Letters to the Editor
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This isn't new ...
This obsession with the virginity of beautiful teenagers isn't new -- think Brooke Shields.
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Before the Olsens
It started well before the Olsen Twins... I remember the websites counting down to Natalie Portman's 18th, roughly coinciding with the release of the first Star Wars prequel. My guy friends were only about 19 at the time, but I still thought it was icky.
When Britney appeared on the scene, no one seemed to worry much about waiting for the countdown to end before they'd admit to drooling. They just drooled.
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Thanks for bringing this to our attention
And I'm sure those involved salute your very public outrage.
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irrevalent, considering...
To be a child star - you'd have to realize there are ugly truths that aren't talked about, especially if you're a female. There are things that you have to be willing to do if you want a shot at the top - things I won't discuss here.
Having said that...the whole deflowering topic is moot.
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In the Interest of Fairness
Although clearly this is most likely to be done with female teenage stars, it is also done with male teenage stars such as Daniel Radcliffe, aka Harry Potter. From Broadsheet:
http://dir.salon.com/story/mwt/broadsheet/2005/11/23/radcliffe_countdown/
Ironically, anybody who consults countdown clocks like these is extremely unlikely to ever be in a position to take advantage when the clock strikes zero.
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truly disgusted
I don't care much for hanna montanna....
but countdown sites for 18th birthdays for girls as young as 5.....somebody needs to petition for them to close down.
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You mean, 'FEMALE teen stars' lives'
No one is talking about Daniel Radcliffe's virginity, after all, or Rufus Grint. And no one talked about Justin Timberlake's, though it was obvious that he was the one Britney lost her virginity to.
If Britney and Jessica chose to discuss their virginity in public, then yes, there virginity (or lack of) is reasonable fodder for public discussion. The wisdom of this is something that the girl's themselves, and their parents, bear responsibility for. Agents and managers are there to help them succeed - if they'd refused to take the sexualized virgin route, other routes would have been proposed - see Mandy Moore. It's doubtful, however, that Britney would have been as successful without the sexualized virgin theme - her voice isn't that good, she isn't a songwriter, all she does is choreographed dances...in short she was a manufactured pop performer who *needed* a hook to become a star. Pretty much the only hook available to a willing young female performer who can't really sing is sex.
What goes on in the media reflects what goes on in the culture, not the other way around. We have always dragged girl's sexuality out into the limelight for inspection. When I was in high school, there was always the designated 'slut' - some poor girl about whom there were rumors that she was sexually active - usually with some preposterous number of boys (the whole soccer team, say - at once). Girls went along with the villification because it protected their own reputations from inspection/decimation, given that many were sexually active but hiding it to remain 'good girls' in the public eye.
I was a junior in high school at 15, and most of the girls around me were, if not sexually active with their boyfriends, then everything but. It's a pretty normal part of development at that age, for boys AND girls. I don't think Miley Cyrus is necessarily too young for experimentation - it's too bad it's being discussed in the public eye, but she is famous and most girls that age and parents of girls that age are preoccupied with sex - girls with having it and avoiding the consequences, parents with preventing it. Salon is just reflecting reality by reporting on it.
However, Salon failed to give the context for the 'poll' - when I followed the article to its source, I found pictures of the girl with her boyfriend and they were clearly intimate - maybe they haven't 'gone all the way' but I'd wager any amount of money they've done everything but. The pictures have that undeniable whiff of comfort with physical familiarity.
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Is that why Emma Watson "accidently" had some crotch shots on her 18th Birthday?
It's like a rite of passage now, get out of a limo and the whole world gets to see whether you're Brazillian, natural or landing strip. I guess whatever sells.
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Virginty isrover rated
Virginyty is over rated and is more about poccession and perversion than it is about is purity. It should be private.
Hannah Montana is a terrible role model for young girls . She is a DIP!!!!
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Say what?
Losing your virginity sucks.
Well let's just get our cards all out on the table right up front, why don't we?
... today's teen actors are facing increasing scrutiny about their sex lives.
Not to mention stern declarations about how "losing your virginity sucks" — why not add a finger wag and a "young lady" at the end?
Everyone is facing increasing scrutiny about their sex lives. It's part of what happens when you break down taboos about sex and public life.
Yes. The fetishization of young girls as sex objects is deeply troubling, and connected in profound and even more troubling ways with the fetishization of virginity.
But is this really new? A half century ago it was all about sexual control through enforced ignorance. In the nineteenth century Lewis Carroll lusted after Alice Liddell and everyone knew that if a man deflowered a young girl it would cure him of STDs.
What's different today, in 2008, from 1848 or 1948 or even 1988, is that the cultural conversation now openly includes these topics — and that conversation happens at the speed of internet.
So, you know, it's hard to feel like the entire modern age represents profound downward spiral from grace — whatever one's own irredeemable loss of pride in the back seats of French Canada might have been. The seamy underside of sex fetish is just more out in the open, and is that really (wholly) a bad thing?
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Luckycat
Brook Shields in "Pretty Baby" is a perfect example of the perversion of virginity. I realized when I saw that movie that saving a girl's virginity for an auction at a bordello is not much different than promoting purity for marriage and possession by a husband. The Christian right new purity balls reflect the same kind virginity perversions as the movie 'Pretty Baby"
If you want to see a movie about a 12 year old, virginity, and childhood lost, get the video 'Pretty Baby". It's probably the only good movie Brooke Shields ever made.