Kids Today

~ Laura

Last week, Jonah and I walked downtown to the local pizza joint for a slice. As we ate our slices, six teenage girls in terry cloth short shorts and plastic flip flops flirted with the idiot behind the counter. "Are you really in band?" "Ohmygod!" "Can I see your tatoos?" "Ohmygod!" Then they all posed for pictures on their cellphone cameras.

Jonah said that the screeching got on his nerves. The girls’ tacky clothes got on my nerves. Words on the ass have to be the worst fashion trend of all time.

The local teenage girls have been in press a lot lately. Some morons let their boyfriends post topless photos of them on the school mainframe.

Published by Laura

8 thoughts on “Kids Today”

  1. Just the other day, I told my son never to date anyone with words on her ass. I’m not sure he understood, but if he did, I’m glad to have gotten that lesson done early.

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  2. A beautiful, good hearted girl who my daughter had known since 1st grade, kissed another girl at a party last year. Some guy took a picture on his cellphone. It was sent around to a lot of people. It ended up on myspace. People who really knew this kid turned their backs on her and called her a “whore.” It was a stupid one time act, a dare. It changed her life. She switched high schools and started using her mother’s last name instead of her father’s.
    It was a valuable lesson for lots of kids, but the girl paid way too high of price.
    We all did dumb-ass things in high school, but luckily they couldn’t be immediately documented and passed around. Thank god technology wasn’t this advanced when I was 16.

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  3. We all did dumb-ass things in high school, but luckily they couldn’t be immediately documented and passed around. Thank god technology wasn’t this advanced when I was 16.
    That’s exactly it. “Dumb” has become much more permanent with the internet. It is not something new, or a sign of a declining society. I played co-ed strip poker in high school at a party. Luckily, no one lugged in a Polaroid camera that night, and there was no such thing as MySpace, or the internet, so we didn’t get a write up in the newspaper — just some minor embarrassment Monday at school that faded with memories. Meanwhile, from the article:
    “onlookers have speculated on a wide range of possible reasons for the girls’ participation, from low self-esteem and a desire for attention to reckless disrespect for their own bodies thanks to today’s hyper-sexed culture.”
    Personally, I would be much more interested in an article of the emotional problems inherent in being a “speculating onlooker” in a case involving topless 11 year olds.

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  4. Laura, did you never flirt with slightly dodgy boys in your younger days?
    On preview, Ragtime is just right about the onlookers. Also, the third bit in the post is the press concocting a mini-moral-panic about tits, which is another thing that will puzzle our European friends. I mean, Marge Simpson and Michelangelo’s David, right?

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  5. Laura, did you never flirt with slightly dodgy boys in your younger days?
    Oh yeah. Tons of them. Though I like to think that I was a bit more subtle.

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  6. From the linked post:
    Psychologists who work with teens worry there’s unprecedented pressure on girls to act sexy before they’re emotionally ready.
    Generally I think I’m pretty conservative when it comes to vulgarity on the internet, but this comment compels me to shout NO SHIT–HAVE YOU JUST FUCKING NOTICED?!?!
    My complete agreement with those who point out the downsides of various record-your-every-move gadgets falling into the hands of pre-teens and teenagers, who often lack any kind of long-term wisdom; my equal agreement with those who point out that obsessing over and pondering about the photos is kind of disturbing in itself and likely to make matters worse. Yet our culture’s toleration of–and often encouragement of–the immature, prurient, misogynistic, dismissive, cheap sexualizing of girls (and women) is the real story here. Wake me if any of the news accounts on this or the next scandal du jour happen to look into, say, how many of the boys who took the photos had subscriptions to Maxim or had downloaded Girls Gone Wild videos.

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  7. A few weeks ago, I friended my babysitter on Facebook. Regret. I really don’t need to see pictures and videos of her pouting for the camera and drunk while on holiday in NC with her buddies.

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  8. A few weeks ago, I friended my babysitter on Facebook
    I did the same thing with kids that I coached and it was a mistake.

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