Obsession with sex that could kill our children (Daily Express)Time of publication: 16.04.2003 |
Leading medic is warning of public health crisis.
Obsession with sex that could kill our children.
By Virginia Blackburn
Cases of sexually transmitted diseases are soaring. A full two decades after Aids awareness campaigns first began, incidents of Aids and HIV infection are expected to rise by 10 percent this year. The number of cases of chlamydia, which can cause female infertility, has doubled to 71,255 and the incidence of gonorrhea has risen 87 per cent since 1996.
Such a bleak message from Professor Micheal Alder, architect of the Government’s strategy on sexual health. We are facing a public health crisis, he says. In particular, he warns that people are beginning intercourse younger and taking more sexual partners and the NHS cannot cope with the results.
Depressing stuff but is it any surprise? We live in a society that has been sexualised as never before. Children and teenagers are targets of a cold and calculating advertising and marketing industry that seeks to exploit for profit their burgeoning natural urges.
Look at the advertisements on television or in magazines, the marketing techniques used to promote the latest teen icons. Whether the message is overt or subliminal, nothing sells like sex.
Take Tatu, two Russian girls who claim to be lesbians. Though 17 and 18 (both 18, dammit! ~ I_Love_Yulia), this duo dress to look much younger than they are and, under the watchful eye of a middle-aged manager, seem to be targeting two audiences, teenage girls between the ages of 14 and 17 and men who like under-age sex. Four days ago, the Daily Express reported on a competition on their website encouraging the group’s fans to dress like Tatu.
Young girls are encouraged to dress like little provocative adults in revealing tops bedecked with provocative slogans. Until recently Bhs stocked a range of children’s underwear called Little Miss Naughty, featuring thongs and padded bras (wow, big deal! ~ I_Love_Yulia); it withdrew the products only after protests. It is still running a clothing range designed by the pop band Atomic Kitten, aimed at children aged 6 to 13.
Everywhere you look now, teenagers and young children are exposed to sexual imagery. Teen magazines are the worst perpetrators of all. It is not long ago that More ran a feature called Position Of The Month.
A recent edition of Cosmo Girl asked a 12-year-old girl if she fancied an 18-year-old boy.
Obsessed with sex though they may seem to be, at least girls’ magazines generally try to place the matter in some kind of moral context. The journals aimed at boys are a far more depressing proposition.
Magazines such as Loaded might ostensibly be designed for mean at least in their 20s but their real audience is teenage boys who are greeted with the message that, if you want to enjoy your life, that you should drink your own body weight every night and sleep with as many women as possible.
Even in magazines aimed fairly and squarely, the slender models showing off the latest designer clothes are usually teenagers, pouting and giving some come-hither glances to the camera.
Sucessful and rich before they reach 21, these young women are role models to teenage girls.
Is it any wonder that vulnerable teenagers take from all this that the message that sex is everywhere, that everyone is having it – and that the sooner they join in the better?
In the face of this barrage from the forces of capitalism, a few well-meant school lessons about sexual health and the importance of waiting until the time and circumstances are right go quickly by the board.
No sensible person wants to return to the Fifties, when sex was a taboo, too embarrassing and shocking even to be mentioned. Young people want to know about sex. What we should be teaching them is that sex is a healthy part of a happy adult life. Instead, greedy companies and cynical advertisers are exposing the young to emotions they simply are not ready to deal with.
We are damaging them physically as well. By promoting sexual imagery to very young children we are exposing them to diseases that may prove fatal or damage them internally, yet still we refuse to see what a dreadful mess we have created.
Ironically we now fear the possibility of paedophilia as never before. We are warned not to take pictures of school plays in case paedophiles see them, male teachers dale not hug their charges in case they are accused of abuse and no doctor with half a brain cell would examine a child without a nurse present.
Much of this is hysterical and unnecessary. We put our daughters in mini-skirts, encourage our sons to read magazines that celebrate promiscuity and inform each of them, directly and through all-pervasive imagery, that if they are not sexually attractive they will never be happy, find a partner or succeed in life.
As Professor Adler has found, the result of this miserable, confused message is a nation obsessed with sex, but unable to deal with the consequences of that obsession.
Transcription and Scan by I_Love_Yulia.
Source: Daily Express |
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