I've been observing the world with interest and concern for over half a century now and certainly one of the most startling changes I've seen is the sexualization of children. Long gone are the childhoods of Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer. Kids today stop being kids at what ... 8?
At any rate, by middle school many boys are acting like studs and many girls are dressing like vamps, so no wonder somebody gets knocked up. But I think this change is really a subset of a larger change: the making of children into major and commercially important consumers. To be a vamp (or a stud), you need a vamp costume and you need vamp role models, and both were hard to find half a century ago. The creation of Homo consumerus has changed all that.
Of course, kids of my generation were curious about sex. I got caught in the closet with a girl when I was 10 or so. About the same time a teenage female niece used to like to show me hers if I showed her mine. This is all biological and natural.
What isn't biological is turning kids into major consumers and creating sexualized images, images requiring considerable consumer buying to clone, for them to imitate. TV has become a pedophile's heaven for all the pre-teen sexualization going on in shows and especially in commercials.
So this is the reality today. You are not going to change it unless you get at the root problem, which I believe is advertising in a capitalist culture. Fat chance of changing that. The only other sensible alternative is to say, ok, this unfortunately is the way it is, how can we minimize the damage?
At any rate, by middle school many boys are acting like studs and many girls are dressing like vamps, so no wonder somebody gets knocked up. But I think this change is really a subset of a larger change: the making of children into major and commercially important consumers. To be a vamp (or a stud), you need a vamp costume and you need vamp role models, and both were hard to find half a century ago. The creation of Homo consumerus has changed all that.
Of course, kids of my generation were curious about sex. I got caught in the closet with a girl when I was 10 or so. About the same time a teenage female niece used to like to show me hers if I showed her mine. This is all biological and natural.
What isn't biological is turning kids into major consumers and creating sexualized images, images requiring considerable consumer buying to clone, for them to imitate. TV has become a pedophile's heaven for all the pre-teen sexualization going on in shows and especially in commercials.
So this is the reality today. You are not going to change it unless you get at the root problem, which I believe is advertising in a capitalist culture. Fat chance of changing that. The only other sensible alternative is to say, ok, this unfortunately is the way it is, how can we minimize the damage?
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2 comments:
Some of what you're talking about is expanding on in Diana West's new book, The Death of the Grown-Up.
Great blog, by the way!
Thanks for the tip!
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