Teenage Pop Sluts

Catchy title, isn't it? I'm stating the blatantly obvious when I say that our culture is rapidly becoming hyper-sexualized. But the manner in which it is becoming so, or the manifestation of it, is troubling all the more. What prompted this thought: I was watching TV the other night, and a commercial for the cable channel (AMC) came on with this snappy tune by The Veronicas as the soundtrack. The song was 4Ever. I finally heard the song in its entirety the following day, and the lyrics were startling. Maybe I'm just getting too old, but the song is about a girl asking a boy to have sex. I would say sleep with her, but the song just didn't even try to hide its message behind the slightest veneer. Gone are the days of voulez-vous couchez avec moi, ce soi.

This same thought occured to me a few months ago when I saw the video for Ashlee Simpson's song, La La. The video was her hanging out with her friends, playing video games, being a brat and causing general teenage mayhem. But that's not what the song is about. Here's the chorus:

You make me want to la la,
In the kitchen, on the floor,
I'll be your French maid
When I greet you at the door,
I'm like an alley cat,
Drink the milk up, I want more
You make me wanna, you make me wanna, scream.

The rest of the song is packed with sexual innuendos. But even that isn't accurate. They're not even innuendos. The song is little more than, "hey baby, want to f**k?".

Now, those who know me know that I'm no prude or Victorian. Quite the contrary. I'm a fairly modern man when it comes to these things, and having traveled around the world, I've seen some strange things in my time. E.g. this past Saturday, when I went to go hear my friend Clay "The Dog" Biggs play a gig downtown, I didn't bat an eye at the 7' tall transvestite I passed on the way into the club (which was next door to the lesbian sports bar the transvestite was going to). With the culture the way it is, it really is hard to be too judgmental. That's just the way things are. Take a look at the Kaiser Family Foundation report released earlier this month that found that sexual images on TV have doubled since 1998. That's seven years. They found that 70% of all shows have sexual content, with an average of 5 sexual scenes per hour. And we really shouldn't pretend that the church is somehow immune from all of this.

Let's get to the point. If you want a good, but dated, cultural analysis of teen culture, watch the 2001 PBS Frontline program, Merchants of Cool. You can see the whole program by following that link. Understand that Frontline is hardly some right-wing, fundamentalist program funded by Paul Crouch of TBN. But even secularists are growing alarmed at what they see happening in culture.

What concerns me about the state of youth culture is how gender roles are developing, and Merchants of Cool identifies the trend. For young girls, the image that they are fed is the prematurely sexual tigress. Now, if you're a young teenage boy, you certainly don't have any problem with that. But if you're a father, you should. The message that's underlying this image is that female empowerment is primarily sexual. (Isn't this what feminism was trying to defeat?) That's an identity problem in and of itself.

But the "cash value" problem I see is that teenage girls are told that they are more sexually mature than what they really are, they get into very mature situations that they are simply unable to handle. Think I'm kidding? Watch the news any week. Ever hear of Natalee Holloway? Irrespective of what actually happened to her, it is clear that she got in a situation way over her head. Did you see the 14-year old PA girl last week that ran away with her adult boyfriend that had just murdered her parents? Did you know that most teenage pregnancies involve a man 18 and over? And the culture feeds this image through virtually ever cultural medium out there. Music, TV, advertisements, et al.

On the flipside of this trend, teenage boys become permanently adolescent. We now have a nation of 40-year old teenage boys. Check out this Joseph Epstein article to see what I mean. Teenage boys today are never taught how to be men. Think I'm exagerating? Ever see "The Man Show"? Here the two conflicting images are presented side by side: the aggressively sexual female, and the permanently adolescent male. Both images are profoundly degrading, and you don't even need to buy into the cultural image to be impacted by it.

Here's something to think about: There is little difference between The Veronicas and the Taliban. Both share the exact same view of women: women are primarily sexual objects and both believe that female empowerment is sexual. One view exploits the image, the other surpresses it, but despite their different responses, their view of women is exactly the same. The view of men is exactly the same as well. More on that later.

What's the solution? It certainly isn't more of the same. And I don't think that the problem is primarily a female one. The problem is men. Strong, confident women should have nothing to fear from strong, masculine men. Strong, confident men shouldn't have anything to fear from female sexuality, either. Male and female sexuality in their proper boundaries should be something promoted and embraced. However, all men and women should fear the adolescent male. If there's a culturally destructive force in America today, that's it. Not the ACLU. Not gay marriage. Think on that.