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Last night, I saw a story on the news (on NBC, I think...might have been ABC...) about what is being marketed to adolescent children these days, particularly 11 to 14 year old girls. First of all, before I say anything else, statistics have shown a rise in the amount of reading done by adolescents. That's the good news. I was happy about that. Then I learned what's in those books these young people are reading: smut. Explicit sex scenes. Sexual immorality gone rampant.
"My word!" I thought to myself. And then they showed three thirteen year old girls who talked about their favorite series, which focuses heavily on drugs and sex. When asked why they read this stuff, they replied that they liked reading about people who have access to drugs and who have sex all the time. I was horrified! Thirteen year old girls are reading this stuff? I'm a college student and I try to avoid reading stuff like that as often as possible. I could see adults reading that sort of stuff, but thirteen year old girls? I suppose they're entitled to read whatever they want, but still...it just astounds me that they do. And the other thing that gets me is that their parents don't even know that they're reading this stuff half of the time. The other half of the time, they just let them read it. Again, I suppose it's their choice to allow their kids to read racy novels...but...thirteen year old girls?
I have a brother that age and just imaginging him and his friends reading something like that horrifies me. When I was that age, I hardly knew what racy meant. I never read anything like that. But what really gets me is that publishers are purposely marketing smut to the adolescent audience. Why? Because it sells, I suppose. Now there's an example of writers and publishers putting books on the shelves in order to make money rather than endorsing the art of writing.
That just makes me sick. I don't know what the rest of you think about racy novels for young teens, but I, personally, cannot express how disgusted I am that those kinds of books are being marketed to them.
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I definately think 13 is too young to be reading books on sex and drugs, unless it has something to do with how to cope with these situations. When I was growing up, my mother knew what I was watching on TV, what I read, and what music I listened to. She made me take an album (yes, back when they used to have those large, black discs that you had to flip over half-way through) back to the store once because she thought it was too racy. Then again, she let me watch soap operas with her, and those aren't exactly prime examples of morality....Hm, I'll have to ask her about that.
I think more companies are marketing kids and teenagers because they actually have their own money. Cell phone companies are marketing phones for kids between the ages of 8 and 13! When you're that age, you should be allowed to just be a kid. They should be reading Harry Potter and the chronicles of Narnia, not smut novels!
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The books only reflect what goes on in the schools. My thirteen year old cousin comes home with those cheer short things that hide nothing, yet teachers don't see anything wrong with it. She tells me all about the crazy stuff that happens there The dancing done at school is a step below actually having sex. The girls want older, high school guys so they will do just about anything to get them...anything. High school drug dealers see potential customers in middle schoolers, not like what most people think, which is that some middle schooler "scores" some weed and tries passing it around. Middle schoolers, especially when their school is right next to the high school, want to be older, they hate that time between childhood and being able to drive, date, and drink, so they will do anything to get close to it, even pick up a book.
Posts: 162 | Registered: Jun 2005
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One of the novels they referred to was the story of a terrible crime, a girl raped by her father. The reporter referred to it as "a father who has sex with his daughter." Completely different meaning.
There are some racy YA books out there, most of them being poorly written and exploitative. But there are a lot more books on the shelves than the reporter's message that girls could read either "smut or fantasy." (Like the way the reporter equated fantasy novels with smut?).
There are a lot of angry librarians blitzing NBC with letters about the report.
Did I mention the story was crap?
As writers, you owe it to yourselves to examine issues more closely than a few minute story on the networks. The next story criticized could be your own.
[This message has been edited by DavidGill (edited August 16, 2005).]
[This message has been edited by DavidGill (edited August 16, 2005).]
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Children grow up too fast as it is. No need for books of this nature to fill their heads with more trash. My main thought is where are the parents? Though I believe in the right to ones expressions, I do think we as a country need more regulation on security of print. This way you can publish what you want but with restrictions to whom can access it. To be honest, TV has me wishing we'd take a step back in time to quality programming.
Posts: 26 | Registered: Aug 2005
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I absolutely agree that children grow up too fast. I was in a Toys R Us looking for a doll for my 5 year old cousin, when I came across (I kid you not) Lingerie Bratz dolls. They were wearing see-through lacy things and it came with a bottle of perfume for the little girls buying them. I was absolutely sickened. However, it's hard to throw around the word "smut". To me, those Bratz dolls are the epitome. Teaching our girls to dress like tramps before their old enough to know what type of people their attracting with those clothes. I walk through the halls of my high school past girls wearing headbands for skirts, and bandaids for tops. That, to me, is smutty. Liteature about drugs and sex, depending on its context - not smutty. If I had had access to those books when I was younger, I would'be known what to avoid.
Posts: 35 | Registered: Jul 2005
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Well...I'm not going to pretend that there isn't a problem with people selling smut to minors. Even when it comes to text only works.
And yet, that last sentance really says it all, doesn't it? Text based pornography is the least of our problems today. I'm not going to act like anyone that thinks it'a a problem is crazy, but there are a lot of things I should think we'd all find a lot more disturbing.
There will always be text based porn, as long as literacy exists. Even when the only literate people in Europe lived in monastaries , there was text smut. And it didn't hold a candle to what the illiterate denizens of the cities could get.
Should each of us, personally, strive to eliminate smut from our reading and writing? Sure. But selling sexually explicit books to kids...it's wrong, but mostly it's just dumb.
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The problem with these books (and I'm unsure of the one you're refering to DavidGill, but I'm refering to the "Gossip Girls", "The Clique", "The A-List", and "The Au Pairs") is that they have all these girls and boys running around having sex and doing drugs without anything *real* happening in return. It's a plastic world of over-the-top fun and no consiquenses (ie: sexually transmitted diseases, pregnancy, overdose, death). REAL LIFE IS NOT LIKE THIS. IMO, this is the real problem. We're setting them up for failure. If our youth are going to read about this stuff shouldn't the author at least have the sence to make it based in reality--otherwise put it in the fantasy section.
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Parents are the problem and always will be. I hate those groups of moms that protest something, key example these days is that Grand Theft Auto game, yet you walk into a Wal-Mart and see those same mothers buying their kids whatever they want without regard for what it is. The problem is that people want to be led and not make decisions of their own. They want the government to ban everything for the sake of their children without considering anyone's rights. Rather than turning off the tv, taking away the make-up from the six year old, and giving their preteen a good book, parents want to place the blame on someone else and call it "good" parenting. I grew up on Legos and my imagination and so can anyone of these little kids with their explicit video games and smutty books.
[This message has been edited by Mystic (edited August 17, 2005).]
quote:They want the government to ban everything for the sake of their children without considering anyone's rights. Rather than turning off the tv, taking away the make-up from the six year old, and giving their preteen a good book, parents want to place the blame on someone else and call it "good" parenting.
Well put, Mystic! I think you said it all right there.
I've met these parents. You know what it is? Laziness. They don't want to do any parenting at all. They want the schools and the government to do it, and unfortunately the schools and the government are far too happy to oblige.
This whole conversation reminds me of a quote (I'm probably not exact on the wording) by Marion Zimmer Bradely: "In this country, we prepare more for our drivers' liscences than we do for motherhood."
I like that quote. It is up to the parents (and the kids...I mean, we're talking about thirteen year-olds. They have brains; they know it's smut and that they probably shouldn't be reading it) to choose what they digest. But I've known a lot of teens who have parents who either love their career more than their home, or think that good parenting is letting their child have "free will" to do whatever they like. After all, goes the rational, the public education system is looking after them, they can't get into too much trouble...
That's sort of a scary thought. I don't think I'd like the public education system take care of anything I cared about...
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If parents object to their kids reading racy stuff (or watching it on television or in the movies or picking it up online), it's really up to the parents to take a hand in stopping them. It's foolish to think that somebody else will, or must, stop it.
I remember, in my younger days as a beginning SF reader, picking up and reading some stuff that was pretty adult and spicy, but hardly sleazy. (Mostly Heinlein's later stuff.) I think a lot of it went over my head. But I can't say it did any particular harm---the damage being done by the ideas of science fiction, not any scurrilous content.
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I think you may be out of luck Survivor. The Lego movies are in short supply. But then there's always Lego Land! I've heard it's fun for the whole family! (The only clincher is, it's in the armpit of California: Orange County )
Posts: 811 | Registered: Jan 2005
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David, I found myself curious about which books they were talking about and exactly what the inappropriate factor is. I'm not curious enough to do more research until I have kids that age, but I always try to keep an open mind, especially in the face of the biased news and their spins.
As for what kids are reading/watching/listening to...this is not a new problem. Nor will it ever go away. The reason is that my idea of what is inappropriate for kids is highly different from another parent. I happened to watch the Disney Channel a few weeks ago (not on purpose) and caught a show called something like "The American Dragon." I would never let my kids watch that crap! No sex, no drugs, no alcohol, no significant violence...nothing in the way of traditional objections...it just sucked. It was disjointed, unrealistic, the main character was overly-confident to the point of being a snob, there was no learning, no problem solving, no thinking. I told my husband after that I'd rather let a kid watch South Park. Of course, I wouldn't let them watch either, but if you stuck a gun to my head and made me choose...I'm afraid it would be South Park. At least it has interesting messages...such as the episode in which all the parents marched down to the television studio to complain about what was on TV while the kids ran amuck.
The other thing I would point out is that thirteen year olds, whether we like it or not, are beginning to have adult sexual feelings and reactions. In our closed-mouth society, they have no outlet for these feelings except for their peers, who give them mixed and incorrect messages. All they can get out of an adult is "You can't do that. You're too young."
Drugs are much the same...bad, bad, bad drugs...without any real details. Heck, I realized the other day that I didn't know enough about the effects of drugs to explain it to anyone. "Drugs are bad, M'kay."
Kids are curious and rather than answer this curiosity with well-written material that puts these real-life situations in a frame of reference they can understand, we try to put blinders over their eyes and they turn to stuff that portrays it in unrealistic ways. Sex with no consequences. Drugs with no consequences.
Much of what happens to teenagers today that I complained about on another thread is artificial -- we (adults) do it to them by treating them like children and giving them no outlet for their new thoughts and feelings. And I don't just mean sexual. Teens have become able to think and reason for themselves but we still want to do it for them. No wonder they rebel! No wonder they have false ideas about the way the world really works. No wonder we spend our twenties tripping over ourselves as we try to figure out the truth.
South Park. The behavior of the characters is not suitable for children, but the writing is very clever. The dialogue is (sadly) realistic, and the moral situations depicted are amazingly complex.
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I agree with Christine. A child is never going to survive in the real world if their cartoon hero runs around spouting corny one-liners and puns like a horrible episode of retro Batman or Scooby Doo, and everyone is laughing at the end episode at a bad joke.
Posts: 162 | Registered: Jun 2005
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I have to agree with Christine as well...I once spent a summer working as a nanny. The parents thought parenting meant buying a lot of videos and having kid's cable. All the children did was watch mind-numbing political-correct happy cartoons. The eldest child still scares me. She tried to rip off the head of a bunny-puppet -- while it was on my hand. I made the bunny cry and told her it wasn't nice to hit things -- see how sad the bunny is? She thought this was great entertainment. For the next week, she wanted me to play with the bunny-puppet. Loudly, she'd demand, "Make it cry again!" She tore the heads off of barbie dolls and wanted me to make them cry, too. She was only three. A staright diet of Blue's Clues just isn't healthy (neither, really, is watching so much tv). The whole time I worked there, I wanted to just plug in a Spiderman movie. I think it would have been good for her.
(This isn't to say I approve of pandering smut to little pre-teens...no. I hate Romance-genre novels in general, but it is the parent and the child's responsibility. The problem with saying "no one should be allowed to publish smut" is that someone else determines what smut is, and it might be very different than my definition.)
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Sorry, what I meant to say was this: poltically correct, perfect mind-numbing cartoons aren't really any better, in my opinion, than smut. They're both garbage. Hopefully, we can all find good, clean, deep-thinking fiction.
Posts: 189 | Registered: Jul 2005
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Such a very interesting topic. So many things I would love to say. It's hard to know where to start.
On public education raising our (in the broad sense, since I don't have any, thankfully) children: I've had conversations with many teachers and most of them (particularly the more...open ones)mentioned having to raise other people's kids. My sociology teacher loved to pin all sorts of things on this phenomenon. The teachers aren't happy about it either. they are supposed to be teaching history and english and biology and algebra, not playing catch up with a bunch of feral children.
On parental laziness: I agree whole heartedly. I remember when I was growing up (not that I'm quite done yet) our parents would kick us out of the house if we were sedentary for too long. I remember having to rush to finish computer games because we knew that any minute my best friend's dad was going to yell "Now boys! that's enough blast 'em for today. Why don't you go outside? It's the most beautiful day of summer/spring/fall/winter. I don't think my kid sister has been outside for more than ten minutes in over a week. My mom is just burnt out or something. It pains me to say this, but I've watched my mom's laziness and my sister's...feralness?...grow over the last few years. It just depresses me. What's worse is that they both openly admit to what is happening, yet see no solution (and I unfortunately have none to offer them). It's a serious problem, and one that needs to be dealt with far more urgently than rating systems on games, movies, or even books.
On Lego movies: Survivor, it warms my heart to read you saying something like that (wow, talk about an awkward statement). There aren't any lego movies (that I know of), but I'm willing to bet that if there aren't any lego tv shows then there will be soon. What's more, there are lego computer games. My friend played one (Lego Starwars)and he thought it was pretty awesome. Not that I'm recommending you play it (I thought it looked boring as all get out), but it's there if you want it. If you do, go for that Star Wars one. All the rest are pretty boring. More than you wanted to know, right?
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Well, I certainly don't think that South Park is the answer. I won't even watch that myself (of course I try to avoid TV altogeather--except for those cool surgery shows).
I have found a very simple solution: Time.
You spend time with your kids. You play puzzles and dolls, or hot-wheels and ninja (or legos ). You talk to them about growing up and kissing and laugh about getting chest hair like daddy. You laugh with them at the character in a book or you cry with them over the death of your favorite pet kitty. How hard is it to do this? Obviously impossible for most. I can't tell you how many times I have had people comment on my kids; "Wow, they're so sweet...so well behaved...so kind...so polite." I am far from an ogre with my kids. But you know what? I talk to them; I comunicate with them. My husband and I spend TIME with them.
Besides, I want to enjoy them while they still like me.
...and they're only allowed one hour of tv a day at my discretion. ("Kipper" is my personal favorite but "Spunge Bob" is theirs. I figure a half hour of mind-numbing entertainment a day won't completely ruin them. There are worse evils in this life. After all, I grew up watching Jerry smash Tom's face in with a sledge hammer.)
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Umm...Legos movies are when amatuer cinematographers do a short film using stop motion photography of Legos figures, usually with some amount of set built out of Legos. There are actually quite a lot of them about, these days.
There is usually a good bit of violence, sometimes bad language, occasionally you'll have suggestive material, though outright porn is pretty impossible unless you use clay or Play-Doe.
I guess it was one of those in-jokes. I'm going to go remind my neice that crying attracts predators
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There is a short Lego verion of Monty Python's Holy Grail on it's DVD. Personally I'm addicted to legos and now that you have mentiontioned it I now have to go out and buy another set. (I hope your happy.)
But on topic I agree that parents should know what their children are reading (seeing, eating, sitting on...) and if the child does encounter something offensive explain why that it is bad not just that they are too young to handle it. That is why I hate the use of the words Mature or Adult to label things that aren't. All thirteen year olds want to be an Adult when they grow up, and they already consider themselves mature.
Reminds me of something my father-in-law likes to point out: success attracts parasites.
Relevance to this topic? In the sense that innocence is something enviable, it could be considered success, and those who want to live off of it (parasites) are attracted to and determined to destroy it.
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I mention one childhood plaything and this is what happens.... Anyway, I was thinking about a little bit before going to bed and thought about my own childhood.
I was a geek, I can tell all the lies I like, but I was a geek. However, I didn't start a geek. I used to be the most popular kid in school because I had learned cuss words early and was proficient at embarrassing anyone. Plus, I had the best imagination and could invent thousands of games to play.
Then a great change came...the parents became involved. They tore their kids from childhood, sending them to soccer camps to prepare for high school soccer, which would in turn look good on a college application. However, my parents didn't feel this was right and didn't do this (My parents are looking real good right now with neglecting me and allowing me to learn to cuss). So, I was left to bask in childhood, but slowly my friends were disappearing to do this or do that all to prepare for their future. So I became a geek, who in reality is the person left behind at childhood and picks up video games and television as ways to retain their childhood.
So parents are truly to blame for the aging of children with hormones coming up a close second. They are so afraid that their children will fail that they will start as early as possible to create a fear of this, which I think is the surest sign of maturity (not the kind of mature we talk about, but the mature that makes kids seem older than when we were kids.)
[This message has been edited by Mystic (edited August 19, 2005).]
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, there was text smut. And it didn't hold a candle to what the illiterate denizens of the cities could get.
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