From http://www.obscenitycrimes.org/espforparents/espforparents2004-08.cfm, a site y´all must visit.


In today’s culture, a near omnipresent media plays more of a role in the socialization of children than ever before. As the values and standards of pornography and the sex industry become mainstreamed, these are the images and ideals that our teens draw from as they come to understand what it means to be men and women and how they should treat themselves and each other. Socially acceptable and socially desirable behaviors have been redefined, particularly in the realm of sexuality. There are many facets of teen culture that reflect these changes.

Some of the most obvious demonstrations of the sexual socialization of today’s teens can be found in their closets. Clothing is an important part of teen culture. It serves as a means of self-expression or a sign of affiliation with a particular social group or set of values, functioning as a social marker.

And what is it that teens hope to be socially marked as? They want to be ‘hot’, according to Marshal Cohen, chief analyst at npd.com, of the NPD Group, which is a Port Washington, N.Y.-based sales and marketing research company, reported Terri Goldberg for MSNBC on August 9, 2004.

Who is it that determines what is ‘hot’? Cohen tells us that the media is the primary influence upon youth in defining that elusive quality. Teens and preteens are expected to spend $884 million of their own money to achieve this goal, according to the results of a survey conducted by BIGresearch for the National Retailers Federation.

If the ultra-low slung jeans, thong underwear and low-cut tummy baring tops worn by girls and the mock prison wear and urban street thug gear for boys hasn’t given you a sufficient understanding of how the media defines ‘hot’ for teens, the new Skechers ads will definitely make it clear.

Skechers is a company that sells footwear in more than 100 countries. First becoming popular with the smaller teen social groups, such as skaters and the like, Skechers products have become favorites among many preteens and teens. They’ve recently put out a series of advertisements featuring Christina Aguilera.

Skechers’ Naughty and Nice campaign features Aguilera as a tarted-up teacher and a student in a pedophile’s fantasy of a school uniform, barely covering her bottom. In another she is both hand-cuff dangling police officer who, in her low cut blouse, hot pants and stiletto heels, looks more like a dominatrix, and an urban styled detainee, spread and bent over the hood of a car. Yet another shows her in the oh-so-clichéd ‘naughty nurse’ uniform—high heels, garters and stockings, ultra-micro mini skirt, partly exposed bra and bosom, large, gleaming hypodermic needle—caring for herself posed as patient.

"I agreed to be part of Skechers' international marketing team because I like its image—youthful but edgy,” said Aguilera, as quoted by Adrants.com. “It has attitude and is willing to try new ideas—refreshing."

New ideas? Refreshing? Clearly, there’s nothing new and refreshing in Skechers’ Naughty and Nice ad campaign, which was launched internationally this month. Indeed, not even the concept of using porn associated images to sell typically youth-oriented products is new. When Pony sneakers wanted to prove how edgy and hip they were, they decided to use porn star Jenna Jameson to sell their wares—until parents and concerned citizens protested the idea—and porn actress Jenteal has appeared in clothing ads for Fresh Jive Clothes, a company described by MSNBC as a source of “cool” back-to-school clothes for boys.

Parents and teachers have long been aware of the porn fantasy fashions and stripper chic styles that filter down to younger and younger girls. In 2003, girls between 13 and 17 spent about $152 million on thong underwear, according to a Time Magazine report cited in a January 2004 article for The Nation written by Alison Pollet and Page Hurwitz.

In a South Florida Sun-Sentinel article published on April 29, 2004 on TheState.com, South Carolina’s Home Page, Sean Piccoli wrote “some critics argue that mass-market porn operates as a kind of social ruse: Young women are encouraged to embrace female sexuality as it’s defined by men, and think of it as liberation.”

Perhaps that offers an explanation for another disturbing social trend among teenaged girls. In addition to the increase of sex industry inspired clothing in so many teen closets, a June 14, 2004 New York Post article reported that “breast implant surgery among American 18-year-olds ballooned 195 percent from 2002 to 2003.” This, despite such surgery having the potential to interfere with the fundamental biological purpose of the breast—the ability to breastfeed babies. Being sexy in today’s porn influenced media defined way is so much more important, both to the augmenting girls and the large number of parents who pay for it.

Among the saddest of the results of the sexualized socialization of youth has to do with what has become socially acceptable, even socially desirable, sexual behavior in teen culture. In a May 30, 2004, article for The New York Times Magazine, Benoit Denizet-Lewis explores the increasingly mainstream phenomenon of teen “hook-ups”—the strictly casual sexual encounters occurring between teen boys and girls.

This behavior isn’t something specific to the lower economic and urban classes. Denizet-Lewis cites statistics from the National Institute of Child Health and Development that indicate that “sex outside of a romantic relationship” is slightly more common among suburban 12th graders than urban high school seniors. The study sponsored by that organization found that 43 percent of suburban high school seniors were engaging in that sort of activity, as opposed to 39 percent in the urban areas.

While teenagers having sex certainly isn’t anything new, the degree of deliberate and self-professed detachment is. Separating sexuality from emotion—something typical of porn—is defined as cool, liberating, empowering. It is the thing to do.

“I have my friends for my emotional needs, so I don’t need that from the guy I’m having sex with,” said one girl interviewed for the article.

“It’s equal,” said the same girl when asked by the author if hook-ups were as good for girls as they were for boys. “Everyone is using each other.” Such a sad and empty vision in one so young.

A little digging, however, seems to uncover a familiar theme: “Young women are encouraged to embrace female sexuality as it’s defined by men, and think of it as liberation.”

“Most of the time it’s young girls performing fellatio on the older boy, with the boy doing very little to pleasure the girl,” said Michael Milburn, professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and co-author of Sexual Intelligence, a book exploring American sexual behaviors, according to Denizet-Lewis.

“The fact is girls don’t enjoy hookups nearly as much as boys, no matter what they say at the time. They’re only doing it because that’s what the boys want,” says Dr. Drew Pinsky, as quoted by Denizet-Lewis. Pinsky is the co-host of Loveline, a “popular nationally syndicated radio program” with almost 2 million listeners. His program has been featured on MTV.

The emotional factors may not be so cut and dried as teens would lead you to believe. The same girl who so coolly spoke of “using each other” expressed hurt feelings when a boy she was hooking up with was no longer interested. Indeed, many teenagers told Denizet-Lewis that hook-ups were emotionally painful.

“But,” wrote Denizet-Lewis, “they often blamed themselves for letting their emotions get the best of them. The hookups weren’t the problem. They were the problem.”

We seem to be well on our way to becoming a society in which, as Wendy Shalit wrote in her book A Return To Modesty, “young women confess their romantic hopes in hushed tones, as if harboring some terrible secret”, a society in which boys, according to Denizet-Lewis, “are made to feel like a loser” for choosing relationships over empty hook-ups. Wishing for love—today’s secret vice.

Looking at the results of socialization via media culture, we see young girls learning to adorn and view themselves primarily in overtly sexual manners. We see boys and girls socialized to view women as interchangeable objects whose primary function is to provide sexual pleasure to males without even the benefits of commitment or at the very least some sort of mutual satisfaction, whether emotional or physical. Where are the feminists when you need them?