State of...Role Models

Wow...it's been an incredibly long time since I last posted. I guess it was a pretty busy summer...but that's no excuse. I do have a list of things that have crossed my mind over the past several months, so let's hope I can get to a few of them in the near future.

I'm generally a pretty open minded individual. I tend to believe that people should learn by making mistakes. I'm not so naive to think that kids these days aren't a million miles more sexually curious/advanced/aggressive/mature than I was so many years ago. All you have to do to prove this is walk through the mall on a Saturday. Girls are wearing half the amount of clothing they did when I was growing up.

So I'm here in my hotel room in Windsor, Ontario and flipping through the channels of trash on TV. I happened to stop on one of the many music stations (Much2 or something like that). They were doing the top 10 requested songs of the day/week/year/era (who knows). At number three we had the most recent catchy jingle from Katy Perry; Teenage Dream. For those who have been stuck in a cave with no radio, this song is as popular as anything you've heard in many years. The regular radio stations (which I refuse to listen to) play this song on repeat.

Here is a sample of the lyrics of this song:

We drove to Cali
And got drunk on the beach
Got a motel and
Built a fort out of sheets
I finally found you
My missing puzzle piece
I'm complete

Let's go all the way tonight

Now, I'm as liberal as the next mid-30 something...but this seems a tad over the top. Katy Perry is a huge mega-star right now. I don't know for a fact her target demo, but I'm willing to be it's girls under the current drinking age (in both US and Canada). In fact, I'd go so far as say her target market includes those without the ability to drive yet.

For argument's sake, let's say that her demo is 14-18 year old girls. If you had a teenage girl that fell in this age bracket would you be comfortable with her hearing this type of lyrics from a "role model"? I'm the first one to say that parents need to do a better job of teaching their kids what is right and what is wrong; don't rely on pop superstars to look after your kid - YOU do it.

That being said, these pop stars are making it awfully difficult to raise your kids without being totally messed up tramps. With half of them getting in trouble with drugs and alcohol and the other half singing about getting drunk and "going all the way", how's a parent to do their job?

I don't have the solution, nor am I looking to solve the worlds problems. I just urge parents to continue to talk to their kids; find out what they are listening to, find out who their friends are, what they do after school, what they do on the weekend. TALK to you kids...help them get through their adolescence in one piece.

If you don't, then they will be working off role models/parenting/images like this (taken from the "Teenage Dream" video):



Cheers,
LW