Wild teen girls: Dangerous lifestyle patterns – Part 3
Teenage girls today engage in wild, dangerous, obnoxious behavior for many reasons,
some related to their home lives and some impressed upon them by different forms of media.
Anyone born after 1980 has grown up in an age where marketing tools and strategies
have become more and more sophisticated. The use of computer databases to store massive amounts of information related to the behavior and habits of potential customers allow marketing strategists to develop very specific ad campaigns. They then market every aspect of a persons life, from birth to death. The marketing of attitude and extreme behavior has changed the way young people interact with each other and society at large.
Young girls are often portrayed in the media as tough, sassy and full of attitude. “Keeping it real.” They are also portrayed as being as sexually hungry as teen boys.
Reality shows are a frequent source of this type of portrayal. There is a show called “Exposed” on MTV where either two males or females compete for a date with a member of the opposite sex. The male or female “interviews” the potential suitors by asking them questions. The contestants microphones are connected to a voice analysis machine that speculates whether or not the person is telling the truth. The machine is monitored by a friend of the interviewer, who relays the result of the answer via an earpiece. The friend is in the back of a disguised truck located nearby.
Granted the contestants are all around 18-24 years of age. However, the show is easily accessible to teens and preteens who soak up what they see the older kids doing and mimic that behavior.
At the beginning of each episode the person who decides which contestant to date introduces themselves with a heavy dose of sexual innuendo. The women are usually scantily clad.
After that , the two contestants are introduced. They are shown meeting face to face. As the contestants approach each other they trade insults and mocking remarks. The girls generally make each other out to be sluts, make derogatory comments about their clothing or that they are unbelievably ugly.
To the young viewer this may seem to be the way cool, older kids speak to each other. Suddenly you have a “dozens” contest going on in the sixth grade lunch line.
When a young man sits the girls down for a Q & A the questions usually revolve around either gross or sexual behavior. One of the most often asked questions by the males is “Have you ever kissed or hooked up with a girl?” followed by “Did you like it?” The girls, sometimes sheepishly, sometimes boldly most often answer yes to both questions. This enforces to young women that it is expected and desired by men that they be bisexual. If a woman is attracted to women naturally, as a lesbian, then she has made that choice on her own, not as a result of peer pressure or imagined social expectations.
On another recent episode, a female is questioning two males. When she is first introduced to them she exposes her breasts to them and asks if they like what they see. They grin and mumble “Hell, yeah.” During her Q & A she asks if they consider their anatomy to be “OK” or “Oh My God.” One boldly answers that his is in the “oh my God” category and she asks if he will show her. He gladly obliges and whips his penis out in her face. She agrees, with a hungry look, that it is definitely an “Oh my God.”
This is only one of many shows, on many networks, that encourage antisocial, promiscuous and potentially risky behavior in both young men and women. While the shows don’t officially endorse these types of behavior, the impressionable minds of it’s viewers pick up on the cue.
Wild teen girls: Dangerous lifestyle patterns – Part 1
As many of us already know, today’s society puts a vast amount of excessive focus on the women of today. Cosmopolitan says their too fat, while Jet would call them too skinny. Verbal attacks and infantile tabloids go as far as to throw slurs at women with a little bit of fame such as, Paris Hilton and Angelina Jolie, just for the simple fact that they may have gained or lost a few pounds. Now, when we turn on CNN and see these obscene stories about how a college girl was raped by a whole sports team or how a college girl was exploited on the internet after a drunken night; A lot of times we do not show sympathy for these girls because we think to our selves “Well they shouldn’t have been out doing what they were doing in the first place.” However, we do not take in to perception exactly why these girls acted in such manners to lead to some of the appalling situations they found themselves in. Being young female myself, I know that our society wants us to be perfect, and that in the world we live in today; beauty equals pain. Society tells us that it is okay to go out a get so drunk that we can’t walk, do drugs, get plastic surgery, have sex, and leave the house half-way naked, because that is what the stars are doing. All these things are said to be part of the glamorous lifestyle. Your sixteen and seventeen year old daughters, they are not going to go to a party wearing a turtleneck and a nice pair of jeans and sit in the back corner without touching a beer or other alcoholic beverage because a couple days ago they saw their favorite singer dancing on a table, drunk, without any underwear on. Now we are quit to point a finger at these teen girls out here living these dangerous lifestyle patters, we are quit to tell them they need to change, but who is attacking their so called “role models?” Who is sitting these girls down and explaining to them that, that is not how women should be interpreted and that , living that way does not make them look beautiful or “glamorous,” it takes away from their womanhood and dignity. It is important that we explain to our daughters , nieces, and sisters that they don’t have to leave the house wearing nothing but a smile in order to be pretty, that they don’t need ten pounds of make-up to look good, and that just because they weigh more then 115, they are not fat! So, instead of exploiting these girls with these bad and dangerous lifestyles, help them, talk to them, comfort them; Let them know that regardless of what Teen Weekly says, life is not defined at the bottom of a party, beauty is found in the beholder, and that they are beautiful just the way they are.
Wild teen girls: Dangerous lifestyle patterns – Part 5
I remember a time when my father said, “One of these days, all those miscreants will either be dead, in prison, or homeless” When you’re 15 you only assume that he must be crazy. I had the coolest friends in the world.
Now I am 23 and I have seen the worst of a lifestyle centered around drugs, alcohol, and materialistic desperation; it leaves a once beautiful and intelligent woman tossed into an unforgiving and dangerous world. You must understand, we are at a brink where the war against keeping our youth safe is a failing battle.
My best friend was 14 when she lost her virginity. To my boyfriend. She was 15 when she was diagnosed with well, a baby. She did try and I will give her credit there, in the beginning she was a good mother. But how good of a mother could you be without having one yourself and now, to make matters worse, an uneducated child? By 16 she had been on various drugs, yet never falling addicted. Her out of control partying and poor choices for male influences on her son has only fueled the cycle that has held her hostage since birth. Dropping out of school by 16, she threw away any chance at independence and yet at 23, she still has not realized it.
She was 20 and pregnant again. This time the father was a real prize. He was abusive, manipulative, drug addicted, and insane. The saddest part was when her eldest son, now 6, had to physically beat her boyfriend (almost 4 times his size) so he would stop choking his mummy. As if it couldn’t get any worse, she has actually given both fathers informal custody of each child.
The real issue at hand has become more or less, what drives someone into a life of such self destruction and unhappiness? What happened to that little girl, when the world was unaware of her existence? Who or what made this little girl so sad that she feels she can substitute happiness and fulfillment with loneliness and destitution? What happened when no one was looking? Now, without a mother’s nurture and love, who’s going to be looking at these motherless children? Raised by men who think it is socially acceptable to abuse women both physically and mentally? Why will we still be asking these questions ten years from now when the cycle has yet to break, everybody wants to blame someone, but no one wants to look.
