Collegiate Times

Anyone remember that movie “Clueless” from the mid ’90s? You know, the one about the bubbly blonde who could not wait to have sex with her gorgeous but — as it turned out — gay friend? Remember how old she was? 19? 18 maybe? Actually, she was 16.

Perhaps this is when it began: The media’s obsession with sexy, jail-bate co-eds wearing barely-there dresses with sky-high stilettos as they sashay past hormonally incapacitated boys. Call me prude, but does this not strike anyone as, let us say, perverse? The topic of “oversexed and under-aged” has been beaten to death for over a decade, yet the more the media is scorned for its suggestive material, the greater the number of racy television programs, commercials, songs and films emerge.

To meet the demand for “thirteen-year-old Alexa” to sport the latest mini-dress with thigh-highs and a Fendi bag, retail stores have thrived on their dedication to providing miniature sized provocative attire. Do popular retailers such as Hollister and Abercrombie and Fitch that cater to preteen and early teen girls have a responsibility to provide trendy yet age-appropriate clothing to their clientele?

After spending several hours in such a store with my 11-year-old sister, I became deeply concerned, if not a bit perturbed, to discover not only the population of scantily clad juniors flooding the store but also at the reading material strewn throughout the premises. On several of the coffee tables lay copies of Maxim, Cosmopolitan and GQ, all of which advertised on their front pages articles how to, and I’m paraphrasing here, “spice up your sex life.” These magazines have consistently contained material very similar to the current content that, while unsavory to some, I find no issue with. What concerns me is why they were strategically placed in a store that middle school-aged children frequent on a daily basis.

Maybe it is being paranoid to think that the retailers deliberately bought the magazines and placed them within reach of preteens because they know the power of media influence on their revenue is driven by the wanton desires of girls to look sexy. Negligent at best, these retailers are manipulating an era of children whose desire to fit in leads them to not only dress scantily and inappropriately, but also to have false expectations about sex, to have sex at an increasingly earlier age and possibly become infected with sexually transmitted diseases that will haunt them for the rest of their lives.

Nowhere in magazine articles does it provide a truthful glimpse into the life of a teenage girl who began having sex at an early age, who had children earlier than most of her abstinent counterparts and then subsequently relinquished her childhood aspirations for a career and life beyond caring for children. Frankly, the truth behind preteen sex is more than unpleasant ­— It is tragic.

Why would the media continue to push the lie that teen sex is not only thrilling and exciting but ubiquitous as well? As always, it all comes down to the bottom line. As long as retailers see spikes in revenue driven by their pandering to new-age sex appeal, they will continue to uphold the “sex sells” motto even at the risk of wrongfully influencing the futures of countless girls around the world.

Asking the media to compromise revenue for morality is not only futile, but it is also laughable, which means the responsibility to educate under-aged girls lies with us. Young women: have frank, honest conversations with the girls you know. Be earnest, be heartfelt and be candid. Sharing your experiences, fears and anxieties can help to debunk the glamorous myth that the media has forged at the expense of preteen innocence. As many of us have discovered through our own experiences, life has a way of removing the happy endings from fairytales.

A version of this article appeared in the Mar 3 issue of the Collegiate Times.