Premature Sex and the Media

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/09/opinion/09dowd.html

Growing up in Bethesda Maryland, and having four brothers that attended the Landon School for all 10 years, I couldn’t help but pick an article from the New York Times titled “Their Dangerous Swagger.” Maureen Dowd writes about a fantasy football league that was set up by a group of 8^th graders from the Landon school. Instead of using NFL football stars, they used girls from the area in their grade to create the teams. The criteria for a good “player” included bra size, weight, personality traits, height, and whether or not they were willing to get “down and dirty.” Dowd writes, “The young woman who was the “top pick” was described by one of the boys in a team profile he put up online as “sweet, outgoing, friendly, willing to get down and dirty and [expletive] party. Coming in at 90 pounds, 5’2 and a bra size 34d.” She would be a special asset to the team, he noted, because her mother “is quite the cougar herself.” Before they got caught, the boys planned a “opening day party” where they had made t-shirts and planned to invite the girls over and score points by how many sexual meetings they had with them.

If Douglass were to have written her book Enlightened Sexism in a year or two, I think that this scandal would have been good evidence to prove her point about enlightened sexism. Enlightened Sexism is the idea that women have achieved their rights and now it is time for them to focus on their physical appearance and materialistic world. In the third wave of feminism, the women’s movement has been focusing on the problem of women being sexually objectified. Although we may have our basic rights as citizens, the media, and both men and women are contributing to the idea of enlightened sexism. There is no doubt in my mind that sexual advances and encounters are starting at a younger age now because of the media. These 8^th graders that were apart of this scandal had probably been watching MTV for years leading up to the incident. Shows like Jersey Shore, Real World, Exposed, and Parental Control objectify women and tend to concentrate on their bodies’ and image rather then their accomplishments and life goals. In the Jersey Shore alone, terms like “grenades”, “GFA/GFF”, “bomb”, “Poundin’ it out” and many more. Grenades are considered large women who are hard to look at. GFA and GFF stand for Grenade Free America, and Grenade Free Foundation. A bomb is a stubborn woman who cannot be easily seduced. Poundin it out refers to sexual intercourse and the male cast of this show usually uses this term. In the Jersey Shore alone, terms are being created and it makes male teenagers across the nation think that it is socially acceptable to use such degrading terms. It also gives female teenagers the impression that it is okay to dress like Snooki and J-woww, and that the norm is for boys to bring you back to their sex lair. I think that if the media concentrated less on the “hook up” scene and didn’t have so many shows and movies about the world of sex, then we could have steered this new generation of kids away from being sexually aware and advanced at such a young age.

When I was in 8^th grade, our brains were not wired to think about how far we would go sexually. The biggest scandal of my 8^th grade year was when a girl performed oral sex on her boyfriend. Everyone in the D.C area found out about it because it was against our societal norms. Although I do think how mature and sexually advanced a teenager is depends on context, such as whom they were raised by and where they grew up, I think that most of it depends on the media and the social norms that are constantly changing. A teenager who has parental control and is raised well in an environment with limited drugs and alcohol is more likely to sexually mature at a normal rate compared to a teen that has to take care of him or herself and lives in an environment with violence and drugs. Bethesda Maryland comes in 2^nd place as the city with the highest income with a population of over 50,000 just behind Cupertino, California and above Greenwich, Connecticut. Some may argue that the richer cities have kids that are forked over money and then go use it to buy drugs. However, just by growing up in Bethesda, I know that kids are extra careful with what they get themselves into because everyone finds out everything and you would never want to tarnish your families reputation.

Some of the parents of the girls commented on the scandal and one father said, “They evidently got points for first, second and third base. They were going to have parties and tally up the points, and money was going to be exchanged at the end of the season.” He said that the boys would also have earned points for “schmoozing with the parents.” He also talked about how upset his daughter was and asked if this is really how we teach boys to treat women. He argued that teenage girls have enough to worry about so the added pressure that boys inflict is self- destructing. Another parent talked about how the girls felt targeted and completely used.

As I reflect on this scandal, I have realized that the norms of the society are changing because of the media and the environment in which the teens are raised. The only way we can put a stop to women being sexual prey is if we teach kids at a young age about the value of a woman as a human rather than an object.