The ironically-surnamed Rachel Olding, writing in today’s Sydney Morning Herald, has discovered something shocking: girls of today are MUCH WILDER THAN THEY WERE WHEN SHE WAS A GIRL (five years ago):
Spending a month touring Sydney’s bars with the girls was an unfettered, depressing experience. I’m only five years older than them but their behaviour seems five times more outrageous than anything from my school days — just how much lower can the bar go? Theirs is a world in which giving a boy a blow job in the toilets is “pretty slutty” but you’ll shrug it off the next day.
INSTEAD OF TEARING YOUR HAIR OUT IN SHAME LIKE YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO.
One of the SMH images they IN NO WAY selected mainly to titillate (and we can only assume they checked that the women pictured were over 18)
For all the prurient detail about these girls’ sex lives, the main serious consequence that Rachel can actually list about their partying is from alcohol abuse:
Fifteen- to 18-year-olds have the highest rate of hospital admissions for drunkenness of any age group; by the age of 18, one in three teens is drinking at a high-risk level compared to one in 10 two decades ago. For young women, the risk of being admitted to hospital with alcohol-related liver disease has steadily increased in the past decade.
Paul Dillon, former spokesman for the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre and author of Teenagers, Alcohol and Drugs, last year visited the hospital bed of a 28-year-old Melbourne woman dying of alcohol-related liver cirrhosis.
Thing is, that real harm is not the same as what Rachel appears to be most outraged about in the article: ALL THAT FILTHY PROMISCUITY. By women with “short skirts” and “spread legs”. She mentions a rise in some STDs – but as a basis for implicitly demanding more chaste behaviour, not a renewed emphasis on life-saving safe-sex precautions.
Because none of the “slutty” behaviour is going to cause cirrhosis or brain damage or the other devastating outcomes of binge-drinking. But apparently it’s more shocking to parents and the Sydney Morning Herald audience:
“My mum knows how much I drink but I would never tell her about sleeping with guys,” says Sara.
Which, if her mother’s priority was Sara’s health, would seem to be completely the wrong way around. (It’s the former that should bother her.)
And alcohol abuse is also a problem for young men. So, presumably, is the increase in STDs. If this piece is about the dangers of alcohol poisoning for the young (which is what pretty much all the devastating outcomes are from), then what’s with all the angry whinging about insufficiently chaste females?
Because what Rachel has mainly provided here is patronising putting-young-women-in-their-place on the basis of their sexuality; the old double-standard about women needing to be under someone’s control – given away by the headline, “Do you know what your daughter’s doing tonight?” Not “do you know what your kids are doing tonight” – the boys are partying too – but LOCK UP YOUR DAUGHTERS hand-wringing. Your daughters are turning into shameless sluts! They’re going to be white trash! It’s your fault for not raising obedient, demure little women who won’t scandalise their elders!
Also, there’s an uncriticised quote from Melinda Tankard-Reist. So, you know.
26 Comments
Not having daughters, or hanging out with teenage girls (or desiring to do so), I really have no first-hand experience of what they get up to. But I have no reason to assume that one very important rule that has always (AFAIK) applied in the past has suddenly ceased to be relevant:
Has the median age of teens choosing to do the deed dropped? Undoubtedly (actually, according to a friend who is indeed an expert, it has). Are more teens doing it than before? Probably – it’s less risky than it once was, I understand that teens have more freedom and money than they did in my generation and prevailing culture places a LOT more pressure on them than it once did (unfairly, IMHO).
Based on my now more skeptical grown-up perspective, looking back on my own time at high school and early university, there were probably groups of kids who were actually doing the deed on a regular basis. Most (almost certainly) weren’t. If you want to generalise about the whole population, you really need to sample way more than one group.
In general I don’t think it hurts for society to occasionally put the brakes on licentious behaviour, which today is being inordinately informed by the porn/trash culture. It’s more common sense than prudishness. A perception of general wantonness, of crumbling sexual morals, inevitably gives fuel to conservatives, fundamentalists and worse. Never forget that Christianity took root in the debauchery of ancient Rome.
I for one am deeply shocked by the revelation that teenagers drink and have sex.
I am sure PP’s favourite columnist will tomorrow be blaming the government. Once you have a PM who indulges in sex outside of wedlock what do we expect?
I’m 40 and grew up in a country town. What she has reported actually sounds pretty tame in comparison to what I saw at that age.
“I blame Julia Gillard for this moral laxity. . .”
I think it shocking that giving a boy a blow job in the toilets can be regarded as pretty slutty but the boy receiving it can not be regarded at all.
Hmmm
I’d still like to know whether Olding had an Fairfax expense account with which to buy drinks with/for the young women she was interviewing. Even if not, there’s a huge ethical problem for any journalist not to encourage her subjects to drink to excess for the sake of the story.
15-18 year olds? who cares!
MUCH more interested in their behaviour over 18. It’s comforting to know she gives me a free pass for engaging in “bad” behaviour.
At any rate doesn’t she realise that moralising is pointless when the rapture around the corner will sort everyone out?
I guess somebody has to put on the sleaze hat and ask the necessary:
(1) where do I find these girls, and
(2) are they into older men?
This also reminds of a moral outrage story I read in quadrant a couple of years back along the same lines (I used to read quadrant, but it fell off my list of things worth paying for). The same sort of emotive talking point stuff. At first I did buy into the author’s horror. Then I thought about it for a bit and realised that the whole piece was just very stupid.
To be fair, Jeremy, having read Rachel Olding’s article in full, there were significant elements of sensationalism, sexism and an appeal to outdated values of female sexual abstinence as virtue.
But there was far more content with significant and valid points to make – for example,
Why you imply that anything Melinda Tankard Reist says must be criticised, I’m not quite sure: She seems to have made an eminently reasonable and concerning observation to me, and is not the only commentator to make the same point:
I wouldn’t be so quick to disparage the thrust of the article. The impression I was left was an accurate reflection of my knowledge of youth culture through family members in that demographic – sexual relations have been depersonalised and devalued, and the objectification and sexualisation of girls continues to proliferate.
Another revealing insight from Rachel Olding’s article – the girls whom she interviewed consistently expressed that their social activities were almost exclusively about flirting, their physical appearance, drug and alcohol consumption and sex. With regard to sex, they elucidated that their choices were to either have sex with their chosen “partner” for the night, and be regarded as a slut, or to not have sex, and face widespread rumour – fueled ostracism as a bitch.
This simplification and oppression of women, and especially girls, into pretty little sexual playthings to be classified as either bitches or sluts depending on their sexual output to men, is concerning to say the least, and it is reasonably well highlighted in the SMH article. Perhaps your criticism could be a bit more rounded and take this into consideration.
Decrying the immorality of youth has such a long track record that it’s a wonder we’ve made it to arguably the healthiest, happiest, and quite likely most equal time in humanity’s history. These girls can choose to do this – or not. If these young women want to buy into this cycle of behaviour at the prompting of commercial or peer pressure, short of locking them in covents, or different parenting and education, that’s their business.
But if this ‘expose’ was done with some kind of historical perspective, journalists wouldn’t be writing prurient and moralising pieces, I can see the problem.
Every generation decries the youth of it’s today.
“I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on
frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond
words… When I was young, we were taught to be discreet and
respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly disrespectful
and impatient of all restraint”
(Hesiod, 8th century BC).
What’s really odd is that there is no reference to the alcohol pushing culture exemplified by Justin Hemmes and Scott Leach. Mustn’t criticise the perpetrators.
“Decrying the immorality of youth has such a long track record that it’s a wonder we’ve made it to arguably the healthiest, happiest, and quite likely most equal time in humanity’s history”
Me too. I’m deliberately barren, so I don’t have a great deal of exposure to kids. But as a casual observer, I see basically no difference between the current generation and my own. There are dropkicks, absolutely. That’s ok – I was one of them, once. But my friends’ kids constantly amaze me with their ability to be sensible, responsible, intelligent and just downright nice.
My one observation is that kids (and particularly girls) seem to be faced with a lot more pressure to conform to unrealistic/unhealthy/unhelpful role models. I guess as long as they can figure out what’s real and what isn’t, it’s not a big problem. I just hate to think that any kid might accidentally mistaken the lilos or hiltons or even the jolies for somebody they might want to emulate. On the other hand, I guess there are also a lot more positive role models now as well. We have (more) strong women in politics and business now. And we seem to have got past the era when it was necessary to be a thug or a bogan to be an acceptable australian male. Odds are, I think the kids are going to be alright.
Hesiod wowserius erat.
The post in question seems to indulge in the great generalisation guaranteed to set conservative suspicions afire…”some girls behave this way….all girls must be doing it.”
I have to view this stuff through the prism of parenthood to two very strong-willed and independent girls, aged eighteen and nearly twenty. They are scornful of people of either sex who make fools of themselves while drunk. We have hosted two small parties where the elder girl has had between ten and fifteen friends around for an informal evening of food, drink and movies. Guys and girls brought relatively small amounts of their own booze, drank sparingly, had a good time and behaved exemplarily well. I’m told by other sources who know them that they are like this when they’re out on the town as well. But that would make for a boring article, wouldn’t it? ” Group of Young People Have Fun Without Behaving Outrageously or Getting Pissed.”
It’s a great reflection on the media more than anything. Can it be any wonder that the MSM is going broke as the youth of today read this crap about themselves?
Quam wanker.
At verum est forma
More appropriate –
Τουλάχιστον ήταν αλήθεια να σχηματίσουν
Ο Μεγάλος Σατανάς Μπολτ είναι ένα γαμημένο βρίσκεται μαλάκας και θα πρέπει να αναγκαστεί να ανατολικά δική σκατά του.
Or…
De sera est Satan et ipsum mendacium wanker cogeretur ortum suum mauris.
You forgot the other meme in the story, Jeremy – THE EVILS OF FACEBOOK!
For mine, it would have been a stronger story if she had focused just on the binge drinking – as a public health issue that is the one that needs more examination, especially when, as she says, the parents more or less condone their child’s drinking. While some of the girls are 18, at least one of them was only 17.
God – the joys of a classics degree!
“ROMANUS ITE DOMUM”
Angra, that’s Imperative.
If only they’d been drinking bhang instead – no violence, hangover, liver damage or … profits for brewers & distillers.
Oh.. right, can’t be having with that.