Isn't This What Every Parent Wants?
Aug 03 '00
I want my daughter to be fierce. I want her to be comfortable baking a cake or giving her car an oil change. I want her to know that her worth is in her whole package: her deeds, her mind, her talents, her skills, her heart, her soul, her love, her friendship, and yes, in her beauty–but not only her beauty, not only in her femininity, and not only in her ability to please a man.
I saw, on TV last night, that Hugh Hefner has approached two female cast members from _Survivor_ to pose nude in _Playboy_. One flat turned him down; one is considering. I found myself angry. These women aren’t heroes, but they certainly are role models. They survived, literally (though I doubt if CBS would let a “cast-away” die for the sake of the contest), a life that millions of us could not, and they did it with guts, brains, determination, skill, and logic. And they did it beside men. Now, apparently, they must be re-feminized. They must be displayed, and their real worth determined by what really matters: their naked bodies. I doubt that Rudy or Gervase will be approached for pictorials. I do not care who, outside of my life, reads _Playboy_ or the other magazines like it. It is not my business to provide a definition of what does, or does not, constitute pornography. My concern is how I am to teach my daughter to be that fierce girl when society provides her daily evidence that value lies in how she looks in a pair of tight shorts or the way she jiggles.
The argument is that people should not go to movies, watch shows, or read magazines where they will find what offends them, and I’ve always subscribed to that argument. I stay on my own “turf,” but how was I to expect that Victoria’s Secret models, dancing with each other in the desert, in bras and panties called “Body Bare” were something to see at 9:00 A.M., in between Martha Stewart making kid’s Play Dough and baking “the Cookie of the Week”? I don’t read the magazines that I would object to, but I have yet to find a legal way to get my groceries out of the store any other way than going though the checkout stand that awaits my daughter with an education on fifty ways to please a man, lose 30 pounds, and have multiple orgasms, all contained behind the half-clad sex kittens.
ABC’s John Stossel presented a report, not too long ago, about what kids do that we parents don’t know about. I’m not naive--I’m a teacher, and I wasn’t all too innocent while I was growing up. I’m also not a Puritan, believe it or not, but I think that there is something tragic in the fact that twelve year olds engage in oral sex with complete nonchalance. I find sadness in hearing that preteens and teens are lap and table dancing at the parties that their parents trust them to go to. I could tell myself that those kids must just not have caring parents; their parents are absent--that has to be the problem. Reality tells me that, while that has to be the case for a great many of them, it cannot be true for all of them. Some of those kids have parents who tried to show by example, who went to plays and soccer games, who attended parent-teacher conferences and PTA meetings, who made home cooked meals and read to their kids...who said “I love you” on a daily basis. Obviously, there is only so much that a parent can do. We are dealing with human children, after all, and those human children have their own thoughts and ideas. In the long run, we can only hope, with everything that we have, that we’ve done right by them and instilled values that will keep them safe and self-respecting as they test and use their wings. We can only hope...but it would be nice if we had a little help from the society that we raise them in.
The answer is not in doing away with what I do not approve of; there are others who do not agree with me, and their rights should not be taken to make me content. But I’d still appreciate the same treatment. If some men need to see women, naked, on paper, and there are still women walking the earth who will oblige them, so be it: keep _Playboy_ and the others. If women really need to see how Sarah Jessica Parker looks in a see-through dress and how she hits a climax, fine: keep _Cosmo_ and its ilk. If America buys more underwear when they see women sliding around, dancing, and jumping in it, keep the commercials. But there’s an appropriate time and place for everything, and it isn’t between Pokemon cards and gum at checkouts or pet tips and “Good Things” at 8 or 9 in the morning.
The human body is not a dirty thing. I want my child to know that, but she needs to see the value of it--why it’s beautiful and special, not dime-a-dozen. She needs to move how it pleases her, not how it pleases others, and not to gain approval from men. I want my daughter to be fierce.
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Epinions.com ID:
MagCentaur
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Location: Pennsylvania
Reviews written: 32
Trusted by: 23 members
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