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.
Wow, What diplomatic sophistication at such a young age. But, you mean you really didn’t want to marry your Dad? 🙂
I did.
Yea, I know about the Electra comples. It is even more comples than the oedipal complex, because, her first love interest, like a boy’s, is her mother. She has to resolve two love interests instead of just one. She transfers her love for mom to Dad, then resolves both by identifying with Mom. A boy only makes the move away from one love object. Girls have to do it twice. Interesting. Not enough study has been given to this topic. It is assumed that the Oed complex is what motivates us all, because we are subsumed into the dominate paradigm.
Another article on incest prevailance
http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/humannature/archive/2008/04/16/incest-in-nature.aspx
the examples mentioned in other animals are mostly those of lifeforms such as insects, fish, and amphibians. These are evolutionary much earlier lifeforms, though the species may be rather recent.
Darwinsmon, I didn’t mean to slam the animals. What I meant was that we have a taboo against incest where the animal kingdom does not. Most animals have no problem mating with immediate family members, but we have a strict prohibition, in place. This is absolutely necissary, and human culture depends upon it. Now the only reason to have a taboo is because there are strong desires and drives at play that must be discourage and repressed….and I agree. We are animals, and I agree that any and all species might like to think of themselves as different and seperate from the rest. Good conversation.
Nope, I did not want to marry my dad at all. I liked and loved my dad, but we’re too much alike in temper. I did not even think of him as attractive. Only when I was near my 30s did I start to recognize that my dad was quite attractive as a young man (think Adrian Brody). But the worst is that he has the habbit of telling me what I should avoid doing when he’s concerned about me, even if I’m not even yet thinking of doing the thing he is worried about. Sometimes it even insulted my feelings that he would think I’d do such a thing at all. He jumps too conclusions too fast too. I know he does it out of concern for me, but as a kid and teen I absolutely loathed it. And it can still irk me.
So, almost any men in my past was someone who deviated a lot of my father in personality, which also implies I avoided men with too much of a comparison of my own temper.
My father though was made happy though when I told him I knew of an attractive actor who looked like he did when he was younger, and especially when I showed him some pictures of Adrian Brody. He was pleased to know that finally his daughter was not finding him abhorrent anymore.
And the P was actually the only guy that I felt was much alike to my dad and myself: social, talkative, extravert, somewhat chaotic, having to search for his stuff all the time and where did I put it (I always ask my mom carefully whether she saw such and such, and my dad will accuse my mom of having misplaced it)… I just felt that he was like a younger version of us, and a louder, more extreme one. But that would be the mirroring, what would make me feel comfortable. It were the good things I liked about him.
But in a way that’s a positive for myself, and for my dad. It means I reconciled with myself who I am when I fell in love with my P, and that I reconciled with what often be the source of disputes between my dad and I.
I married someone who was a lot like my Mom. OCD, and contolling. Infantalizing.
Years later, I went to the opposite extreme and hooked up with someone a lot like my Dad. Alcoholic, social, gregarious, light hearted. My Dad wasn’t spath, though, and the spath took these charatoristics and ran with them.. He was a user, and a con. My Dad wasn’t.
Great conversation.
My take on the oedipal complex is that it doesn’t have anything to do with incest at all. The only reason oedipus married his mom is because he took his father’s place as the ultimate authority (king), so naturally, since he was wearing his father’s skin, he would need to have everything his father had, including his mother, to really “BE” his father.
This matches up perfectly with the way spaths mirror us, become us. They want our self-esteem, so they get close to us and manipulate us into loving them. We, naturally, hold anyone we love in high-esteem because we hold ourselves in high-esteem and we jump to the conclusion that we couldn’t love anyone who isn’t worthy – RED FLAG: MAKING ASSUMPTIONS!!
Once we love someone, we have “lent” them our high self-esteem, just the way they are lent credibility by being with us. That’s why they choose us, good, moral and responsible women to be with. They know how we think.
But we didn’t realize that they think exactly the opposite. They have extremely low self-esteem, since they see themselves for the infants that they are. (not that they see this logically, but the feeling of being needy and helpless is there) Before you love them, they are envious of your self-esteem and want you to love them to prove to them, that they are worthy of love. (Remember Hulga/Joy’s lover demanded that she say it?) But it’s never enough, because their self-esteem is so low that instead of proving to them that they are worthy, instead it proves to them that YOU are unworthy. Once you say, “I love you”, to them, they see you as pathetic and an object of disdain. Which is what they wanted in the first place. They wanted to bring you down from that pedestal and this is done by making you love someone as revolting as they believe themselves to be.
It’s the exact opposite of how we think, that’s why there is no redemption for the spath, it’s because he refuses it when it’s offered.
Sky, Oed murdered his father and married his mother without knowing they were his father and mother.
His bio Dad, Laus had paid a visit to the Delphic oricle and had been told that his son would grow up to murder him, and would then marry his wife, Jocasta. Because of this prophesy, Laus, refused to name Oedipus, peirced hos ankles, bound them and exposed him to the elements.
In a day or two, a wandering shepard stumbled upon the infant Oedipus, and took him home to his own Kingdom and gave him to his childless King and Queen.
Oedipus grew into his young manhood, crippled and walked with a limp. He used a cane.
One say, Oed was just hanging out in a place a lot like a bar. He over heard a group of roudy drunken youth gossiping about him. They said that he was destined to kill his father and marry his mother. Horrified, and not knowing that Menelous (the King) and what’s her name (the Queen) were NOT his real parents he left their Kingdom, in an effort to cheat fate and protect them from himself.
On his journey he encounters a carriage at the cross roads and in it is a real entitled individual who orders Oed off of the road…This man strikes Oed with a cane, and Oed reacts violently and kills him, along with all but one of his coachmen.
He continues his journey and comes upon the dreaded Sphinx, who has been terrorizing Laus’s kingdom ever since he was found mysteriously murdered at the cross roads.
The Sphinx tells Oed that the only way he will be spared is if he can answer a riddle correctly. (This is often refered to in Literature as a “neck riddle”)
“What goes on all fours in the morning, walks on two in the afternoon, and walks on three legs in the Evening?” asked the sphinx. Oedipus answers Mankind and gestures toward himself. The Sphinx throws herself into the abyss, and Oedipus becomes the hero of his new Kingdom….they need a King cause Laus has been murdered so they crown him, and Jocasta ( origins of her name: the Joke) takes a liking to him and they marry.
It is Only MUCH later when a plague ( same root word as plaguerism) ravigess the land, that Oed determines that the reason for the plague is that it is a punishment for L.’s murder and if they want to end the plague, they must find the murderer.
Later, a shepard comes and tell’s Oed that his father is dying and wants to see him. It is only then, that Oed begins to suspect himself as murderer. He tries to stay in denial, but eventually realizes the truth.
Jocasta kills herself and Oed. blinds himself and exiles himself to wander the country side aimlessly, forever.
Oed. accepts Scapegoat status to save the community, just as Gerard would suggest.
But there is an extreme unconsciousness about the whole thing…and remember that the word “tragedy” comes from the Greek and means “goat-song.”
Oedipus begins his life as a victim of abandonment and is crippled for life. He is set-up for tragedy by his unconsciousness. I love this stuff.
So the growth of an individual is reflected in Oed’s answer to the sphinx…we start our infancy crawling, then we walk, and when we are old and wise we walk with a cane. It also speaks to the evolution of human culture. We start out on all fours, raise to our feet and develope language skills, then in our later evolution we go on three…the cane is a crutch, and can also be compared to a pen….thus language evolves from the spoken word to the written word.
I had heard the story before, Kim, but I love the way you tell it! Yes, the oedipus syndrome is (I’m going to say “subconscious” rather than “unconscious” because there is a subconscious drive).
The killing of his real father at the crossroads is symbolic of meeting authority and deciding to kill it and take it’s place when you come to a cross road in your life. All this happened because his own dad tried to change the inevitable course of human nature: that you give birth to your own replacement. It’s destiny. So because of that narcissism, he ends up crippling his child, so that what should have been a normal transition of passing the crown from father to son, we have a violent rebellion against authority and a perversion of nature.
That, I believe, takes all the elements of how the spath thinks and lives and ultimately suffers, and puts it all into a drama that nobody, could imagine actually happening…
Are you saying Oed is the spath? If so, I disagree. I think it’s a warning against unconsciousness, and harkens back to Girards ideas about the cultural need to remain unconscious of primal drives and project them outward onto the other. The other that is then sacrificed for the sake of the community….so that they can remain in their comfy state of unenlightened ignorance.
Oed is faced with the emerging “knowledge of good and evil” rising up within himself. He was at first innocsent because of this unconsciousness, but becomes guilty as soon as he aknowledges it. This is the perfect place for a scapegoat to be. He is the primal scapegoat….
Then, as Gerard would point out, Jesus comes along and makes sacrifice obsolete. Jesus says, “Let he who is without sin, throw the first stone.”
Just brain-storming a bit.
Sorry about my long-winded re-telling of the tale.
Have you read Girards, “Violence and the Sacrid”? I think you would really get into it, Sky.
Kim,
whew! my internet was down and I went into withdrawal!
Yes, I read Girard last in 2009 right after “all the evil happened”. I needed to understand evil and it helped alot.
It had never occured to me that Oed was a spath, but maybe so. It would fit: he’s born entitled, he is wounded and crippled and he’s got mommy issues. But as in all myths, the characters aren’t meant to be fleshed out, they are 2-dimensional, for a reason: they symbolize parts of ourselves. These are not fleshed out characters, so I couldn’t actually call him a spath except for that spaths are all 2 dimensional. LOL!! But in myths, all the characters are flat and shallow, even the good ones. That’s why they can end up doing anything.
Wow, the more I describe mythological characters, the more I sound like I’m talking about a spath. There is no difference!