The Whoring of America's Youth

I want to apologize for the recent hiatus that has been experienced on my website. I have been working on my thesis, and with classes beginning next week, I may not post as frequently as I have in the past. But I will try and contribute interesting and thoughtful posts when I find something interesting, which brings me to today's post.

Society Gone Wild is an article I came across in my online reading today. Here is a taste of the article:

If you have ever found yourself up late at night staring at the television, you’ll likely be familiar with Joe Francis’s work. Joe Francis is the brains (?) behind “Girls Gone Wild,” that lovely, $40 million a year series of videotapes or DVDs that provide a historical record of the varieties of undergarments worn and removed by mostly drunken old girls and young women of the early twenty-first century.

A great recent article in the Los Angeles Times provides a wealth of information about Mr. Francis. We learn about his arrest on charges of racketeering, drug trafficking and promoting the sexual performance of a child; about his fondness for physically bullying women; about his philosophical insights into human nature (for instance, “only the guys with the greatest sexual appetites are the ones who are the most driven and most successful” – is that pre-Socratic? I forget); his business’s code ("Push That Porn!!!"); his pitiable life of being so gosh-darned famous ("It's fun for everybody else but me. I just get hounded by kids. It was more fun not being famous on spring break."); and even his gift for turning phrases ("I've been anally raped over and over by the media."). What a guy! But Mr. Francis isn’t the story. There’s nothing new in men profiting from sex, nor in what people used to call men profiting from the exploitation of women. What’s new, instead, is that it’s almost impossible anymore to call the eager dropping of one’s drawers in return for a T-shirt exploitative.(emphasis added)

That introduction should have caught your attention. Now check out this even more powerful statement from the article's author, Joseph Capizzi:

Let’s be clear about what we’re seeing. This is nothing less than the whoring of America’s youth. Joe Francis is not setting this trend, he’s capturing it on video. And these girls typically are not exposing themselves because they are drunk, though they are very drunk, but because that’s what they know.

Whoring of America's youth. It was only time before the over-sexualization of society started taking its toll on the youth of the world. This actually brings me to an interesting tie-in to what my wife had mentioned on her website concerning a recent visit we had to a Toys-R-Us. We were quite shocked to see such trashy dolls being marketed to young girls. Check out her post Valley of the Tramps.

I dare not think of what's next if this is how far things have gone.