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De facto child abuse?
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(Povah)
Yesterday, being a smidgin hot under the collar about the so-called sport of shooting alligators on less than equal terms, I touched briefly on the subject of allowing very young children access to lethal weapons.
I didn’t comment on it at the time, and still won’t. If parents think that it’s okay to allow their littlies to use guns, that’s their business and none of mine, though I doubt any parent would let their child, no matter how sensible, drive the family car on the freeway. To be absolutely fair, teaching kids to kill things in the real world is only a small step removed from the violence and bloodshed which are pretty much the sole theme of the thousands of video games and movies to which kids have virtually unrestricted access.
And is it any worse than conditioning them to compete in the so-called ‘child beauty pageants’? I didn’t know such things existed until the tragedy of JonBenet Ramsey’s short life unfolded and then, just a couple of weeks ago, I watched an episode of a Tv series supporting, if not extolling this weird and scary sub-culture.
Do these kids’ mothers – and it seems to be mostly mothers involved – ever stop to think what their daughters are being asked to do on stage? The makeup and costumes are bad enough, but to see a four-year-old attempting to shimmy, bump and grind like some ghastly parody of a 1930s carnival burlesque queen is nothing short of horrifying. Take a film clip of just one of these performances, put it out of context on YouTube and you’d probably find yourself talking to the FBI.
So where do we draw the line? Putting automatic weapons in the hands of African ‘child soldiers’ is regarded as child abuse, and should be. Teaching our own kids to shoot living things or allowing them the brutality of violent video games and movies…where do we stand on that?
We rightly feel outraged at the activities of paedophiles and call for stricter monitoring of the activities of known offenders, yet we say nothing about these pageants which offer up little children as miniature versions of catwalk sex objects. We also allow the existence of an industry aimed at selling makeup, ‘beauty’, fashion and dating advice to the prepubuscent. Tube tops and advice to the lovelorn for 9 year olds? Tanning for pageant contestants? I hope the parents have good health insurance. I suppose it all helps the economy, but at what eventual cost?
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