September 18, 2007

We Need to Tell Them

We need to Tell Them, both boys and girls, that having sex isn’t finding love. This is difficult to understand, given the way romance is portrayed in movies and on TV, of course. This relates to my second message: We need to make sure we purchase NOTHING that uses sex to sell. It’s a cheap, ugly ploy by advertisers that if you use a given toothpaste or drive a certain car, you’re sexy. This, of course, furthers the concept that being sexy is a necessary ingredient to the glamour of living in a TV commercial, which we’re all taught is the way to live, just by the constant barrage of those very commercials! It’s a dangerous mind-warping fact of life for too many Americans, especially in places like South Carolina, where’s there’s virtually nothing to do that doesn’t involve spending money. Few people in SC have money. So many kids find comfort and fun in sex.
Girls bear the brunt of all this social irresponsibility. Perhaps if we could find a way for boys to suffer life-debilitating consequences of teenage pregnancy, they’d be more careful about playing around with sex - and perhaps their parents would begin to understand the need for sex education and condoms. As long as boys can go play their sports and pretty much suffer no consequences of getting girls pregnant, there will be no change in teen pregnancy rates. Classes that dwell on shame and fear will have no effect on teenagers, given teenagers’ tendency to believe nothing bad can happen to them! The only way we’ll see changes will be to change the adult contribution to society.
To sum up, that change must come from not supporting corporations who make it cool and sexy to buy certain products and demanding the boys be treated to the same baby-making side-effects as the girls. At some point we as a society must learn and emphasize that men have as much responsibility as do women for the children they produce, and on a day-to-day basis, not just when custody battles arise and the money is being counted.
The continuation of this analysis would go into society’s insistence women make less money, then considering the father’s larger income when contemplating custody - thus insuring money is the focus of child-rearing… perhaps to insure money is spent on junk that emphasizes sexiness and keeps the nasty spiral going?
Money talks, but it needs to learn another language. The status quo is too mean.
Chicago-born Kate Lehman Landishaw moved to SC from Boston, where she had spent many years as a grassroots activist (affordable housing and racism issues) while working to build a business career. When the obvious conflict of these pursuits finally dawned on her, social activism and her undeveloped talent as an artist emerged strongest; so, that’s where life is carving Kate’s niche in the Carolina clay.