Teenagers as Sex Objects

The other day my wife told me about this song she likes. She was quick to point out that she in not normally a Miley Cyrus fan, but she likes this song. She wanted me to listen to it, so I pulled it up on youtube and we watched it. Ok, I know I'm not up to speed on pop culture, but isn't that girl 16? Because she doesn't dress 16 or act 16 or dance 16. In fact, it seems every effort was made to make her appear to be at least 18 and you can bet all the skanky dancers around here were at least 18. A child was portrayed as an adult in that video. And you can bet it has an effect on her. I'm pretty sure she doesn't think of herself as a child anymore. She's probably already got this complex about being the center of the universe. It happens to a lot of child stars, but now she thinks she's an adult.

I thought about that and it seemed really sad to me, so I decided to check and see if it was an isolated incident. It definitely is not. A large number of teenage girls are portrayed as adult or at least in adult situations where they have to make adult decisions. And I'm not even talking about sex, although that's a part of it. What kind of message is that sending to kids watching these shows and videos and following their lives? Even some of the cartoons. I saw an episode of this Teen Titans show while I was at work. It's about these teenage superheroes. First, where are their parents? Why are they allowed to live on their own and do all this stuff? Second, where did all the money come from for all their stuff? They have their own tower with sophisticated security systems and all this other crap. This may seem kind of silly for me to rant about, but it's part of the problem. In order to attract teen and pre-teen children these shows are portraying teens as adults who can lead adult lives.

Then we've got the models. Lots of models are between 14 and 17. Not legal yet, but they are on the fashion runway as adults. The youngest bigshot I found was a 13 year old girl who's first major runway thing, (whatever it's called), was the day before she turned 13. How messed up is that? And you wonder why we've got so many creepy pedophiles out there? I'm not excusing any such sick behavior, but it's not gonna help the problem when you've got 15 year old girls strutting their stuff in bikinis on the runway. Then you've got Miley Cyrus with her half naked pictures all over the internet, that Spears girl getting pregnant at 16, and I'm not sure who Vanessa Hudgens is, but apparently she had some near naked pictures too. And these are people our little kids are watching on the Disney Channel and our teenage girls are idolizing and imitating.

I can't blame the girls. Everyone loves to point fingers at child stars gone bad, but come on. They're children! The irresponsible ones who should bear most of the blame are the parents who thrust their child out into a world that they aren't ready for and then cry when the child can't handle it. I could name any number of these child stars. The parents bear the majority of the blame and then the movie, music, and tv industries that made their roles. Kids have a little trouble judging the difference between reality and imagination. You tell them they're something long enough and they'll believe it. However, we are all responsible for our own actions, so these child stars still bear a portion of the blame and need to stop acting like idiots. It would be ok for miss Miley Cyrus to say, "You know what? I think I'll pass on being a slut today. Thanks for the offer though." I feel bad for her though. Her childhood was stolen.