Loud and clear

Junior high and high school kids say sexually inappropriate things to each other. No, really, I just read an article that described the problem as “pervasive.” In fact, it’s now being called sexual harassment.

According to a nifty, free online legal dictionary I found, “Unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature constitute sexual harassment when such conduct has the purpose or effect of unreasonably interfering with an individual’s work performance or creating an intimidating, hostile, or offensive working environment.” Now, I clipped out the parts of the definition that seem irrelevant to a school context but you may think, as I did, that most people’s teenage years, particularly junior high, were infused with an “intimidating, hostile, or offensive working environment.” It’s one reason that young teenagers are such stressed-out people. Their lives are lived in a Lord of the Flies culture where the tune is called by other stressed out young people.

You may not doubt me but if you do, I invite you to go sit in the food court at a suburban mall and eat a number one combo from Chik-fil-a. While you’re munching your waffle fries, watch the young people who migrate to and fro in your vision. Some of the girls are struggling to keep their clothes covering the legal minimum and a few of the boys are treating them with a level of disrespect I’d have never imagined 40 years ago. Where did these behaviors come from? Once you’ve finished your delicious meal, police up your red plastic table and wander down the mall. Understand that the stores are not owned by teenagers and that the money that keeps them open comes from those closer to middle age. You pass by the Abercrombie and Fitch but don’t go in because of the overpowering smell of high priced cologne. In the window, though, you’ll rarely if ever see a poster featuring someone fully clothed or who looks over 20. On you go past Torrid, Victoria’s Secret, and other stores that do good business marketing provocative clothes for girls and provocative expectations for guys. This environment is hostile to the idea that kids should ever think anything pure about sex.

I believe that things are worse but not different than when I was young and charming. Everything from music to clothing styles added to a more sexually charged atmosphere during my early adolescence. I remember a shaving cream commercial with Joe Namath where a lovely woman wearing nothing from the shoulders up (the rest was up to my imagination) prompted Broadway Joe to “take it off; take it all off” in a Nordic accent. She was of course referring to the shaving cream on his face but my 13-year-old ears burned as I sat on the couch with my parents watching TV. It was an intimidating environment. As tame as it sounds, it pushed the boundaries in its day. The problems we cause in our sexualization of everything are real and I don’t make light of them. Since that day, the culture has given us the extreme but logical extension of the sexually charged 1960s.

What seems cynical about this is that we are likely to pass laws, zero tolerance zones for sexual harassment, in the places where we send our teenagers every day. Those community activists  who do so will be going to their day jobs in marketing, retail, entertainment and so forth—industries that have come to depend heavily on creating a sexually unhealthy environment for kids. How hypocritical for us to call a teen-aged response to the stimuli that roll over them like a tsunami “harassment.” Popular culture harasses these kids every day.

Freedom to say something or sell something does not come to anyone without responsibility. It is unfortunate, tragic even, when we who sell feel justified by anything we do so long as we stay within the strict and enforceable bounds of the law.

Item: Transformers II, a movie about good and evil intergalactic robots disguised as cars and planes is rated PG-13. This is supposed to mean that this content should be OK for your 13-year-old. The sexual content in this movie was more blatant than it was in most “R” or “M” (for mature audiences) rated movies of the 1970s. And the movie was in no way whatsoever marketed for “mature people.”

Item: X Men: First Class, a movie about good and evil mutant humans with extraordinary powers (characters based on a great comic book series) is rated PG-13, with all that theoretically implies. That movie contains an extensive scene of parading ladies wearing only undergarments. The movie also has one use of the big daddy of all profane words, in service of nothing at all. This movie was not marketed for people old enough to have teenagers either, it was clearly for kids.

Item: A recent article in Psychology Today told us what we all know; sexual lyrics make music more popular. The article went on to feature a study that showed the frequent references in R&B and Pop music to promiscuity, specific body parts, prowess, and seduction. Country music topped the survey only in references to courtship, parenting and rejection, and was nearly tied with R&B (way above Pop) in references to commitment. It’s called “Pop” music because it’s popular, right? What is it that’s plugged into our kids’ ears nearly every waking hour? The article suggests that the music is popular because of the sexual references. People old enough to be parents of consumers only make money if the music they market is popular. And other people old enough to be parents have the vapors because teenagers are saying inappropriate things about sex to one another.

This is an example of clear communications: message encoded, message transmitted, message received, message decoded—crystal clear. Our kids understand what we’re saying as a culture, except when we tell them to ignore the blatant messages we give them in return for their parents’ money. In reality, we are either insane or truly unconcerned regarding appropriate attitudes and behavior on the part of America’s primary inhalers of popular culture.

What are your kids and grandkids seeing and hearing as they consume pop culture? As you buy gift cards for young people on your shopping list, ask yourself what you know about those vendors. Take the extra trouble to know what you’re supporting. Kids haven’t essentially changed that much; but clearly, the environment adults create for them has changed a lot, and not for the better.