From: nelson_p@apollo.hp.com (Peter Nelson)
Subject: Re: Self Appreciation (was: Re: Elle MacPherson causes rape?)
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1992 18:56:35 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Corporation, Chelmsford, MA

In article <1992Nov18.173848.23583@cbnews.cb.att.com> lib@cbnews.cb.att.com (Lib) writes:
>In article <BxvvL0.FCI@apollo.hp.com> nelson_p@apollo.hp.com (Peter Nelson) writes:
>>
>>  And, as I pointed out in an earlier posting, while it's true
>>  that we are all under social pressure to conform to certain
>>  roles and behavior and consume certain products, that pressure
>>  *can* be resisted!    Women have to face enough *genuine*
>>  harassment and discrimination that it's alsmost criminal when
>>  they actively promote a set of cultural values that further
>>  denigrates them.   It's truly bizarre.  I'm at that age where
>>  a lot of my friends have children and I see mothers in generation
>>  taking their 9-year old girls out to get their ears pierced or
>>  to buy makeup and jewelry, setting them out on the road to
>>  becoming obediant little consumers preoccupied with conforming
>>  to some artificial standard of beauty.   Last Christmas my
>>  10 year old niece got a mall shopping game! 
>
>    
>There's nothing wrong with little girls wanting to wear makeup and earrings.
>There definitely is something wrong with making them wear them and there's
>definitely something wrong with telling them they can't do things like play
>baseball. Give them a choice. Let them wear makeup and earrings if they
>so choose.

  It's idealistic to think that children *choose* things like this
  in some kind of a vacuum.   A little girl whose peers, idols, and
  so forth don't wear these things, or who doesn't see them advertised
  on TV and elsewhere is unlikely to want them for herself.  

  This is one of the great myths of our time.  We have created
  such an ethos of individuality that we now think that it's  
  some kind of a violation of children's "rights" to treat them
  as children and assume the role of parent.   But *somebody* 
  or *something* will be the parents.   If not the mother and
  father then it will be the peers, the TV, and Madison Avenue.

  Northeastern University released a study recently of teenage
  violence.  They concluded that todays teenagers are "incomp-
  letely socialized" due to "lack of parenting" because parents
  are just not a sufficient force or factor in kid's lives.

  Kids today are seriously screwed up.  There is an apalling
  rate of violence - the homicide rate among teenagers has doubled
  in the last 10 years even while the actual number of teenagers
  has declined.  Teenage suicides are far higher than a generation
  ago.  So are eating disorders and drug use, and teenage pregnancy.
  And the demographic group with the fastest growing rate of HIV
  infection is teenagers.  Gang violence in school is far higher
  than, say, the gang violence of the 50's depicted in, say, West
  Side Story.  People always say the "younger generation" is messed
  up, but this time the statistics leave no doubt.

  I believe that my generation of parents is responsible for
  this.  We were products of the "do your own thing" 60's 
  who resolved that we would raise our kids with total freedom
  to "be themselves".  We would be hip and modern and let
  them leave the TV on during dinner, with MTV blaring, treat
  them like adults in all decisions, and remark on how
  cute it was that our 9-year old girls already had "boy-
  friends"   Looking back on the result, it all seems like
  a form of child abuse. 


---peter




  


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