Here We Go Again

The Parents Television Council is squawking about the downfall of something or other again. Let’s see, what is it this time? Ah yes, teenage girls are being sexualized, how dare they do this, think of the children, et cetera, et cetera.

According to the report, underage female characters were depicted in a sexual manner far more often than adults and only 5% of those depictions showed the character expressing any form of “dislike” for being sexualized. The PTC looked at sexual innuendo, “erotic kissing” and “erotic touching,” “implied intercourse” and “implied nudity” in making its assessments.

“The results from this report show Tinseltown’s eagerness to not only objectify and fetishize young girls, but to sexualize them in such a way that real teens are led to believe their sole value comes from their sexuality,” PTC President Tim Winter said in a statement. [LA Times; more at The Lookout]

On the one hand, it’s wrong to sexualize young women, especially more mature women are so much better at sex. On the other hand, if if we can’t fetishize young women’s sexuality, what CAN we fetishize about them? I mean, have you ever TALKED to a teenage girl? Um, I certainly haven’t. Not for, like, a decade.

Anyway, this news marks a striking change in society since 1998, when 17-year-old Britney Spears’s …Baby One More Time sold ten million copies worldwide solely on the strength of Spears’s beautiful voice. I’m sure the downfall of Western Society will happen any moment now.