Exploiting the Teen Temptress
You
may have never heard of the 17-year-old actress Taylor Momsen, but she
represents everything that's wrong with pop culture today. At seven,
she starred as the adorable Cindy Lou Who in Jim Carrey's "How the
Grinch Stole Christmas," but there's nothing adorable in what she's
done lately.
Momsen is a "multiple threat," matching acting on CW's smutty teen
series "Gossip Girl" with a "music career" with a band accurately
titled "The Pretty Reckless." In July, still aged 16, Momsen's music
video for the song "Miss Nothing" featured her in raccoonish eye makeup
wearing a white silk bodysuit, fishnet stockings and garters - not
exactly your standard high school junior outfit - a child, crawling,
standing and lying on her back on a banquet table offering herself
figuratively as a morsel for men twice her age.
In September came another video, for the song "Make Me Wanna Die,"
where she walked down the street, systematically stripping until she
stood in a fiery cemetery in her underwear and stockings. She promised
in the lyrics she would steal and die for her beloved.
Then in October, Momsen - realize, still legally a child - appeared
on the cover of the hard-rock magazine Revolver wearing a skimpy black
camisole, black panties, and the requisite garters and stockings - but
this time, she was carrying a Glock pistol and a sawed-off shotgun. The
copy next to her promised verbiage on this "pretty reckless
firestarter's appetite for destruction!"
Also in October, Momsen performed with her band in New York and
upped the ante for the crowd, opening her shirt and exposing her
breasts ("covered" by pasties). The Hollywood Gossip website underlined
that "This was no invasion of the Gossip Girl star's privacy by
paparazzi. Taylor Momsen made sure concert-goers saw Taylor Momsen
topless on stage. Insane."
It's either insane - or the act of giving the envelope-pushers
exactly what they want. She also keeps celebrity gossips buzzing by
joking she had sex with a priest; that "her best friend is her
vibrator"; that she set her neutered dog's testicles on fire as a
protest against men; and that she started a feud with Miley Cyrus and
her repressive "bubblegum (expletive)," saying she never wanted to be
"Miley f-ing Cyrus." Momsen blames her parents for ruining her life,
that she never had a childhood and started working as a model and
actress at age two.
Momsen may be extreme, but the trend is well-established - the
marketing of teenaged temptresses for much older men. Oh, let's stop
the niceties. It's not "teenaged" anything. These are young girls.
Children. And it's the glorification of statutory rape.
Earlier this year, we had the stars of the teen show "Glee"
prancing around in underwear and sucking on lollipops for GQ magazine.
A "Glee" scene featured two cheerleaders making out in bed in their
cheerleader outfits. Why must Hollywood turn high-school girls into
fantasies for men of all ages? More importantly, what do teenagers
learn about sexuality from our brazen popular culture? The Parents Television Council
recently started at the top of this sleazy mountain, studying sexuality
in all scripted programs in Nielsen's top 25 for viewers aged 12 to 17
(during the 2009-2010 season) in two hot ratings periods, the first two
weeks of the November 2009 "sweeps" period and the comparable first two
weeks of the May 2010 "sweeps."
That would include dramas like "Desperate Housewives" as well as
comedies like "Two and a Half Men." Fox's programming aimed straight at
teenagers was heavily represented: not only "Glee," but "The Simpsons"
and the Seth MacFarlane cartoons "Family Guy," "American Dad," and "The
Cleveland Show."
What the PTC found matches the teen-temptress trend, and it's a
factoid that should rattle you: Underage female characters are shown
participating in a higher percentage of sexual action than adult
females. While almost 70 percent of sexy scenes with adult females
involved verbal sexual references, 47 percent of the sexy scenes with
teenagers implied nudity, implied intercourse, or erotic touching,
kissing, or dancing. And then there's this: 98 percent of the sexual
incidents involving underage female characters occurred with partners
with whom they did not have any form of committed relationship. In
other words, just raw, physical sex.
The depictions of underaged sexual activity are more explicit than
those featuring adults and yet, 75 percent of these hit shows with
sexualized underage female characters did not have an S-descriptor on
screen to warn parents of sexual content, thus nothing tripped the
alleged parental "protection" of V-chip technology. This proves for the
thousandth time what a joke it is.
Taylor Momsen shouldn't just blame her parents for her horrid
behavior. The supposedly "feminist" entertainment industry that can't
wait until adulthood to exploit females for money needs also to be
condemned. There's a whole lot of pimping going on.
