How Much For The Little Girl?

This hasn’t been a good month to be a young girl. I’m not speaking from personal experience, this is more of a general observation. The creepy Lolita subtext that pervades our culture has crawled from the slime to the surface. In fact it is casting a shadow on the door of a cottage on the shore of a dark Scottish lake many miles away, many miles away….uh, where was I?

The other night, we wound up having The Talk with the boys about Girls. Thirteen came home with all the middle school gossip. Included were tales calculated to drive parents mad and provide fodder for Evangelical Spook Houses. At one of the suburban middle schools, a seventh grader is pregnant at the hands of an eighth grader. Another eighth grader had a miscarriage, thereby avoiding an awkward moment breast feeding her child during Health class. Not sure when the State of Tennessee allows kids to start learning about procreation, but making it part of the Head Start curriculum may not be a bad idea.

The other gossip involved a middle school girl blowing a boy in the bathroom and getting caught. All of this information was revealed in the presence of Ten, who only knows that he likes hot girls and hasn’t really thought it out past that point.

So, we had to have the talk. It was clearly more embarrassing for the boys than it was for us. It all seems rather soon for all of this and the boys are far from being ready for grown up activity. But, there is a lot of misinformation out on the street. The whole “guys talk, you hear things” bit has degenerated into the worst game of Telephone ever. No example was more obvious than when asked the definition of a “douchebag”, Thirteen replied that according to his peer group it meant “used tampon”.

At one point, I did lose my cool while discussing, I believe, condoms. He doesn’t quite have the nomenclature down or is just, I don’t know. No points for sensitivity were won by me that night.

“Yeah, I know. I know. You put the condom over your balls.”

“Not your balls, your penis.”

“It’s all the same.”

“No it isn’t. They are two different things entirely.”

“Well, that’s what I call everything down there. Balls.”

“Then people will think you are an idiot.”

Which segues nicely into the media coverage of Miley Cyrus. Clearly, the American public is far more idiotic than science is yet able to measure. Last night, the lowest rated local newscast showed their commitment to hard hitting investigative journalism by leading the broadcast with local teen reactions to photos (click the video link on the page) that only the dirtiest minds would find titillating. In fact, they even try to get mileage out of the picture of her with her father by using a tsk-tsk tone to get blue noses out of joint.

Let us assume for argument’s sake that her pandlers (that’s a portmanteau of parent and handler. All Rights Reserved) approved the pictures before this manufactured shit storm hit the public and are now back-pedaling like crazy to distance themselves and their golden goose from the “bad” publicity.

First problem I have with this is, she isn’t topless. Not that I really want to see Hannah’s little Montanas, but if there is faux-outrage over supposedly topless photos, shouldn’t she be a little more, you know, topless? Her back is exposed. Her front is covered with a sheet. No boob, no foul.

What is the responsibility of the media in all of this? It is similar to a self-aggrandizing interview Paul McCartney did back in the 60’s where he admitted quite openly to doing all sorts of drugs, much to the chagrin of the rest of the band who were far ahead in the drug taking. The interviewer asked about his responsibility to the Beatles’ young fans. McCartney rightly countered that it was up to the press to publicize it or not. If they were so worried about “the kids” maybe they shouldn’t air the interview.

I don’t see any difference here. If the high moral pillars of decency that make up the news departments across the country were interested in the impact that pictures (from a magazine that 90 out of 100 Disney Channel viewers have never heard of) would have on young, impressionable girls, then why did they show them to the point of parody on every news program in the last 48 hours?

Because sex sells. Especially underage sex. That’s the dirty little secret that no one wants to talk about in our culture. We all want to slow down and gawk at the wreck. We gawk a little longer when the wreck involves a school bus full of private school cheerleaders on their way to the beach. Media knows this and can sell more advertising when they know we will tune in for gripping stories involving high school age girls. Just ask Chris Hansen.

As for young Ms. Cyrus, her career is going according to plan. She’s bigger now than ever. What could go wrong?

She’s finally old enough to be dating Roger Clemens.

Or, be a baby machine for some crazy ass Mormons in Texas.

Or, be a baby machine for your crazy ass Dad in a dungeon in Austria.

Or, be Tabitha Tuders, five years later.

Makes me glad I have sons. I hope they continue to sound like idiots for the next several years.