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Home  Community Family Food for Thought "Pop Culture is Bursting the Bubble of Our Children's Innocence" by Beverly Beckham, Boston Globe
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11-28-2005 |
Pop Culture is Bursting the Bubble
of Our Children's Innocence
by Beverly Beckham
Boston Globe
It was the Sunday before Halloween and the children came to church
dressed not as ninjas or vixens but as saints. They'd been asked
to do this and dozens did, young kids and older ones, arriving in
flowing
robes and sandals; and the priest invited them all up to the
altar.
"Can you tell us a little about your saint?" he asked. And the
children raised their hands and took turns speaking. "St. Francis
loved animals." "St. Joseph was a carpenter." "St. Joan was
a French soldier."
After Mass, there were doughnuts and drinks and a small book of saints for each of them.
This is one story.
Here is the other.
At a mall later that day, children just a little bit older than the
saints were also pretending to be someone else - was it Paris
Hilton? Mariah Carey? Hard to say - as they strutted around
the food court in high boots, low-rise jeans and tops that literally
were only tops, not covering their middles at all.
One girl, 14, maybe 12, sat down and her backside was exposed.
She didn't seem to realize this because, despite her appearance, she
was just a kid, chatting with her friend, just like the girls who that
morning had been dressed as saints.
But, oh, what a different impression she made.
You can't judge a book by its cover. But we're not talking
books. We're talking children who are walking around with too
much of their bodies exposed.
Where are the adults, the protectors, the guides, the mothers and fathers who are supposed to be looking out for these kids?
Forty years ago, adult women broke free of this one-dimensional
role. Betty Boop was out, Betty Friedan in. So what
happened? How did we go from a I-am-what-I-am feminism to a
geisha-like sexism that has trickled all the way down to grammar school?
It's bad enough when grown women act and dress like kids. But it's worse when kids act and dress like grown women.
When JonBenet Ramsey was found murdered in Colorado nine years ago, the
image of a 6-year-old in makeup disturbed people, never mind that she
competed in beauty pageants. The whole thing struck most
Americans as bizarre.
Now there are JonBenets everywhere, on the streets, at the malls,
shivering outside in scanty clothes waiting for the school bus.
Seven-year-olds have birthday parties at hair salons.
Ten-year-olds get their hair colored. Teenage girls beg to have
their breasts enlarged.
Pop culture is destroying our daughters. Sitcoms.
Music. Movies. Clothing. Even toys. We have the
Amber alert for abduction. But there is no alert for this.
Bratz, a line of collagen-lipped, sexed-up, tittering dolls, is edging
out Barbie as America's favorite teenager. Not that Barbie is a
great role model. But compared with Bratz dolls, which have a Web
site, a television series, a video game, a DVD, and a new magazine,
Barbie is Snow White.
The worst thing about Bratz is not their motto, "A passion for
fashion"; not their "Flaunt it or forget it" advice ("Rockers would
never wear pastels, butterflies, Capri pants, flower prints, glow
necklaces or mesh Chinese slippers"); not what they tell kids leaving
their Web site: "Above all be beautiful"; not their name, which
is obnoxious and mispelled. But that they are everywhere.
And that they are being marketed to children ages 6 and up
For even younger children, ages 4 and up, there are Bratz Babyz,
younger dolls with the same pouty lips, short skirts and exposed
midrifs as their older counterparts, only slung over their shoulders is
a baby bottle instead of a pocketbook.
What next? Beer for the dolls? A mirror, some fake cocaine? A runway doll?
Earlier this month, Abercrombie & Fitch stopped selling several of
their T-shirts because a group of teenage girls from the Women and
Girls Foundation of Southwest Pennsylvania found them offensive.
"Who needs brains when you have these?" and "Available for parties"
read some of the shirts.
Why aren't more women and men protesting? How is it that parents
go from Baby Einstein and Fisher Price toys, from monitoring everything
children are exposed to, to allowing everything?
What we're teaching our daughters by not teaching them is that the way
to get attention is to color their hair and paint their faces and wear
tight clothes and shorts with writing on the rear and strut and pose
and worry about what they look like and not be kids at all.
Childhood doesn't last long even when kids aren't being pushed to grow up.
But when they are, it's over before it's begun.
(Reprinted with permission of the Boston Globe)
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