Tuesday, October 04, 2005

More on teens and sex

But, here's a weird thing- when asked what they want to do with their lives, 63% of girls want to be a glamor model, and 25% want to be a porn star. Perhaps this explains why Jenna Jameson was encountering teen girls who consider her to be their role model.

People will worry about what this says about young girls' self-esteem, but I think that misses the point. I'm going to suggest something a bit off-kilter- maybe teenagers experience self-esteem as a burden. It seems like a lot of parents force self-esteem, or more accurately, high self-regard, on their kids as something that they have to maintain to have a high quality of life. They may not want them to be highly moral or highly academic, but the kids must have a high self-esteem at all times. I think that this gets to be extremely artificial after a while, especially when it's not tied to any actual accomplishments.

I think perhaps the porn star crosses the last taboo left- the taboo against degrading oneself, against letting down ones own self-surveilance, and thus she escapes the prison of self-esteem.

No comments: