kids as nuanced as possible beyond their budding teen hormones.
  • ICarly follows the "tomboy" aspect to the letter with Sam, but averts the trope as a whole, but does the occasional episode like iDate A Bad Boy or iSaved Your Life, where the trope plays out pretty spot on.
  • Full House, with DJ in particular. Also her friend Kimmy. Stephanie starts becoming this in her pre-teen years, and especially by the last seasons.
  • Ashley in the execrable and short-lived sitcom Two of a Kind.
  • Samantha on Whos the Boss. This really was something of a staple of 1980s/1990s sitcoms. Of course, this invokes the Overprotective Dad trope.
  • Gossip Girl.
  • Dawson's Creek.
  • Tiffany Malloy of Unhappily Ever After is a subversion; while she nearly always dresses to show off her gorgeous body to the boys, she remains a virgin by choice throughout the series.
  • Both of the Bundy siblings (Kelly and Bud) of Married... with Children are the Trope Codifiers, if not the Ur Examples.
  • Degrassi the Next Generation is an example of this trope regularly. However, a teacher in the series mentions this trope by name (in an example of Alternate Character Interpretation) talking about Romeo and Juliet should get an honorary mention.
  • Cordelia from Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a textbook example. Buffy herself averts it, at first only because her responsibilities as Slayer prevent it, but she grows up as the series goes on.
  • In Season 3 of Outnumbered, a BBC sitcom about a pretty realistic, rather-dysfunctional family, all Jake's storylines involve his new tendency to stare at women, making him pretty lecherous for a 14-year-old.
    • This is probably an attempt to add attributes and plotlines to an otherwise fairly uninteresting character, who is constantly upstaged by the other children on the show.
  • Half the cast of Saved by the Bell, especially Zack, Lisa, and Screech. Jessie, being the Soapbox Sadie, is the biggest aversion. (Though even she's not immune when it comes to Slater.)
  • Blossom tended to feature this, though Six was an example of this to a larger degree than Blossom herself.
  • Discussed on The West Wing:
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 Reverend Van Dyke: Show the average American teenage male a condom and his mind will turn to thoughts of lust.

Toby: Show the average American teenage male a lug wrench and his mind'll turn...

C.J.: Toby!

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  • Brad Taylor on Home Improvement. Especially when it comes to Heidi the Tool Girl, whom he has a massive crush on.
  • Despite (or possibly because of) their wholesome Christian upbringing, all of the Camden children were this as teenagers on 7th Heaven. Especially Simon and Lucy.
  • Ephram on Everwood.
  • Becky on Roseanne had several different boyfriends before settling down with Mark. DJ also became this in the last few seasons. Darlene initially seemed to avert the trope...until she and David got serious and couldn't keep their hands off each other.
  • Cory, Shawn, and Eric on Boy Meets World, especially the latter two. Cory is a little more reserved about it and is still kind of a kid at heart, but season two has him catching up to his friend and his brother in the girl obsession department. Then he and Topanga hook up and can't keep their hands off each other.
  • All the teen characters in That 70s Show were this to one or another degree, especially Kelso and Fez.
  • Greg and Marcia on The Brady Bunch are young teens when the show starts, so they get plenty of episodes about lusting after the opposite sex. Peter is this to a slightly lesser degree when he becomes a teen, but Jan is an aversion; she's definitely interested in boys, but doesn't drool over them the way her sister does.
  • Eddie Winslow on Family Matters is obsessed with the "fly honeys" till he reaches adulthood and gets serious about a woman named Greta. Laura is this to a slightly lesser extent, but her best friend Maxine plays the role till she and Eddie's friend Waldo start dating.

Music[]

  • Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" is from the POV of a girl like this.

Toys[]

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    • Barbie eventually grew out of this with her and her friends gaining more rounded personalities and mainly focusing on their goals. (Barbie has acting, Teresa has fashion design, Grace has sports, Summer has writing and so on.)
  • Likewise, the Bratz dolls advocated shopping and fashion as a cure for all of life's woes. To say nothing of their actual appearance and, uh, taste in fashion.

Video Games[]

  • Fire Emblem has quite a few thirsty teenagers:
    • Silvia from Genealogy of the Holy War flirts with Lewyn, Alec and Sigurd, and is very sexual in general.
    • Ewan from The Sacred Stones is a bit of a Kidanova, and in the Japanese version he's quite perverted towards his potential love interest Amelia.
    • Inigo from Awakening is a slightly older variant; it's unknown exactly how old the future kids are but he looks to be at least in his mid-late teens AND Nah explicitly says they're among the youngest of the group. He's mostly outgrown it when he becomes the older and wiser Laslow in Fates.
    • Hilda Valentine Goneril and Sylvain José Gautier from Three Houses are this trope to a T. Hilda's final support with Caspar implies she really wants to jump his bones whereas he's Oblivious to Love, while Sylvain is a known skirt-chaser and the local Chivalrous Pervert.
      • Ashe Ubert is a more subdued version of this; while he's mostly sweet and wholesome, his supports with Hapi reveal he has a secret love for smutty novels.
  • Street Fighter: Has Ibuki who despite being a highly competent ninja she is portrayed as boy crazy to the point of being one of her weaknesses. She skips a ninja assignment in the fourth game for the chance to meet men, only stays in a party because of the promise of good looking men being there.
    • The comics take this further, having Ibuki only sign up for her university because a handsome man was running it's advertisement and being legit heartbroken when Akira Kazama was female when Ibuki thought that he was a "bad boy" earlier.

Web Original[]

Western Animation[]