sexy

  A quarter of this world’s population is situated in North America, Europe, and Japan. If you live in any of these regions you are subjected to a constant barrage of extreme sexuality from print media, to the internet, to the local high school, or merely walking outside your home. If Middle Eastern cultures have any apprehensions that we have sold out to evil, they need merely watch our TV or peruse our magazines.

Of course, at the turn of the Twentieth Century, the sight of a woman’s ankle, even cloaked in a stocking, was enough to send a suitor into a delirious tizzy. But by the turn of the Twenty-first Century…, good grief! Do teenage girls want to be assaulted?!? Do teenage boys think that wearing their pants below their butt is attractive, let alone appropriate?!? Really!

Fashion today, at least among teenagers, is a degradation of the female and male bodies. Among Twentysomethings, it’s a little better…unless their goal is to get picked up, laid, or merely to look sluty. Casual sex is in vogue. “Hooking up” it’s called:  no other context, just sex. O joy. Granted, this is not true of every teen, or every Twentysomething; but it is all around us, all the time.

Everything sexy in our society, in our culture, has lost any context connecting it to marriage and commitment. It is sex for sex’s sake, and nothing more. Tina Turner’s song, “What’s Love Got to Do With It (1984).” was prophetic. Why would anyone have to pay for sex again?

Physical/sexual attraction among the young, and the old, is a normal part of life; a quite enjoyable one, I might add. But must sexuality dominate our media to the extent that it does? I recall a 1950s auto parts magazine cover, picturing a girl in a bikini holding a 3’ long wrench. My mind was baffled. The connection between the wrench & the bikini was supposed to be…, what? Even though I was not yet 20 this made no sense. But this was merely a portent of things to come.

Western culture, and any culture seeking to be like us, will fall to this sexualization of their young. It is the inevitable result of any society that dismisses a moral code based outside its own plurality. The questions raised by this process are serious and numerous and must be addressed. Otherwise, Caligula’s Rome awaits us.

So how do we instill a moral conscience in the next generation when the definition is left up to the individual who is assailed 24/7 with the images & messages of sex? Ideas please!

Sweet dreams,

Gary