Posted on 12/30/2006 7:27:56 PM PST by shrinkermd
It’s hard to write this without sounding like a prig. But it’s just as hard to erase the images that planted the idea for this essay, so here goes. The scene is a middle school auditorium, where girls in teams of three or four are bopping to pop songs at a student talent show. Not bopping, actually, but doing elaborately choreographed re-creations of music videos, in tiny skirts or tight shorts, with bare bellies, rouged cheeks and glittery eyes.
They writhe and strut, shake their bottoms, splay their legs, thrust their chests out and in and out again. Some straddle empty chairs, like lap dancers without laps. They don’t smile much. Their faces are locked from grim exertion, from all that leaping up and lying down without poles to hold onto. “Don’t stop don’t stop,” sings Janet Jackson, all whispery. “Jerk it like you’re making it choke. ...Ohh. I’m so stimulated. Feel so X-rated.” The girls spend a lot of time lying on the floor. They are in the sixth, seventh and eighth grades.
As each routine ends, parents and siblings cheer, whistle and applaud. I just sit there, not fully comprehending. It’s my first suburban Long Island middle school talent show. I’m with my daughter, who is 10 and hadn’t warned me. I’m not sure what I had expected, but it wasn’t this. It was something different. Something younger. Something that didn’t make the girls look so ... one-dimensional.
It would be easy to chalk it up to adolescent rebellion, an ancient and necessary phenomenon, except these girls were barely adolescents and they had nothing to rebel against. This was an official function at a public school, a milieu that in another time or universe might have seen children singing folk ballads, say, or reciting the Gettysburg Address.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Well said. And good for you.
Too many parents use this excuse. There ARE stores that carry cute clothes for girls that are NOT slut-wear, but the parents don't bother shopping there. They're worried their little darlings will be ostracized by the alpha-bitch of the school
If a woman sets out to arouse a man, and then gets raped, yes it's rape and rape is always wrong. But to suggest her behavior did not contribute is dumb.
It goes a little beyond that. If a woman sets out to arouse a man to prove the power she has over him it may contribute to his showing her her limits in a like manner.
Of course the rapist should be severely punished and yes even whores like the princess in the Nifong case can be raped.
I graduated in 1988, so Im not THAT old (kidding!!!) and the big controversy my senior year was, the prom committee wanted to use the Bon Jovi song, "Never Say Goodbye" as our prom theme, and we werent allowed to because it contained the lyric "remember when we lost the keys and you lost more than that in my backseat" I dont remember any parents or members of the staff supporting the prom committee's choice of song. This was in a public school in a New York City suburb. So I really think this is a generational thing and not a public vs private school thing.
Ginsberg of the subpremes is actually on record as all for it!
Amen. We fight the little fights. The big ones don't even come up very often. E.G. disobedience is disobedience. We don't distinguish disobeying about keeping your voice down and something more serious. The problem is disobedience, not the particular acts that comprise it.
Public school? Enough said. Parents who care, and who are able, don't send their kids to government schools.
I take issue with your statement. I find it completely reasonable for teenage boys, even the best of them, to be extremely confused by the behavior of girls such as described.
Don't we call it sexual harassment when boys act out in such overt ways?
I think you were misreading it. This issue comes up in our church when, on occasion, teenage girls have spoken to the congregation about their mission trip in wildly inappropriate clothing (and we're a come-as-you-are church). When men have objected, the response from the women has roughly translated been, "that's your problem." Nope. It's our problem. The girls dress like that for a purpose. Then whine that it's someone else's problem when they succeed. They want the benefits of deliberately arousing men without any of the downsides. And it doesn't work that way.
The reality is males are on a bell curve in appropriate responses to arousal. Girls who strut around half naked frequently enough will eventually encounter one of the 99.9 percenters on the inappropriate response bell curve on a bad night. Does that make the response appropriate? No. But have the girls just increased the chance of an inappropriate response by an order of magnitude? Yes.
Girls figure out young that they get stuff they want by acting like that. They also get stuff they don't want. It's all part of the same package. Take it or leave it.
I work in a middle school too, and if you could see the stuff the drill team does, you'd shudder head to toe. It's hair-raising. And it's adults teaching them to do it!! That's what really blows me away.
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What someone needs to tell these "young ladies" is if you dress like a slut, you'll be treated like a slut, and some "young man" won't be understanding if and when you say...no.
It's the Baby Boomers' fault! (Well, a lot of Freepers will tell you it is...)
The most important reason my kids are relatively untouched by this stuff is they don't watch TV. We have a TV in the house, but no cable for it, and the only channel we receive with the antenna is the local PBS station, so the only time it's ever on is when they are playing videos we have approved or when our 4-year-old is watching a harmless kid's show like Sesame Street or Arthur.
Regarding the public sluttiness -- there is a really big difference between school districts, it comes down very simply to leadership. Most parents are sheep who won't object to the sluttiness if it is rampant, but who will conform to proper standards if the community sets them.
In the high school my kids go to (9th grade girl, 12th grade boy) the teenagers are very sexually aware, but there is an enforced dress code and the school events are well-supervised. If my kids hung out with the wrong friends they'd be exposed to a lot of bad stuff, and the school is not teaching any *positive* moral messages regarding sex, but at least it is not providing an environment which overwhelmingly negates what we try to teach our kids (it subtly negates it in some ways, but we can counter those).
If the kid has unsupervised TV watching, a school that doesn't set standards, and a community that doesn't care, it's extremely difficult for parents to counteract the bad influences.
He meant a "Prick."
where are we going, and what are we doing in this handbasket?
I actually met them at the Memphis Film Festival last year.
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