Yesterday I attended a family celebration in honor of my little niece’s First Holy Communion. The guest of honor, my niece, is in the second grade and is a beautiful, vibrant child—blond hair, blue eyes with a sprinkle of freckles across her nose. In her white Communion dress, she looked like a little angel.
It was a sunny day and a pleasant get-together. Most of the guests had left when my niece and her friend, another little girl, wanted to put on a “show” for those of us who remained. We, of course, agreed to be the audience.
With a video clip from the Internet providing the music, the girls sang and danced to the song Beggin’ On Your Knees by Victoria Justice.
I was horrified.
Victoria Justice
Victoria Justice is 18 years old. She has been performing since the age of 10, and has acted in several TV shows on Nickelodeon. Without a doubt, she is a beautiful, talented singer and dancer. But she is also selling sex to little girls.
Here’s the video of Beggin’ On Your Knees.
The video is slick, obviously packaged by entertainment executives and corporate bigwigs to appeal to tweens—and younger. It’s set on a seaside amusement pier, with the actors playing arcade games and going on rides. The performers, of course, represent a nice multicultural mix—I’m sure the money men don’t want to miss any marketing opportunities.
So Victoria Justice sings about her relationship with some guy, and how he cheats on her. The chorus goes like this:
and One day i’ll have you begging on your knees for me
yeah, One day i’ll have you crawling like a centipede
You mess with me?
And mess with her!
So I’ll make sure you get what you deserve
yeah, One day you’ll be begging on your knees for me
So my little niece, who a few hours earlier was angelic in her white Communion dress, was shaking her body and crawling on the floor as she sang along to Beggin’ On Your Knees.
She, of course, had no idea what the words meant. But the messages are there for anyone to see: Girls achieve success by attracting good-looking boyfriends. Good-looking boyfriends cheat on their girlfriends. When cheating happens, girls take revenge.
Gee—when I was my niece’s age, I watched Shirley Temple sing Animal Crackers in My Soup.
Cheerleaders
This isn’t the first time I was struck by the blatant sexual messages being communicated to young girls. A few months ago, friends were in Atlantic City to watch their daughter perform in a big cheerleading competition. They invited my husband and I to join them.
This girl is a senior in high school and has been cheerleading since she was young. Approximately 3,000 girls were participating in this competition, ranging from high school age to girls my niece’s age—or younger.
As I walked around Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, I could not believe my eyes. All of the girls, down to the youngest ones, were parading around in cheerleading costumes that featured off-the-shoulder tops, bare midriffs and extremely short skirts. They all wore heavy make-up. They were all being taught to strut, show what they’ve got, and smile.
Abusive dating
I, in the meantime, am preparing to talk to another group of high school students about Sociopaths and Abusive Dating Relationships.
Part of my message is that sociopaths use sex to trap their victims. If you’re lonely, you are vulnerable. And when you have sex, you form a psychological bond that makes it difficult to get away if the person turns out to be an abuser. This is how domestic violence starts.
Yet according to the constant bombardment of messages directed towards young girls, their success depends on how sexy they are, and whether they can attract a hot boyfriend. Any girl without a boyfriend, therefore, will feel lonely, and will be vulnerable to the abuse of a sociopath.
So how do I compete with overwhelming, lifelong marketing? How do I tell these high school students that sex may get them in trouble when they’ve been fed a steady diet of “sex sells” since they were little kids?
Girls are being brainwashed by marketers out to make a buck. I don’t even know how parents can protect their kids from the onslaught—they’d have to raise their daughters in a cocoon. As a result, so many little girls are probably ripe to become the next generation of victims of sociopaths.
Oh dear Donna. The problem is so much bigger.
Flashbacks aplenty. The struggles to be a good mom. And the vitriole of parents who totally disagreed and condemned me as one of “those” moms… whatever that meant… a mom who was a killjoy.
Memories….A soccer team fundraiser where the girls had a massive sleepover and took in the children to be babysat for the night during a huge local community event. Should have been fun for all right? I objected to a horror film with extreme sex and violence being played on the vcr (yep, a vcr…remember those?) in front of kids right down to toddler age and was treated as if I were bizarre… “my kids watch this all the time and they love it” was the challenging hiss from the organizer… as if there was something mentally wrong with any kid that got nightmares from it.
My daughter being the only kid not permitted to watch rated R movie in the 4th grade, she had to do homework. I had been the ONLY parent who did not sign the permission slip.
And arguements about school dances after pics were printed in the local paper showing of 10 yr old girls with boys hands on their butts (they thought it cute)… and the dance was chaparoned but I was told to shut up about making a big deal out of nothing.
And it wasn’t so much little girls learning that success was having a boyfriend, it was Their parents who felt shame if their little girl wasn’t hooking up, like she was deficient if boys weren’t after her sexually… Parents measured their success on the popularity of their kids.
Parents needing to raise their kids in a cocoon? No in my experience, it was the parents who put their kids out there to be exploited. THAT is the norm.
I feel heartsick. This post is a graphic example of the impending doom of our society. As opposed to the movies where good people are revered as heroes, in reality people HATE goodness and attack it and destroy it and they get huge approval from others when they do destroy anything morally “good”.
Wow, Donna, you are starting to sound like ME!!!! LOL
Yep, Donna, this has been going on for over a generation and getting “worse and worse”—-How about those “kiddie beauty pagents?” the ones like Jon Benet Ramsay was in, 6 year olds dressed up like little tarts and paraded around? Sex sells to all ages, ain’t that GRAND?
Many parents now are home schooling their kids in an effort to not only give them a better education in “the three Rs” but in keeping them from being so influenced by the culture of “SEX, drugs and media” in schools.
I did my attempt at keeping my kids out of the worst of it by not having a television in my home for 7 years between 1979 and 1986…fat lot of good it did. LOL But I tried.
When I was director of student health at an “upper class” liberal arts college where most of the kids were bound for professional school after college, “casual sex” was pretty much the norm and I passed out free condoms in student health and did programs on STDs.
Unfortunately, “casual sex” is not “casual”—biologically it isn’t meant to be, because it releases bonding hormones in normal people and sets up normal girls and guys (yep, guys too) to be bonded to the ones who are incapable of bonding with anyone.
It isn’t just about “morality,” it is about biology and bonding.
I think it was Benjamin Franklin who said “sins are bad not because they are labeled sin, but are labeled sins because they are bad for you.”
Back when I was a kid starting out dating in the 60s, the question was “Are you loose if you kiss on the first date?” now it seems that the question is “is it okay to have sex on the first date or should you wait til the second or third date before you have sex?” Then again, in the 60s the youth in America started the “free love” movement where “casual sex” was starting to become OPENLY “okay.”
Also, apparently there is the “oral sex” thing with girls now, that this is not “real sex” so if they have oral sex with a young man but not vaginal sex, then somehow that is okay.
With the combination of sex, drugs and consumer goods that is being sold to people in our society as what makes you “cool” and “happy,” it isn’t any great wonder that the next generation is being groomed for abuse.
How can you, teachers, mentors, and parents compete with the media sales pitch in all the movies, television, and other media as well as peer pressure to be popular? I wish I knew the answer to that question, Donna.
Yeah, it’s really hard to keep it out of girls’ head, the influence of peers and media, certainly if parents go along with it.
Even though I did fall victim to a P, I did not feel guilty when he wasn’t treating me right and responded to it (sometimes reacted to it), and he has been unable to hurt me in my identity, my feelings of honor and self-belief. I don’t even feel I lost self-esteem or self-respect. Of course it would have been best if I had not entangled myself with him in the first place, but that’s another story.
Anyhow, a child story that always resonated in me as having a powerful message is that of the little mermaid by Anderson. Avoid at all cost the Disney version, because it teaches exactly the opposite of the original version. For those who don’t know it…. little mermaid is curious about the human world and sees a good looking prince in a ship that is about to go down in a storm. She saves his life, and helps him ashore, and sings for him, having fallen in love with him. But she has to return to her father’s palace, and the prince wakes to another beautiful human woman who found him on the beach and helps him to the convent to be nursed. He thinks she is the one who saved him and falls in love with her.
Little mermaid searches out a witch to ask her to make her into a human woman so she could be with her prince. The witch gives her a pair of shapely legs, but in return the little mermaid has to give up her voice by which otherwise the prince could recognize her. She is human, but mute. And also, as walking and legs are not natural to her, she bleeds from her feet with every step she takes.
She ends up being the prince’s favorite companion. The prince has never seen the other woman again, nor does he know where to find her, and he likes the little mermaid enough, and intends to settle for her. When he’s sent out to another country for an arranged bride, he even promises her that he would not want the other woman. He’ll stay with the mermaid.
But once he enters court and sees that the arranged bride is the woman he assumes saved him, he forgets about the mermaid altogether, and instantly marries the other woman.
Little mermaid ends up being heartbroken. Worse, the witch had also warned her that if she could not achieve to win the heart of her prince, she would die and turn into foam. But her sisters want to come to her aid. They give her a way out: if she kills both newlyweds with the dagger from the witch before sunup, she can return to sea as a mermaid.
And the little mermaid enters the honeymoon tent on the ship to kill both the prince and his bride, but she is unable to kill hte man she loved. When the prince and bride wake up with the sun and stand at the railing of the ship, they marvel at the beautiful foam appearing like flowers on the sea around the ship.
The story is pure tragedy, but ought to be so. First of all, the little mermaid denies to herself the reality that she and the prince are two different beings.
Secondly, she attempts to be someone she is not, alter her identity, change her nature in order to be with a prince who’s only good asset is that he’s pretty. By changing who she is, she loses her ability to communicate. In order to remain with the prince, she is forever bound to be misunderstood and easy to push away. She has no voice to stand up for herself. Worse, being someone she isn’t is a torture, a daily pain.
Thirdly, the prince is a fool, who gives away his heart (if he has any) to the first woman that passes by. He would never truly love the mermaid, not even if she’s human.
Fourthly, the prince is an undeserving clout, who first promises to marry her, only because he can’t find the other woman, and ditches her as soon as another presents herself who is more to his preference. His promises are worth nothing. At the very least, he is fickle.
And lastly, no, the little mermaid cannot become who she used to be anymore. The whole experience has changed her too profoundly. Both the old self as well as the persona she takes on to be with him are dead. And even knowing all that now, she is still in love with a man whose only merrit are his looks.
It is a children’s story that parents can use to try to teach what not to do, based on attraction alone.
Oxy-OK that whole issue with kids and sex really grosses me out. I have decided recently that I do not plan on having kids after all-mainly cuz I am SCARED TO DEATH to have a daughter and have to try and raise her with all this crap. I think it would be a little easier raising a boy. Once I completely got over ex boyfriend and came back out as my true self, I realized that it’s hard for kids too if parents are gay and primarily, since I am planning on being a police officer, I have to be realistic that there is always a possibility of me not coming home at the end of my shift and there is NO ONE on this earth that I would trust to take my child. If something happened
OK Guys ~ try being 63 and raising a 10 year old!!!!!! Talk about a generation gap.
The really scary part of this is, these CHILDREN, from about 8 years on, actually view themselves as the teenagers in these various TV shows. MANY shows on Nickelodean and Disney channels are directedly marketed to their age. Try watching some of these shows if you want your eyes opened to what Donna is talking about.
Oh, yes OXY, those beauty pagents, with the parents (not just the Moms) yelling at their TODDLERS to shake their rears and show the judges’ what they’ve got. I want to reach through the TV and slap those parents. Then I want to reach for a barf bag.
At least a thousand times a day I am saying “You are ONLY 10 years old, not 13, not 16, you are 10.”
Oh My …..
KatyDid…what you describe is so the norm these days…I cannot believe how parents have checked out, and yes, how they live vicariously through their children, and want so badly for them to be “popular”. I will never forget at a local festival, a group of 2nd graders, from one of those quasi “dance” schools, dressed in, what I can only describe as “dance bikinis” gyrating to the song Love Shack on stage. I just thought, did none of these parents think about what their kids were dancing to? What they were wearing? REALLY? Pedophile heaven it was, that day…I have 12 kids and it’s a constant fight, this world is a scary enough place without inviting the scare into our homes/lives …I’m no puritan, and I can’t protect them from everything, but my kids know their boundaries.
Hi All,
I have been reading but not commenting. I would have to write a novel for my recent past but will spare you all.
Instead, to comment on the above, well, it is not just with the little girls but the little boys too. My daughter thought it was so cute when she “taught” my grandson age 4 to sing and dance a Michael Jackson song. I love Michael Jackson’s talent and his ability to dance etc. But watching my grandson sing and dance to Billy Jean was too much.
Especially when he grabbed his groin and pushed his body to the audience as MJ does in his video. Then he was singing Beat It and again the inappropriate gestures etc.
I just told him when he is with me, that is wasn’t nice to do that particular gesture and instead to do this and show him another move.
My daughter is has a bi-polar disorder and borders on SP. I went through the symptoms here with you friends some time ago, and she is impossible. At another time, I will extend out to you all for some help about some issues, but I have not the time right now…..
But don’t these “grown up children” foresee what all the above instills in the little minds and hearts of our children??
I was the “perfect” victim for a sociopath. In highschool I was never asked on a date. Never had a date for prom. I was basically invisible in highschool. I was extremely lonely.
I was 18 and working in a bad neighborhood. So I decided to take some martial arts. I never even knew the abusive mindset. Absolutely nothing.
I am so happy you are educating highschoolers. (this is when i needed it most!)
I was preyed on by my martial arts instructor.
I am now 22…and no longer a naive nice girl…but a smart woman.
Excelent post and point Donna!
“sex sells” and it has for decades, hundred of years since the early days of fairy tales.
If you examine all the fairy tales like “Sleeping Beauty”, “Cinderela, “Little Priinces”, “Beauty and the Beast”, “Little Red riding Hood”, etc. etc. the archetypal message is alleays the same for little girls; Be beautiful, sexy, kind, generous, HELP THE BEAST BECAUSE WITH YOUR SWEETNESS AND BEAUTY YOU WILL TRANSFORM HIM INTO A PRINCE…or you will lay sleepiing in eternity until the ultimate PRINCE CHARMING comes to wake you up and transform you from a troll into athe beautiful princes that you are.
The messages to little girls have always been the same, only now in this modern society of mass marketting and media, it’s become an outrageous blatant norm.
As a designer and a concious marketter, I am always appalled at how the most mundane products are presented with sexual overtones to sell. And when it’s in your face like the constant bombardment of TV commercial for viagra, etc. the message is always there SEX, and with out it your nothing….. disgusting.
I don’t have a daughter, but I see the girls in school when my sons were in primary school and I couldn’t believe my eyes. I always wonder, what are the parents thinking? well it starts with the fairy tales they read.
Pefectly flawed,
I’m glad you got your education early in life. keep learning, it is a complicated subject and if you aren’t familiar with the red flags, another one will get you. Please don’t spend 25 years with one, like I did.
Aeylah,
I agree, it is the fairy tales. And the twilight series has got to be the worst of all. Vampires are glorified. Supposedly, the male vampire sabotages the human female’s car and stalks her and tries to control her. All this is because he really loves her, but being a vampire, he uses his super human control powers. Well that is exactly what my spath did to me and he certainly is a vampire as well as a murderer and child rapist. But I also know he NEVER loved me and is incapable of love.