Miley Cyrus performs during the iHeartRadio music festival at the MGM Grand |
This Is A Fleshy, Naked Emergency – Pop Stars Are Too Sexy For Our Kids
Singers such as Miley Cyrus have left Netmums parents up in arms about sexualisation. I have a simple solution to the problem.
While the sexualisation of female pop stars is an ongoing saga which will, much like the women who dressed up on Halloween as a naked person, reach its logical zenith any day now, we must take account of the fact that all this scaremongering wholly buys into the "devil's music" narrative of pop being damaging to young people, and, in that sense, this generation is no different to those previous. While my disco-dancing ditty of choice, Destiny's Child's Bootylicious, may be tame by today's standards (and if the thought of a 12-year-old belting out "I don't think you're ready for this jelly" fills you with horror, take comfort in the fact that I thought they were referencing an intolerance to the E-numbers in Rowntree's), back then the big worry was nu-metal and goth music, a genre which disturbed my school so much that they sent a letter home to school asking that parents not allow their children to wear hooded tops bearing slogans such as "deviant" and "Cradle of Filth". I'd like to see Miley Cyrus take on Mortiis, I really would.
In other words, music has always been held to be a corrupting influence on young people and a threat to the establishment, and it's important that we bear that in mind when we're questioning whether it has now gone too far, as 87% of Netmum parents polled believe it has. And let's not forget, it's not just the girls, either. A quarter of parents said that boys thought women wanted men to be "into violence and gangsta culture" – presumably they are just as impressionable as young girls, and are thus taking it upon themselves to rub up against those "bitches and hos" in the playground à la Robin Thicke. They certainly seem to be expecting women to have the kind of bodies that rarely exist in real life.
The solution to the problem is simple: don't let them watch music videos. I didn't know these oiled-up sex robots and their pimping boyfriends even existed until that joyous two-year period when my mum got Sky. And if you must let them watch music videos, while I fully accept they have become much, much worse and are practically porn now, perhaps use it as a chance to discuss what's happening with them in a non-judgmental way? Siobhan Freegard, a founder of Netmums, said in reference to the survey: "It's toxic to tell young kids that casual sex and violence are something to aspire to," and she's not wrong about the violence. But the fact she places it hand in hand with casual sex in terms of toxicity reveals more about our society than Miley and Robin's frottage ever could. — Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett | The Guardian
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