The Sad Truth

One day I plan on having a family of my own.  It will be 10+ years from now, but I hope one day it will happen.  If I have a daughter I am going to be TERRIFIED.  One would find that very confusing since I am a daughter and have only a sister.  The truth is, every generation of girls gets more and more promiscuous.  I know I would do the best I could to scare her away from anything completely out of line, but if girls continue on the same path they are on, my poor daughter will end up locked in her room with a chastity belt (half-kidding).  These horrible thoughts about my daughter's future were triggered two summers ago when I was talking to my family friend Nick who was in seventh grade at the time.  He told be how the cool thing for girls and boys to do is to give blow jobs on the busses on the way to Bar and Bat Mitzvahs.  I couldn't even believe what I was hearing.  In seventh grade I was hoping to have a boyfriend that I could talk to somewhere else other than AIM over the computer or maybe get a kiss on the cheek.  But these girls were giving blow jobs on the way to their friend's bat mitzvah?! That is NO mitzvah if I ever knew one.

The point I am trying to make is that it is evident that girls are being extremely effected by the beauty myth from an extremely young age.  The behavior of these young girls reflects on what we learned from "Killing Us Softly 4".  Some ads we were shown showed full mature women dressed as children or children piled on with makeup to look like a women.  Clearly when young and impressionable people see these things, it make them believe it is ok to do completely inappropriate things.  It is true what Kilbourne says that "ads create an environment we all swim in... a toxic cultural environment".  Although I don't feel the media has effected me too much as a person, the fact that it is influencing people around me by causing eating disorders and promiscuous behavior has made a huge impact on my life.  While watching TV or reading a magazine everyone should keep in mind that "ads sell more than products... They sell concepts of normalcy...The tell us who we are and who we should want to be".  Hopefully years from now I can rest easy when my children open a magazine or turn on the TV.  I would hate to see more generations sucked into the beauty myth.