by E L Swist

Created on: September 04, 2008

Not so innocent is beginning to sound like a bit of an understatement. The rise of fame obsession in young people today is blurring the lines of what is appropriate and what is over the top. We hear it over and over again, times are changing. It is a different world out there and it seems like the divide between socially acceptable and morally relevant is broadening with every new Britney Spears story or Paris Hilton scoop. The lack of positive, self-respecting, and responsible role models for today's young people (especially girls) is staggering. Have we as a society become so desensitized to the depraved that it has become common place to allow our kids to dress like sexual objects rather than children?

Many people may not think that this provocative new generation is really that big of a deal. Make no mistake there are many implications that are suffered in the wake of this loss of innocence that as a whole parents are obviously either don't understand or maybe they just don't care. Go to any shopping mall and really look with an objective eye at the clothes for sale to the younger crowd. You don't even have to do that. Just take a look around at the young girls walking around. Short and tight is always a popular theme. Implicit words written on the chest on shirts and seats of pants are a staple in every young girl's wardrobe. These girls are being conditioned at a very early age to view themselves and the girls around them as "eye candy". Sexual objects at an age that sex should not even be something that they have to think about.

We are treading in dangerous waters here. The media and fashion industries are consistently pushing the limits by taking young girls and making them look like women. Anthropologist David Murray warns that, "Our culture is to a large extent experimenting with eroticizing the child." Models are getting younger, sometimes as young as 12 or 13 and dressed up as women and are photographed with older male models in photo shoots that would have been deemed pornographic in the not so distant past.

Why is this ok? In a time when it seems that you can't turn on the television without hearing about a pedophile or child rape or child molestation who in their right mind would allow these young people to be sexualized to the degree that they have been. Has our obsession with youth somehow helped to create this new fashion trend? Does seeing these images of young people as provocative adults somehow vicariously feed our desire for eternal youth? Regardless of the cause of this unsettling new trend the ultimate result is young girls who develop a misconstrued perception of what it means to be a woman and how they ultimately should feel about themselves and others.

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