Halos and More

Once again, this is an article I’ve shared with the good folks over at Tomorrow’s Trust. And you get a comic, too, just because I like you.

The Rise of Raunch Culture

It’s a strange fact of teaching that you wind up reading magazines that are three, four, or even five years old. It’s no longer safe to give your students a magazine to leaf through and look for pictures to use in collages or art –- even the most benign are apt to have some pretty strange things going on in the advertisements –- so we wind up flipping through ourselves and yanking anything that looks appropriate. And in the process, we spot articles that catch our interest.

That’s how I wound up reading a three-year-old issue of Maclean’s magazine – an issue from September 26, 2005. Lots of references to Hurricane Katrina. Some out-of-date political commentary. And an article referencing a book by Ariel Levy called Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture.
Or, as the magazine cover so succinctly puts it, “how it became cool to treat yourself like a piece of meat.”

The most frightening aspect of the article, which analyzes the increasingly exhibitionist behavior of modern women (including the intriguing observation that it’s no longer enough to be “beautiful,” you have to be “hot”), involved high school students. We’ve all seen high school girls dressing in, shall we say, less than appropriate ways. Maybe as teachers and parents, as responsible adults, we’d like to turn a blind eye to it – make excuses: it’s just fashion, and they don’t really know what they’re doing.

But Levy’s interviews with young women seem to indicate otherwise. Teenage girls freely admit to giving lap dances at parties and making out with other girls solely to attract boys, all competing to look the sleaziest they possibly can. So why are they doing it? Is it a form of sexual liberation?

One girl’s response to Levy answers that question loud and clear. When told that not so long ago, such extreme exhibitionism would have gotten you ostracized, not idolized, a teenage girl retorted, “How did you get the guy? Charm?”

How did you get the guy? Well, there’s the issue in a nutshell, isn’t it? As a Catholic teacher, it terrifies me to see ten, nine, eight year old girls coming to school in tube tops, stiletto heels, and worse. As any teacher, that should be kind of scary. I really don’t think we need to be sexualizing small children. This isn’t a matter of some sort of Catholic repressionism, it’s common sense.

This puts us in a unique place as teachers. How on earth do you teach your girls to respect themselves and their bodies in the midst of a culture where success seems to be measured by how many boys you attract and how many pounds you lose? I’m not even talking about sexual choices here. I’m talking about maintaining some sort of dignity and respect, not only for yourself, but for other women.

That puts teachers in a very awkward position. At the age of eight, some of our students are already mimicking older sisters in how they dress, speak, and think. Sometimes they’re even mimicking parents, aunts, or cousins. So what to do?

Well, there are three things we can at least try:

1.     We can set a good example ourselves. I’m not trying to mandate a maximum skirt length here or anything like that. I just mean that if we’re female teachers, we need to display respect for our bodies and those of other women, and if we’re male, we need to make sure we’re treating women with respect.

2. We can try to instill a sense of self-worth in students. Do what you can to convince them that they’re valuable for reasons outside their bodies, and make sure male AND female students see themselves as individuals with souls, not just creatures of flesh and blood.

3. We can be aware of the issues facing young people, especially women, these days, and address them – maybe not in grade three, but certainly as they grow older.

Beyond that, we’re at the mercy of a society that tells these kids to value themselves solely on what they look like. In the face of that, all you can really do is pray.