This is a letter I wrote in response to an article on Salon.com. It's my reply, and I'm cross posting it here.
Maybe because the people who are running the show, making and marketing the trends, are Baby Boomers who have spent their entire lives chasing and sexualizing youth and who believe that every moral value is "relative"
Dressing up little girls like hookers, encouraging tweens to express their sexuality, telling teens they need to say no but look like temptresses is...wrong.
Yes. Wrong.
Period.
I'm making a moral judgment. You can too, it's not that hard once you stop trying to make relative knots with your tongue.
That picture of Miley Cyrus doesn't reflect her sexuality, unless she designed the shot and talked a friend into taking it. It reflects Annie Leibovitz's sexuality, this is what a 59 year old woman considers hot. Or perhaps it reflects Graydon Carter's sexuality, he's the 59 year old editor of Vanity Fair. It has nothing to do with Miley's sexuality, she didn't come up with the idea, she just did what her parent's were told to do.
The Bratz dolls were approved in 2000 by Isaac Larianm, the then head of Micro-Games America Entertainment. Born in 1954 according to Wikipedia. This is what a 54 year old man thinks is hot.
This has nothing to do with any girl or young woman expressing their sexuality, that will happen of its own accord and in it's own time for everyone. This is Baby Boomers trying to chase the sexuality of their youth by making teen-agers into their own perverted fantasies.
Baby Boomers, guess what, you're old. No matter how much you market to a bunch of teens and tweens, no matter how much you encourage them to be whores they are never going to be into you. You have outgrown them. Not only is it *still* illegal for a 50 year old to chase a 14 year old, it is also immoral. Sexualizing children is wrong,period, moral judgement passed. No amount of rationalizing is going to change that ever.
And any Gen X or Gen Y parent, and everyone I know, is not going to let you do it. They are not going to encourage their daughters to act the whore for your amusement. They are not going to watch your TV show, they are not going to buy your magazine, they are not going to wear your clothes, they are not going to listen to your music. The more you push your prurient fantasies the more we are going to turn you off, the more your profits will shrink.
Your choice.
