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Diz: Oh, and to elaborate further on this:
In my book, the "girls are dressing like sluts these days" speech is to sex what "why can't all these black rappers speak Proper English, and why don't they talk about something Positive and Uplifting instead of guns and hoes and bling and all that?" is to race.
Additionally, it always smacks too much of "in my day..." when it's more about the change in perceptions of the issue rather than the issue itself. Someone mentioned upthread that sex for pleasure among kids has gone up, but I'd argue that we're just more aware of it now - just because you weren't supposed to talk about Fallen Women in the Forties doesn't mean that a lot of girls didn't get pregnant before they were ready or wanting a child, out of marriage, et cetera. And to assume that the boys in question went into the liasion with any intention beyond pleasure ("By gum, I think I'll get her pregnant!") is self-defeating. They did it, I would imagine, because it *felt good*, or they were driven by hormones that they couldn't talk about.
The argument of "kids these days" just strikes me too much that people are forgetting what kids were actually like in their day, and they've glossed over their memories with a happy pen. I don't know about other people, but I always felt like I was wholly and completely responsible and wanted to be taken as wholly and completely responsible when I was a child - and now I know this is not true. The feeling of "kids these days" sets up an Us-versus-Them that ignores the fact that we -were- them at one point, and they will be us. We survived it for the most part, even with a lot of baggage, I'd imagine a lot of them will as well. They just might end up with different baggage.
One of the weirdest parts of being in my mid-twenties is the mixture of irritation, concern, and laughing memory that hits me when I see teenagers being teenagers. |
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