Call to Arms
I was taking a shower sometime ago, pondering a conversation that I had had with my 15 yo daughter, now 17. I had happened onto OMG blog while browsing the net and it set off a mental chain reaction in my mind....
But to understand what I'm talking about, we'd have to begin at the beginning. Like I said, I was on the OMG website where they were panning celebrity style and happened on a picture of Paris Hilton...looking well, like a reject addict from the Planet Zork. I got to thinking after reading the comments on her picture..fake tan, feed the child etc...and had my usual "who gives a rats patootie reaction" for a moment. But something struck me which set off previously mentioned train of thot...apparently this ugly spoilt rich girl is routinely thought of as a "hottie" and marketed as such. This brings to mind another of her ilk - Tila Tequila.
Now, being a middle-aged hausfrau with all the truisms about middle-aged hausfraus, you'll forgive me for not entertaining the idea that this lost child with so much wasted opportunity whose main claim to fame is that she's been screwed more than "joe the plumbers" power tools, is "HOT"...that got me to wondering what this world has come to and from there, to what it means to be a parent these days and who is going to be parenting the children who are our future...
As a tough single mom who's raised two teenagers...and had more than my fair share of angst in doing so..., I learnt a few lessons along the way.
I have a son and a daughter, both of whom watch popular TV daily and draw a lot of their sense (whether I like it or not) of right and wrong and what to do or not do, from what they see on TV. It was hard, convincing my children that what they see on TV is not necessarily real or true. This is concerning, given the widespread availability of TV and the fact that it babysits our kids. It meant sometimes, having to be brutally honest about my reactions and why I believed as I did, even to telling them things sometimes about myself I'd have preferred not to.
Now I'm not a liberal nor conservative. I dont believe in protecting my children from the perils of the world. I believe strongly that allowing them to engage in the world (with all its vices) and teaching them to navigate those terrifying shoals with a knowledgeable and independent mind is a better way to manage their minds and their lives since I won't be there at every decision point to save them from themselves. Thankfully, this has been borne out in the two outstanding kids that I've raised. I never made any restrictions about what to watch but engaged in conversations with them about right and wrong and taught them to make good decisions about the issues they were exposed to. The end result, satisfyingly, is two kids who are smart and sensible, able to go out into the world and not follow fads or fashions but who remain grounded and set on their own true north, but, IT WASNT EASY!!!
I know there is a constantly raging battle about censorship and accountability and whether we should stop our children from using the internet, playing certain video games, watching certain types of TV etc since the powers that be in the worlds of media content seem determined to turn every young male into a "rutting" boar and every young female into an objectified empty headed bimbo, always on for free sex and inclined to every libidinous gratification. In fact, you would be hardpressed to find any game, video or TV show that doesnt address or sell sex and gratuitous violence in one form or another and apparently, to all intents and purposes, that is all the adult world is about.
Putting all the pros and cons of that battle aside, is there anyone that truly thinks Paris Hilton is happy, that she wouldn't be much more fulfilled in her life if she had higher standards for herself than being the sexual train station for the developed world??!!! Are we so lost to any objective measure of morality or sense of right and wrong that we dont see the damage that this consumerist gluttonous search for pleasure and the visual and auditory overindulgence in all manner of depravity - whether sexual, gustatory, or vanity is having on our society?!! Is Paris Hilton really hot! Or is she just the poster child for lost-in-translation, like others of her ilk - "The Kardashians, Kendra, Tila, and Lindsay Lohan, to name a few.
As a feminist myself, I am thrilled that as women, we have the freedom to express ourselves, have a right to our own bodies and can make informed decisions about our lives and can live independently. However, watching women today is like watching a train going backwards...we have allowed our freedoms to be mutated into the right to "f..k" at the drop of a hat, losing all sense of proportion and balance about the niceties of social interaction between men and women and our responsibilities to ourselves.
As my son said to me when I had this discussion with him...well, mom, you have a daughter, better do right by her coz I, for one, am thrilled that girls put out at the drop of a hat. In response to whether he would seriously marry any of the girls he was making time with, his answer...the same one I got from guys my age when I was growing up - an emphatic HELL NO!!! That being so, I guess guys really havent changed that much, despite all this permissiveness of the current generation.
Is it any wonder then, that women are finding themselves in large numbers - single and unwanted? Who wants a woman who's had more guys than a prostitute. Which husband wants to walk down the street with his wife and have 200 men able to describe her in exquisite detail...and in today's parlance, complete with video captions and youtube podcasts and personal downloads for any guys' collection. And for the women who disagree...how would you like to walk down the street and have every one in your neighborhood be able to describe your husbands sexual peccadillos? So what makes any young woman think that this would be anymore acceptable to guys?
Men, wonderful Neanderthals, that they are, havent changed much from prehistoria, despite this new de-evolution of women, and I've asked every young man my son has ever brought home, how they feel about these women being served up on TV and the girls they are dating and sleeping with. I have yet to meet one who has said Yes, I'd take that girl home to meet my parents. By the same token, I've polled my children's female friends on their attitudes towards sex and overwhelming, they seem to think that "putting out", makes them popular and wanted...WHO IS TEACHING THESE GIRLS?!!!
Television today is mostly soft porn. Given how much guys' like porn, is it any wonder that for them, today's TV is a veritable smorgasbord of pornographic entertainment?! No longer do they have to sneak around to rent or buy DVDs/videos and magazines. All they have to do is turn on the TV and Kendra, Kim or Paris will be only too happy to serve up a steady diet of pornographic titillation for free.. and it gets better.... go on the Net and there's thousands of free sites for amateur shenanigans, served up by misguided young girls who think that offering up their bodies is the way to a man's heart. WHO TAUGHT THEM THIS IDIOCY and how have mothers and grandmothers allowed this to occur?
Now I realize that many of the mothers of today, grew up in the free love 60s, out of which the bra-burnings and free sex ethos evolved. Subsequently, these women became mothers who apparently were so in love with their new theories of freedom, they taught 2 generations of women to sell themselves so cheaply as to become unworthy of purchase. You see, the old adage does still ring true. "Why buy the cow if you can get the milk for free". That is the penalty being meted out to our young women today.
No longer can our young women count on a guy marrying them just because they've dated them, no longer do guys hold themselves responsible for the families they create...they are too busy enjoying the many low-hanging fruit of these women who have lost all sense of propriety or perhaps, never had it taught to them at all.
At some point, we as adults in the communities we live in, and the jobs we work in, have to take responsibility for the reprehensibility of the society we live in. I'm not advocating a return to the dark ages...but I sure would love to watch a TV show, just once, that had the class not to demonstrate in GRAPHIC detail, what happened when the man and woman involved went to the bedroom. It is not germane to any tale being told...THAT is what porn is for. No, adults do not routinely break furniture, throw dishes on the floor and screw in hot tubs, while waterboarding, in car trunks, while tied up, gagged and drunk. We arent routinely maimed, raped, killed for sex as TV would have you believe today. Most of us are too busy working and trying to make ends meet actually, and go to bed, pleading headaches, earaches or are just too plain bloody tired to give a DAMN about sex. Can we teach THAT to these kids too, that there is more, much more to growing up, than an endless diet of sex and self-gratification?!!!
We need to resurrect a sense of propriety about ourselves as people and a society and to once again teach some moral fortitude to our children. This latest generation is so at risk that it is scary. I expect them to start doing drugs at age 3, start SELLING their sexual favors at age 5, perhaps then migrate onto same sex experimentation at age 7, nd then commit murder or suicide at age 10 having lived all their lives BEFORE PUBERTY, all while glued to their many online addictions and flaggin school for not being cool...after all, what visual diet are we feeding them as they grow?
So anyway, having gone off on a rant here,
These are the simple steps I offer parents who want to take a different tack and who would like to reclaim their childrens' minds and bodies back from the Moral Abyss.
1. Definitely if possible, limit TV offering, stay away from cable TV...there is just WAAAYYYY!!! too much exposure to junk.
2. If you must have a TV in your house, make it a point to watch it with your kids and spend the time discussing OPENLY the rubbish they are exposed. Do IT, dont argue...you may bury your head in the sand of not wanting to broach those issues...their friends at school are a lot more sexually advanced and WILL teach them if you dont....the earliest is about age 8. (I'm a pediatrician, you'll be surprised at what your kids are learning in school!!!)
3. Be direct and open with your children about holding off on becoming sexually active. Tell them your experiences. They need to know you've faced the same challenges and why you advocate the decisions you do. If they feel you dont understand them or you try to write laws you dont justify, yes, your teens will rebel...May I remind you all of what you were like at that age!
4. Trust them to make bad friends and bad decisions. Have calm discussions, pointing out to them why those issues are dangerous for them and share your insights into what makes you disapprove of those things for them, giving them REAL LIFE EXAMPLES. No, they will not all listen right away but when you start being proven right, they'll shift gears faster because they'll start to understand that you are not quite the idiot you appear to be and that you may know something worth listening to after all. Or, you can be autocratic, lay down the law by fiat and watch them fight you all the way and rebel right into those things you ORDERED them not to do!!! They are listening even when they stand there with scrunched up faces, arms crossed, rebellious to the core. When you start being proven right, they'll change direction faster than if you yell and scream, set rules you cant enforce and generally drive yourself crazy.
5. Dont be afraid to ask your children to practice abstinence. It will make the difference between them bedding 2000 people vs 2. No, they dont necessarily need birth control, they need REAL LIFE STRATEGIES for saying NO and being cool while doing it and if you give them great reasons why, they WILL practice abstinence despite what their peer groups tell them. This also works when the issue is drugs and other stupidities.
5a. The same goes for setting other limits. For example, doing homework, household chores and accepting discipline. You are parents, act like it. Yes, you will be their best friend till after age 12, then you will be the devil till they are in their 20s and living the mistakes you told them not to make. You did it too...learn from those mistakes and accept that that is the way it will always be. It is a developmental aberration. The young ARE stupid, they grow wiser with age...sucks but is the truth.
Anyway, this is my rant for today. Feel free to make comments and add your insights and experiences.
But to understand what I'm talking about, we'd have to begin at the beginning. Like I said, I was on the OMG website where they were panning celebrity style and happened on a picture of Paris Hilton...looking well, like a reject addict from the Planet Zork. I got to thinking after reading the comments on her picture..fake tan, feed the child etc...and had my usual "who gives a rats patootie reaction" for a moment. But something struck me which set off previously mentioned train of thot...apparently this ugly spoilt rich girl is routinely thought of as a "hottie" and marketed as such. This brings to mind another of her ilk - Tila Tequila.
Now, being a middle-aged hausfrau with all the truisms about middle-aged hausfraus, you'll forgive me for not entertaining the idea that this lost child with so much wasted opportunity whose main claim to fame is that she's been screwed more than "joe the plumbers" power tools, is "HOT"...that got me to wondering what this world has come to and from there, to what it means to be a parent these days and who is going to be parenting the children who are our future...
As a tough single mom who's raised two teenagers...and had more than my fair share of angst in doing so..., I learnt a few lessons along the way.
I have a son and a daughter, both of whom watch popular TV daily and draw a lot of their sense (whether I like it or not) of right and wrong and what to do or not do, from what they see on TV. It was hard, convincing my children that what they see on TV is not necessarily real or true. This is concerning, given the widespread availability of TV and the fact that it babysits our kids. It meant sometimes, having to be brutally honest about my reactions and why I believed as I did, even to telling them things sometimes about myself I'd have preferred not to.
Now I'm not a liberal nor conservative. I dont believe in protecting my children from the perils of the world. I believe strongly that allowing them to engage in the world (with all its vices) and teaching them to navigate those terrifying shoals with a knowledgeable and independent mind is a better way to manage their minds and their lives since I won't be there at every decision point to save them from themselves. Thankfully, this has been borne out in the two outstanding kids that I've raised. I never made any restrictions about what to watch but engaged in conversations with them about right and wrong and taught them to make good decisions about the issues they were exposed to. The end result, satisfyingly, is two kids who are smart and sensible, able to go out into the world and not follow fads or fashions but who remain grounded and set on their own true north, but, IT WASNT EASY!!!
I know there is a constantly raging battle about censorship and accountability and whether we should stop our children from using the internet, playing certain video games, watching certain types of TV etc since the powers that be in the worlds of media content seem determined to turn every young male into a "rutting" boar and every young female into an objectified empty headed bimbo, always on for free sex and inclined to every libidinous gratification. In fact, you would be hardpressed to find any game, video or TV show that doesnt address or sell sex and gratuitous violence in one form or another and apparently, to all intents and purposes, that is all the adult world is about.
Putting all the pros and cons of that battle aside, is there anyone that truly thinks Paris Hilton is happy, that she wouldn't be much more fulfilled in her life if she had higher standards for herself than being the sexual train station for the developed world??!!! Are we so lost to any objective measure of morality or sense of right and wrong that we dont see the damage that this consumerist gluttonous search for pleasure and the visual and auditory overindulgence in all manner of depravity - whether sexual, gustatory, or vanity is having on our society?!! Is Paris Hilton really hot! Or is she just the poster child for lost-in-translation, like others of her ilk - "The Kardashians, Kendra, Tila, and Lindsay Lohan, to name a few.
As a feminist myself, I am thrilled that as women, we have the freedom to express ourselves, have a right to our own bodies and can make informed decisions about our lives and can live independently. However, watching women today is like watching a train going backwards...we have allowed our freedoms to be mutated into the right to "f..k" at the drop of a hat, losing all sense of proportion and balance about the niceties of social interaction between men and women and our responsibilities to ourselves.
As my son said to me when I had this discussion with him...well, mom, you have a daughter, better do right by her coz I, for one, am thrilled that girls put out at the drop of a hat. In response to whether he would seriously marry any of the girls he was making time with, his answer...the same one I got from guys my age when I was growing up - an emphatic HELL NO!!! That being so, I guess guys really havent changed that much, despite all this permissiveness of the current generation.
Is it any wonder then, that women are finding themselves in large numbers - single and unwanted? Who wants a woman who's had more guys than a prostitute. Which husband wants to walk down the street with his wife and have 200 men able to describe her in exquisite detail...and in today's parlance, complete with video captions and youtube podcasts and personal downloads for any guys' collection. And for the women who disagree...how would you like to walk down the street and have every one in your neighborhood be able to describe your husbands sexual peccadillos? So what makes any young woman think that this would be anymore acceptable to guys?
Men, wonderful Neanderthals, that they are, havent changed much from prehistoria, despite this new de-evolution of women, and I've asked every young man my son has ever brought home, how they feel about these women being served up on TV and the girls they are dating and sleeping with. I have yet to meet one who has said Yes, I'd take that girl home to meet my parents. By the same token, I've polled my children's female friends on their attitudes towards sex and overwhelming, they seem to think that "putting out", makes them popular and wanted...WHO IS TEACHING THESE GIRLS?!!!
Television today is mostly soft porn. Given how much guys' like porn, is it any wonder that for them, today's TV is a veritable smorgasbord of pornographic entertainment?! No longer do they have to sneak around to rent or buy DVDs/videos and magazines. All they have to do is turn on the TV and Kendra, Kim or Paris will be only too happy to serve up a steady diet of pornographic titillation for free.. and it gets better.... go on the Net and there's thousands of free sites for amateur shenanigans, served up by misguided young girls who think that offering up their bodies is the way to a man's heart. WHO TAUGHT THEM THIS IDIOCY and how have mothers and grandmothers allowed this to occur?
Now I realize that many of the mothers of today, grew up in the free love 60s, out of which the bra-burnings and free sex ethos evolved. Subsequently, these women became mothers who apparently were so in love with their new theories of freedom, they taught 2 generations of women to sell themselves so cheaply as to become unworthy of purchase. You see, the old adage does still ring true. "Why buy the cow if you can get the milk for free". That is the penalty being meted out to our young women today.
No longer can our young women count on a guy marrying them just because they've dated them, no longer do guys hold themselves responsible for the families they create...they are too busy enjoying the many low-hanging fruit of these women who have lost all sense of propriety or perhaps, never had it taught to them at all.
At some point, we as adults in the communities we live in, and the jobs we work in, have to take responsibility for the reprehensibility of the society we live in. I'm not advocating a return to the dark ages...but I sure would love to watch a TV show, just once, that had the class not to demonstrate in GRAPHIC detail, what happened when the man and woman involved went to the bedroom. It is not germane to any tale being told...THAT is what porn is for. No, adults do not routinely break furniture, throw dishes on the floor and screw in hot tubs, while waterboarding, in car trunks, while tied up, gagged and drunk. We arent routinely maimed, raped, killed for sex as TV would have you believe today. Most of us are too busy working and trying to make ends meet actually, and go to bed, pleading headaches, earaches or are just too plain bloody tired to give a DAMN about sex. Can we teach THAT to these kids too, that there is more, much more to growing up, than an endless diet of sex and self-gratification?!!!
We need to resurrect a sense of propriety about ourselves as people and a society and to once again teach some moral fortitude to our children. This latest generation is so at risk that it is scary. I expect them to start doing drugs at age 3, start SELLING their sexual favors at age 5, perhaps then migrate onto same sex experimentation at age 7, nd then commit murder or suicide at age 10 having lived all their lives BEFORE PUBERTY, all while glued to their many online addictions and flaggin school for not being cool...after all, what visual diet are we feeding them as they grow?
Cartoons have been sexualized. Every tale told has a boy-hare kissing the girl-hare - the two cuddling and holding hands then little baby-hares popping up. Are these topics REALLY child fare. Then the pornography starts by 7pm when you are shanghaid while watching what you thought was a child appropriate show, only for the couple to go into the bedroom and the girl slide under the covers and the guy start moaning - while your 8 yo daughter is sitting there, eyes wide open going - "Mom, what are they doing???????!!!!!" Those were the days of my battles with the remote. I had to turn the TV on and off so many times because of what rubbish shows were available to my then 8 yo daughter that I gave up, let her watch it then had an adult conversation with her about right vs wrong because GOD only knew what she was watching and being exposed to when I wasnt there. I DIDNT WANT TO! - But I did and thankfully, it stuck, choosing to this day, not to sit glued to the TV and the popular garbage it serves up and she went on to make wiser decisions than her peers.
So anyway, having gone off on a rant here,
These are the simple steps I offer parents who want to take a different tack and who would like to reclaim their childrens' minds and bodies back from the Moral Abyss.
1. Definitely if possible, limit TV offering, stay away from cable TV...there is just WAAAYYYY!!! too much exposure to junk.
2. If you must have a TV in your house, make it a point to watch it with your kids and spend the time discussing OPENLY the rubbish they are exposed. Do IT, dont argue...you may bury your head in the sand of not wanting to broach those issues...their friends at school are a lot more sexually advanced and WILL teach them if you dont....the earliest is about age 8. (I'm a pediatrician, you'll be surprised at what your kids are learning in school!!!)
3. Be direct and open with your children about holding off on becoming sexually active. Tell them your experiences. They need to know you've faced the same challenges and why you advocate the decisions you do. If they feel you dont understand them or you try to write laws you dont justify, yes, your teens will rebel...May I remind you all of what you were like at that age!
4. Trust them to make bad friends and bad decisions. Have calm discussions, pointing out to them why those issues are dangerous for them and share your insights into what makes you disapprove of those things for them, giving them REAL LIFE EXAMPLES. No, they will not all listen right away but when you start being proven right, they'll shift gears faster because they'll start to understand that you are not quite the idiot you appear to be and that you may know something worth listening to after all. Or, you can be autocratic, lay down the law by fiat and watch them fight you all the way and rebel right into those things you ORDERED them not to do!!! They are listening even when they stand there with scrunched up faces, arms crossed, rebellious to the core. When you start being proven right, they'll change direction faster than if you yell and scream, set rules you cant enforce and generally drive yourself crazy.
5. Dont be afraid to ask your children to practice abstinence. It will make the difference between them bedding 2000 people vs 2. No, they dont necessarily need birth control, they need REAL LIFE STRATEGIES for saying NO and being cool while doing it and if you give them great reasons why, they WILL practice abstinence despite what their peer groups tell them. This also works when the issue is drugs and other stupidities.
5a. The same goes for setting other limits. For example, doing homework, household chores and accepting discipline. You are parents, act like it. Yes, you will be their best friend till after age 12, then you will be the devil till they are in their 20s and living the mistakes you told them not to make. You did it too...learn from those mistakes and accept that that is the way it will always be. It is a developmental aberration. The young ARE stupid, they grow wiser with age...sucks but is the truth.
Anyway, this is my rant for today. Feel free to make comments and add your insights and experiences.
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