Oh, man, that’s priceless! I think I’m going to steal that, only I’ll use white sugar and table salt - you can’t tell which one is sweet and which one will kidnap you and take you away from Mama forever by looking at them.
Here is the fear - I’ll leave it to you to determine whether the fear is justifiable or silly.
Small children soak up the world around them like dry sponges. What they see they may emulate…or they may forget…or they may stick it in the back of their little brains.
See or hear things portrayed as acceptable over a period of time and you give kids the impression that its acceptable behavior. Swearing. Casual Sex. Making your living swinging on a pole.
Most parents hope their kids grow up to be doctors or teachers or engineers. They want them to have fairly respectable lives. Perhaps its judgmental - I’ve known a few perfectly nice women who have stripped for a living (and some of them made pretty good money) but it isn’t my aspiration for my own little girl. And I don’t have a problem with guys who occasionally visit a strip club - it can be an enjoyable way to spend the evening - but I hope my son doesn’t choose to make one his regular Friday night hangout and doesn’t objectify women.
Each exposure to this things creates either the allure of something naughty - or perhaps more worrying to a parent, the perception that this is acceptable. Doesn’t matter if that is casual sex (or sexual naughtiness like stripping), drugs and drinking, or violence. Add in the complete stupidity parents anticipate for their kids between puberty and their mid-twenties - the danger years - and parents get anxious.
Nudity is not bad - the sex industry, however, does have a dark and disturbing underbelly. Is anyone saying nudity is bad?
(And nudity, outside its proper place, is not appropriate. Nudity may be all fine and good, flash people in a public park and its more complicated. These are also shades of things you will want to consider when raising well-balanced, mature adults.)
Mmmmm, pole dancers. Come over here. I’LL show ya some pole dancers.
I am shocked, SHOCKED, that parents can’t even let the TV babysit their kids anymore.
What makes you think that the public considered this display to be perfectly acceptable for their children to watch? Did the news report state that parents applauded the conduct of these girls?
No, but it was shown as a pretty light hearted cute thing. I mean, they were sexy, but no one was really judging them.
Did the news report actually say that, though? Or did it simply report that some people thought it was cute?
I’d be surprised if the public at large deemed that there was nothing objectionable about girls pole-dancing in public – even playfully. Moreover, unless the news reporters polled the public for their reactions, I don’t see how we can use that story to conclude that pole-dancing on a subway is indeed considered light, harmless fun.
Check out this guy pole dancing. (Video with sound.) Man, I wish the video quality were better, but it’s still amazing.
These aren’t acceptable? Why wasn’t I told this?
I thought it was the other way around. The more exposure and lack of reaction a kid got, the less likely he is to view it as alluring or naughty.
You mean like the Internet?
Do you want your kids engaging in these things casually? If you do, then they are acceptable to you. They are not to the majority of parents I know - at least, not as acceptable as the average 15-22 year old would like them to be.
I like your theory a lot – it would definitely be an improvement over my attempt – but I’m afraid that shortly their lesson, my kids would be licking random strangers.
(what I actually did, after I’d cleaned up the condiments, was pull up the sex offender’s registry for our county and let the kids see those faces)
Another one you’ll like – have you heard the latest recommendation re: kids asking for help in public? A lot of people suggest that kids should look around for a mother to help them out. Police officers can be hard to find, and plenty of pervs have nametags - but women with children are a pretty safe bet. So the theory goes.
I gave my kids that instruction, told them if we got separated they should look for a Mommy. They got really upset about this. It took a bit of talking for me to figure out – they thought I was saying that if they lost me, they’d better go hunt up a replacement! 
:smack:
Whoosh!
I have a question-- were the women in the clip stripping or humping the floor or doing anything blatantly sexual? How explicit was the dancing? Were they just swinging around on the pole? I’ve seen pole dancing that’s just dancing with a pole, not inherently sexual, like this video. This one is entitled “Sensual Pole Dance”, and while it’s more sexy than the first one, it’s STILL not what I would call sexually explicit. I’ve seen dancing at the middle school dance that was just as sexual, if not moreso because there were two people involved. So IMO, it all depends on what was going on in the specific video clip. “Pole dancing” by itself is not inherently R- or X-rated
Maybe I’ll feel differently when I have kids, and I certainly would endeavor to have my toddler watch pole dancing on purpose, but I also don’t see what’s so sexually explicit about fully clothed pole dancing that I’d cancel my cable or be upset about it. Though it would be kind of funny/embarrassing if your kid imitated the dancing in school. You would have failed to do what Chris Rock says you must do to be a successful parent of a daughter-- keep her off the pole!
Swearing? Sure, why not? They’re part of our language and convey strong feelings. Just because some people get bent out of shape over a few words doesn’t mean everyone does. Casual Sex? As long as they’re being careful and know what they’re doing, what harm is there in expressing love? Pole dancing? I think that is a great way to get exercise and stay in shape. Sure it can be made sexy if that’s what someone is going for, but it doesn’t have to be. And again, if it’s made normal, people won’t seek it out. Swearing was never disallowed in my house. My parents both swore casually. My mom explained that they were simply words that offended some people. Neither me nor my brothers swear much at all, despite 20-30 years of hearing it.
Cool. Some parents feel differently and want different things for their children. They are afraid that casual swearing will become habitual and therefore “career limiting.” They are worried that casual sex will not be safe sex - or disapprove of it entirely and would rather their kids not be under the impression that EVERYONE else does it. They worry that a career as a stripper may haunt their kids later when they run for Senate.
(I personally think teaching swearing is important since the power of those words is diminished when used against you if you make them powerless. That pre-marital sex is something good - but casual sex is confusing and often unintentionally disrespectful to either yourself or the other person (its hard to communicate what sex really MEANS and is often misread). Pole dancing at home for exercise or sex play - well, I don’t want to know about the sex lives of my adult children - but I do hope my kids don’t make any sort of career out of it. (For me, it isn’t the sex, I hope my kids don’t become models or politicians either).
I use that one. If they get lost or separated, they should look for, in order- an employee with a name tag, a mommy with a stroller, or a policeman. I make a point of stopping and chatting with an employee, showing the kids what their badge looks like, etc.
You can never find a cop anymore, it seems.
I’m sure you also skip out on TV shows and movies with the obligatory Italian restaurant scene or the obligatory donut shop scene or the obligatory skating rink scene or the obligatory hotel scene. Og forbid somebody actually portray a legal business making money in a major city.
I must admit, though, that I’ve never heard of this “obligatory” strip club scene you speak of; but then, I’m naive, and I would tend to assume that if a TV show or movie included a scene in a strip club, it’s for a plot-related reason, and I would totally overlook the fact that they’re probably neo-Hitlers hell-bent on oppressing people with their subtle chauvinist imagery. Which genre features the obligation to include a strip club scene? I can only think of one TV episode I’ve seen in recent memory with a strip club scene, and (a) that was a British show, (b) it only ever happened once, and © it was related to the plot. But then, I don’t seek it out. YMMV.
For a while (although I haven’t noticed it quite as much recently) it seemed like almost every cop/detective show or movie would have a scene where one of the main characters would meet a suspect or informer in a strip club. Which meant, of course, that there would be scantily clad or topless females (depending on the rating of the show) in the scene also.
[James Lipton]
Jenna Jameson, you are truly one of the greatest talents of the last century. Your acting in Hell on Heels, particularly the cyberpunk-themed lesbian threesome with Nikki Tyler and Sydney Steele, was a tour de force of transplendent method acting, on par with the finest performances from Katherine Hepburn, or even Miss Meryl Streep herself! Huzzah, Miss Jameson, huzzah and kudos to you!
[/James Lipton]