I have said this before, but once again, I am tired of the way teenage girls are not supposed to show sexual desire in, like, nearly all of bestselling YA literature. Even in the Hunger Games, which otherwise I quite admire, Katniss only barely starts noticing, after MONTHS of kissing Peeta, that, huh, it's occasionally *fun* to kiss him. And of course (SPOILERS, HI) a certain pregnancy rumor has to go hand-in-hand with a marriage rumor--because a heroic female would never have sex before marriage, even in a world where tributes stroll around naked to please the crowd.
Authors and prudish Americans at large, you are NOT doing teenage girls any favors by holding up only the chaste young women as the role models. You are indirectly (and sometimes directly) suggesting that all sexual feelings are to be suppressed and are something to be ashamed of, and that a "good" girl doesn't go beyond kissing AT ALL until after marriage. (I suppose you say the same to boys, but with much less force, because hey, boys do what they're going to do, right?) You are only giving our young women complexes, far more than you're giving them valuable role models. They're going to have those feelings whether you discourage them or not.
All I can do is rant occasionally, and of course write my own books in which teens find healthy and relatively safe ways to enjoy each other sans clothing. Which I shall keep doing. So there.
Authors and prudish Americans at large, you are NOT doing teenage girls any favors by holding up only the chaste young women as the role models. You are indirectly (and sometimes directly) suggesting that all sexual feelings are to be suppressed and are something to be ashamed of, and that a "good" girl doesn't go beyond kissing AT ALL until after marriage. (I suppose you say the same to boys, but with much less force, because hey, boys do what they're going to do, right?) You are only giving our young women complexes, far more than you're giving them valuable role models. They're going to have those feelings whether you discourage them or not.
All I can do is rant occasionally, and of course write my own books in which teens find healthy and relatively safe ways to enjoy each other sans clothing. Which I shall keep doing. So there.
Comments
But the heroine is Sandy. The professional virgin, poor man's Sandra Dee, who proceeds to change everything aout herself in the end of the movie, just to get the guy.
That was 1978 - sexual revolution time. The only thing that has changed between then and now is that Rizzo would probably die horribly by the end of the movie.
Yeah...it's all kind of messed up in that movie. Sandy is dull, but Danny treats her rather horribly, so he isn't worth changing her entire being for, yet that's the happy ending. And even Rizzo takes punishment for being sexual--pregnancy scare, reputation damage, relationship problems. Luckily she does get Kenickie back. ;) Agreed; nowadays she'd die of a miscarriage or something.
It won't be graphic though, but it will exist.
Have you guys seen Stockard Channing these days? Solid actress with a decent CV under her belt. Still looks lovely. Olivia Newton John - regularly has plastic surgery competitions with her daughter. Can only score gigs on second rate Australian talent shows. Looks more and more like Jack Nicholson's "The Joker" every day.
Total sidenote, though related on the subject of physical attractiveness: saw The Avengers! Great fun. I think I was at a disadvantage in that I don't know comic books much at all, and hadn't seen, like, any of the movies preceding and relevant to this one. (Half of Iron Man is all I've seen. Haven't seen The Hulk, Captain America, Thor...) That might have helped. Still, pretty people abounded. And RDJ made it 2.5 times funnier than it would've been without him. Naturally I burst into giggles when he called Hawkeye "Legolas."
But ah, the Avengers! That's why fiction should exist: To be fun. (And in this case, for some of the audience at least, to provide eye candy.) Alas, it's parody-proof - too self-consciously aware, and amused.
I never followed the Marvel comics universe either, which I think actually helped, b/c I didn't have to rebel at any deviations from canon. (And I've rebelled often enough at the deviations in the LOTR and HP movies...) I had seen Thor & Iron Man I & II before, and I've seen Captain America since; I'm sure there'll be a boxed set for the Christmas season.
I saw it with five kids - four teenage girls and a five-year-old boy - and everyone loved it. The violence is of a cartoonish, non-threatening kind, not too scary for a five-year-old, but with enough grown-up nmaterial to keep his parents entertained. It's almost enough to make me forgive Joss Whedon for Dollhouse.
Hah, I know; Stark's lines in "The Avengers" (and the lines of many others, on occasion) were pretty much what I would've put in a parody. Nothing left for me to do there. Wonder how we can convince Joss to stick to lightheartedness? I haven't even tried Dollhouse. Enough people have given it awful reviews.
We let the kids watch it, and they seemed fascinated with the fights and explosions. The only thing that seemed scary to the 3-year-old was Iron Man's mask. Hee. Go figure.
I might see "Thor" after this, since Loki and Thor did intrigue me. Not *just* because they're cute...though that doesn't hurt.