SEX BEFORE KISSING: How 15 Year Old Girls Are Dealing With Porn-Addicted Boys........This is a most fascinating article.... but not entirely focused on the real problem.
I recently read an online article [http://fightthenewdrug.org/sex-before-kissing-15-year-old-girls-dealing-with-boys/] about how 15 year old girls are handling (or more accurately, not handling) their relationships with young boys who have been affected by exposure to porn at an early age. This piece primarily focuses on the indirect effects of porn on young girls because the boys in their lives are saturated with it. It also focuses on the (very) young girls who are uncomfortable with the demands of young boys. The truth is that this scenario is just a little “dated”. We are ignoring the fact that today our daughters ALSO have easy access to porn and are learning all too soon the power that their bodies give them over men.
Today the girls are leading the boys into behavior unthinkable by their parents just a short time ago. The problem is NOT the effects of porn on young boys “per se”. It goes MUCH deeper than that. Porn has gone main stream in every area of life. We are a culture that gets our cues on how to dress, how to act, and what our social expectations should be from all the media around us. Our constant exposure to movies, TV, music, supermarket magazines at toddler eye level, advertising, and now the internet has never been matched in the history of the world. We live in a media soaked culture that gives us our understanding of what is right, what is wrong, what is “normal”, from the constant media we are exposed to. No generation before us has ever been manipulated by so many relentless voices and images that are working together to change what is “normal” for us all.
We will sit and bemoan what porn is doing to our boys and husbands but completely miss what porn is doing to the world at large. This "porn mindset" has permeated every aspect of our culture. We forget that women are moving into producing and consuming their own porn at an alarming rate; porn that once again appeals more and more to younger women. We should not be as concerned about the effect porn saturated male adolescents have on our young girls but more so that the "porn mindset" is changing our young girls to accept a new normal, and to be comfortable with the “porn mindset” long before they are exposed to the young boys that have been exposed to porn.
How about this headline from Live Science? “30% of Girls' Clothing Is Sexualized in Major Sales Trend”
“Almost a third of girls' clothing for sale at 15 major retailers has sexualizing characteristics, a new study finds, a trend that psychologists say can encourage girls to view themselves as sex objects at an early age”.
The majority of sexualized clothes also had childlike characteristics, such as polka dots, the research found. Nonetheless, adults in the study rated these childish but sexualizing clothes just as sexy as clothes with only sexualizing features.” [http://www.livescience.com/14249-girls-clothing...]
Do we really need any research or more studies to tell us the obvious? Who buys little girls their clothing? It appears Mom and Dads who have been saturated in a porn culture are buying little girls their clothing. We can’t blame the porn industry here.
I can’t tell you how many times I hear adults at family gatherings comment on a new dress that their 6 year old niece has for a special occasion. “Wow, don’t you look sexy?” “You will have to really fight off the boys now!” What is wrong with us as a society, making little girls “sexy” before they even know what that is?
This summer I had occasion to be with the grandkiddies at our local neighborhood water park. I don’t know what it is about watching the grandkiddies have unrestrained fun that does my heart good, but it does. I would do it every day if I could ….. but I digress. This water park is primarily for young children.
On more than one occasion I observed a young girl of about 10 or 11 years of age. She was with her mom, aunt and several siblings. Her mom thought nothing of allowing her to wear a bikini cut as it would have been for a fully developed young woman. This girl was far enough along in puberty that she had the hour glass figure but nothing else that would betray her pending adulthood. She was for all intents still a child. Her play and talk was that of a child. It seemed totally oblivious to the mother that all the “dads” and other strange men suddenly attracted to the water park couldn’t take their eyes of this 11 year old. This poor girl had absolutely no idea why she had all the male attention, or even that she did. She certainly was not mature enough to deal with this scenario, and it appears neither was her mother.
Why can we not see that dressing our young girls “sexy” does in fact make them “sexual objects” long before they understand what that is or have the emotional tools to deal with it? Are we conditioning what their “normal” will be? Are we unknowingly establishing their “comfort zone” where it should not be?
There is no question that the social pressures created by the easy porn accessible by boys are not healthy for either the young girls or the young boys in their lives. However, let’s not overlook the fact that we adults have allowed our daughters to be “comfortable” being sexual long before they even understood what that was. We have failed to prepare our daughters for when they meet our equally unprepared sons to develop healthy relationships in the midst of a “porno world”
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