Especially for Parents
News and Commentary by Sharon Secor
April 2005
Through The Looking Glass

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We've reached a strange state of affairs in our country, particularly in regard to popular culture, those who profit from it, children, and parents – one in which children demonstrate a variety of negative effects as a result of exposure to popular culture, while individual and corporate profiteers prosper from it and parents stand by oddly bewildered. We've passed through the looking glass and arrived at a nation distorted and disfigured, bordering on the unreal.

It should come as no surprise that yet another ugly, violent incident has spewed out into the streets from the corporate funded "minstrel show" that brings forth the rap music that forms the soundtrack of so many teen lives. According to a March 1, 2005, New York Post report, the New York City radio station Hot 97 was the site – again – of an alleged rap related shooting, in which a member of the chart-topping rapper 50 Cent's "posse" was injured.

The incident, which made international news, allegedly arose from a clash between the "posses" of 50 Cent and The Game, a former G-Unit member. However, this is not the first time that Hot 97 has been the site of a rap related shooting. Rapper Lil' Kim, according to a March 18, 2005, AP report by Larry Neumeister, was convicted on charges of perjury and conspiracy for lying about the circumstances of a 2001 shooting at Hot 97.

And, in the rap world, the hits just keep on coming. According to an April 12, 2005, AP report published on NewsDay.com, Foxy Brown is facing charges in an alleged salon dispute over a pedicure in which "prosecutors charge that Brown kicked and hit a manager" resulting in "bruising and swelling to the face" and "slugged one of the workers with a cell phone."

On March 28, 2005, ABC News reported that Master P and his brother, who calls himself "Silkk the Shocker," are facing charges relating to the loaded, unregistered guns they were allegedly stopped with. Their brother, who, until very recently, went by the name by C-Murder, is in prison due to his 2003 conviction in the shooting death of a 16-year-old. Small time rapper Luis Ramos allegedly shot a high school basketball player on Easter, paralyzing him from the chest down, according to an April 4, 2005, Boston Globe report.

The April 18, 2005, edition of the New York Post reports that "the two hip-hop mogul brothers who adopted mobster John Gotti's name and turned Murder Inc. records into a hit machine are under federal investigation for the beating death of a Manhattan drug dealer." And the list of rappers allegedly doing crime and doing time goes on, and on and on.

We should wonder about a society in which a genre of music that "non-judgmentally" portrays and even glorifies violent criminal behavior is among the most popular and most profitable in the nation. According to an April 13, 2005, Mercury News story, hardcore "rapper 50 Cent became the first artist since the Beatles in 1964 to place at least four songs in the Top 10 of Billboard's Hot 100."

Indeed, it should give us pause that, as reported on March 18, 2005, by WorldNetDaily.com, to reach their target market, creators of a Bible "especially for girls age 13 – 16" felt it necessary to include "fictional teenagers discussing oral sex, lesbianism," and a host of other topics of a similar nature. What kind of culture have we allowed to develop that the makers of a youth Bible feel the need to add these extras?

One that, apparently, leaves a major publishing house, Simon and Schuster, feeling free to release a "young adult" book, which, according to its own web site means age 14 and up, about oral sex, titled Rainbow Party, by Paul Ruditis. A "rainbow party" is a popular slang term used to describe get-togethers in which girls perform oral sex on a boy or boys, leaving a rainbow made up of each girls' lipstick shade on the penis or penises involved.

Today, Abercrombie & Fitch, a company that markets to youth, finds it perfectly acceptable to use underwear clad models in sexually provocative positions on large street-side billboards, as demonstrated by the photos accompanying a March 27, 2005, New York Post article. And Reebok has no problem with using rapper 50 Cent, a self-professed ex-crack dealer who promotes himself as a gangster and pimp, to sell our children sneakers.

It is simply amazing what we, as a society, have allowed ourselves to tolerate and even accept. Among this season's top selling designer prom dresses, created by Xcite, is a floor length, tight fitting skirt held up by what are basically fancied-up suspenders. As reported in the New York Post on January 24, 2005, the $495 dress, "prominently advertised in Seventeen Prom, YM Prom, and Teen Prom," is worn with nothing underneath the suspenders, and thus with most of the breasts exposed.

"I was shocked when I first saw it, but now it's one of our top 20 dresses nationwide," said Nick Yeh, CEO of Xcite, according to the Post. "As a businessman," he continued, "I'm not judging what a teenager should or should not wear. It's up to the parents to decide for their own children."

The fashion industry's continuous marketing of porn-chic stripper gear to youth growing up in an already ultra-sexualized culture juxtaposes eerily against the words of the British pornographer that calls himself Ben Dover, who, in a March 2005 interview with Adult Video News said that he doesn't "want to shoot girls that have just been in America because they all come back acting like porn stars."

There are too many corporations whose profits rest upon products and/or marketing methods that are destructive to the spiritual, moral, psychological and physical well-being of youth. Amoral and irresponsible corporations, however, are not the entire explanation of our current cultural situation, nor are they even – in my opinion – the most important part.

For, while it is the Fortune 500 company, Reebok International, as Errol Louis points out in his March 11, 2005, NY Daily News column, that has "launched an entire sneaker line and national advertising campaign that features rapper 50 Cent", justifying their use of the rapper from "office suites far from the blood-stained sidewalks" and "counting the profits," it is all too often parents that permit their children to create those profits.

As children enamored of the thug life die in the streets, as did 14-year-old Anderson Bercy in a gang related shooting this past Christmas Eve, and 8-year-olds are assaulted in schoolyards in attempts to force gang allegiance, as reported in a February 27, 2005, Daily News story, big money corporations continue to relentlessly promote and profit from the rappers who glorify the gangster pimp lifestyle. But, it is parents that ultimately allow countless millions to be poured into the numerous industries associated with hip-hop music and fashion.

While lawmakers struggle over the degree to which ads for unhealthy and fattening foods can be targeted at children (according to a March 17, 2005, New York Times article, the companies invested $10 billion last year in advertising aimed at children, much of which reaches right into the schools) and health officials continue to send out dire warnings about the increasing obesity and diabetes rates in children, the food industry continues to rake in the profits from the sale of these foods. But, especially for younger children, it is primarily the parents that purchase such unhealthy fare.

Although researchers at the University of Washington have found an association between TV watching by young children and the development of attention problems and disorders and, as reported by Marilyn Elias in the March 31, 2005, edition of USA Today, teachers and school psychologists confirm that "more kids than ever" have significant attention span difficulties, with many suspecting "the fast-paced media" in playing a distinct role, a huge proportion of parents just can't seem to turn off the TV. Elias cited a Kaiser Family Foundation study of children 8 years old and up in which 63% of the children said the TV is "usually on during meals," 51% said "the TV is on most of the time," and 53% claimed to have "no rules about TV watching."

And, I doubt that nearly topless prom dress by Xcite, at $495, could have become a big seller without some parental financing.

For too many parents, giving in to nagging, whining and the fear that little Janey or Johnny won't like them anymore is easier than standing their ground and teaching right from wrong. Some just can't spare the time from their busy day to go through the hassle. Rather than the real guidance and principled examples they need, too many children receive – even from well-meaning parents – cop-outs.

In a recent article for the Common Sense Media Newsletter, Liz Perle, in an article titled A Common Sense View: Talking To Kids About Music Lyrics, wrote about her conversations with her children about lyrics such as those by the rapper 50 Cent. "There's absolutely no point in forbidding her to listen to the music, so the best I can do is listen with her and share my perspective," wrote Perle about her daughter.

With all due respect, I must strongly disagree. First, and most importantly, we are parents and we are in charge. And, second, there is no reason to support this type of music. There is a wide variety of excellent hip hop music that is positive in focus and still more that is Christian.

The best thing, in my opinion, would be to discuss in an age appropriate fashion how the lyrics by 50 Cent and his ilk degrade women and humanity as a whole, as well as glorify a way of life that causes nearly immeasurable suffering for the vast majority of the people caught up in its grasp, and to gently teach and strongly enforce that we, as a family, cannot support in any way those who bring forth such material. It is my responsibility, even when it's hard, to teach morals and principles, including empathy, seeing the big picture of how our individual actions affect the whole of society and the concept that the suffering and/or degradation of others should never be the foundation upon which our pleasures are built.

We're on the wrong side of the looking glass in our society. Instead of standing around, looking bewildered by what our children are becoming in this culture, wringing our hands while we wait for lawmakers and politicians to fix it all for us, we need to do our part, the often inconvenient work of putting our own houses, our own principles, purses and priorities in order.

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