The Girl In the Red Dress

The Girl In the Red Dress

Above is a photo of "teen sensation" Taylor Swift, who is actually well beyond her teen years at 22 years, but who nonetheless looks like an awkward teen-ager with her mother's bold red lipstick on. Her dress is a cute frock, and even grown-up, and her shoes have the high heels of an adult, but notice the pigeon-toed step which is how shy six-year-olds walk.

Today's young women vacillate between over-sexualized sluttish looks, and when they do try to cover up, they end up looking like confidence-devoid girls.

I wrote abut Taylor Swift here, where she has an interaction with Michelle Obama. I wrote of a photo with the two together:

Below is Michelle Obama with Taylor Swift, who says as she receives the award "I'm freaking out!" according to the Mail article. I'm sure she's overwhelmed. The photograph below subliminally captures Taylor's "freaking out" moment, as she instinctively gathers in her prize, and seems to be running away from a stalking Michelle. I would be terrified too, with this imposing woman standing so close behind.

Poor Taylor Swift. It isn't just
rambunctious young boys she has to
ward off, but over-exuberant
First Ladies as well.

Here is one of Taylor's more dramatic songs (yes, she does hail from a Country Music background, but even those songs have some level of dignity in their confessions of heart break):

"Don't you think I was too young to be messed with?
The girl in the dress
Cried the whole way home
I should've known"
Lyrics from: "Dear John"

But try to imagine a twenty-something boy-man singing "Don't you think I was too young to be messed with?" Yes he might write about unrequited love, but not with this self-indulgent pity.

Joe Jonas of the Jonas Brothers, who "split" with Taylor Swift before she "broke his heart" wrote the following song:

What did I do to your heart
What did I do to your heart
Did I break it, apart
Did I break it, your heart

Taylor Swift With the Neglectful Joe Jonas.
She may be as good as any man when selling her records,
but will she ever be strong enough to "break up"
like a man?

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We Can Say No, But It Isn't Enough

I should add to my last post People Are Not Stupid on the Kardashian sisters' promiscuity that relying in people's "common sense" is not enough. Young girls, growing in this culture of celebrity vulgarity are very susceptible. Their mothers (the woman I talked with could very well have a young toddler at home) may be less susceptible to all the tabloid news, but young children are not.

Protecting them to avoid such exposure is one way to lessen their descent into innocence lost, but there is still TV, friends, and the general culture which will seep through any barriers well-meaning adults may build. Teaching girls to be "nice" is not enough, and modern mothers very often don't have the principles and tools to help their daughters maneuver through these wastelands anyway.

We have to fight this promiscuous culture directly, while at the same time protecting and teaching young children the right behaviors. This takes more than a mother, and more than common sense. Religious and cultural traditions are essential.

Society pariahs like the Kardashians should not be made comfortable with their disgusting TV shows. Cultural networks like TV, magazines etc. should be made to feel the cost of putting out pornographic-level material. Schools should feel the cost of allowing (and at the very least, ignoring) a sexualized culture to foster in their play grounds.

We can fight the battles at the front lines, but we can also protect children through standards and principles.

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People Are Not Stupid

Ordinary people are not stupid.

I was at the grocery checkout, when I saw one of those tabloid magazines with the heading "Kim [Kardashian] caught with a man and a woman and ." The story is more detalied, as it also involves Kim's lesbian tryst at this same encounter.

I turned to the young woman behind me and said "That's not surprising." (I talk to "ordinary" people behind me or next to me in lines, etc. to gauge what people are thinking. The media keep telling us that people are more perverted, more liberal, more accepting of erratic sexual behaviors, but I think that is not accurate. We may be inundated with these images and stories usually from second rate "celebrities" but people take that like some kind of circus freak show.)

"I would believe it with the other one," said the woman.

I started to laugh. "Yes, Khloe, right?" I said. But the woman didn't answer, I think embarrassed at being "gossipy" with a stranger in a grocery line. Khloe, who is married to a black basketball player, looks like a transvestite, and looks like she will "experiment" with anything.

Khloe Kardashian

I just continued to laugh as I finished at the checkout.

Well, these "celebrities" deserve no remorse from us. With their mediocrities and media fawning, this is exactly the kind of "news" that makes their day. I also believe it. What else do they have to do with their empty days?

But to give this group of sisters some support, it is their "manager" mother, Kris Jenner (yes, all the female members of this family have names which begin with "K" courtesy of Mom) who started hawking them to gossip magazines at a young age.

The Hip Pimp Mother with her brood
(She's the one on the far left)

None of these girls has done anything substantial. They cannot sing or dance for their dinner (see Kim Kardashian's "colder and more distant than Siberia" performance at Dancing with the Stars), so it is to their advantage to follow their mother's lead, or so they think.

Now "Kris" has two more teenager daughters, which will extend her daughter-hawking career by a few more years. Will it be grandchildren next?

Kris with Kyle and Kendall

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Resurrecting Ishtar

Reconstruction of The Ishtar Gate
Pergamon Museum, Berlin

It may seem trivial to write about pop stars, and many are innocuous enough, but Madonna takes everything up a notch, as I wrote here. Her gyrating through our culture affects everybody. The blogger The Vigilante Citizen also seems to think so.

He compares her appearance at the Superbowl half time show last February to a Babylonian goddess. Yes, Madonna did come decked out as some kind of exotic ancient priestess, so this may not have been a difficult analogy to make. But TVC explains the significance of her "costume":

Madonna herself is dressed in a way that highly resembles an Ancient Sumerian/Babylonian goddess, Inanna-Ishtar.

Ishtar was a powerful and assertive goddess whose areas of control and influence included warfare, love, sexuality, prosperity, fertility and prostitution. She sought the same existence as men, enjoying the glory of battle and seeking sexual experiences. Madonna’s portrayal as Ishtar is therefore quite interesting as one can argue that the pop singer has embodied, throughout her career, the same assertive yet highly sexual qualities of Ishtar, even achieving a state of power in the music industry that is usually reserved to men. On an esoteric level, Ishtar is associated with the planet Venus, known as the Morning Star or the Evening Star.

I also compare Madonna, and her highly sexualized performances, to an ancient goddess. I wrote:

Madonna's homosexual men [in her video Girl Gone Wild] are like the castrated dancers of the Greek goddess Cybele, who danced around their goddess into sexual frenzy.

We have reached a new level of Godlessness in our culture. But this doesn't result with an empty, atheistic, world, but with a world full of gods. People still need figures to worship. Rejecting God only leaves an empty space to fill up with other gods. Leading cultural icons are re-inventing and re-introducing ancient gods and goddesses into our culture. Popular culture, through powerful venues and mass gatherings such as television, giant pop concerts and spectacular sports arenas, displays these rites and rituals with grandeur, hypnotizing even the most jaded of viewers. It won't be long before those empty souls are filled with such offerings. Madonna is not merely re-enacting some forgotten ritual, but is resurrecting an ancient, pagan religion and its goddess.

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