A Warning

Having been reared in a family that thrived on secrets, I am no stranger to denial. If the lie can be sustained, why bother with the truth? Let's pretend everything is wonderful. Such a rejection of unpleasant reality might be mistaken for optimism, but denial is more sinister than that. Regularly ignoring truth infects all involved with an insidious loss of equilibrium. Like looking through the wrong prescription of eye glasses, denial leaves some participants, especially the unwilling ones, always on the brink of nausea, straining to make sense of the distorted view.

I love your comments, Burton. I also know what you mean about various states of undress. Little kids don't have too much modesty or too much interest except out of curiosity. I never worried as much about nudity in a movie my children might see as much as I was concerned over violence. I do worry about how young some of the current models are. There were some ads in Rolling Stone back in the 90s that could have only appealed to pedophiles. It was Calvin Klein in the heroin chic era and there were a couple of half clothed about 12 year-olds as models. I stopped my subscription to the magazine and wrote to them about why. That particular campaign was discontinued--many people wrote--but lately I've noticed the same tendency creeping into various areas of advertising. Super thin models were in the news last year after a couple of deaths with global attempts to encourage actual caloric intake. Now more and more images seem to be just barely pubescent. Or else there are the role model celebs like Paris Hilton. Her visit to a local Macy's makes me question their quality as well as taste. Maybe mine is a larger resistance to the Madison Avenue attempt to hand me some prepackaged image I am to portray. I can only speak from a woman's point of view, but if this is liberation, I want nothing to do with it.
More on the whole feminism issue later.

Changes

I am attempting to make some changes in my life. At my age, cynicism tends to set in. You know, thoughts like "I've tried this before" or "what's the use?" pepper my world view. But I have found it is harder to give up on possibilities than it is to believe in them.

Another thought: Walking through Macy's today, I was accosted by lifesized picture advertisements hawking some new fragrance for Estee Lauder. They were artistic photos of women--one very, very young--half clothed in suggestively opened dress shirts. Eroticism oozed from the poses, which in and of itself does not offend me. But I read a commentor on my daughter's blog today who was puzzled by someone who wore a Tshirt blazened with MAN WHORE to a children's tourist site. I likewise was concerned about children like the eight year old boy shopping with grandma for school clothes or the ten year old little girl who is cutting through the department store with her mom to get to the mall and a book store. There was no channel changer or on-off switch, no way to close the magazine, and no way to avoid the EL display on that particular floor. As a composition teacher, I emphasize the importance of audience. I wonder to whom EL is attempting to appeal and if their marketers have forgotten that their displays appear in stores where families shop. Of course, I don't understand fragrance ads on TV with all their meaningful pauses either. Maybe I am just not an ideal consumer.

It is not a really big deal. But so many small changes in society have the effect of desensitizing us. I believe what I most resent is that media and advertisements and social mores are being refashioned by people, some nebulous group, who not only do not care about my opinion but also flat out refuse to consider what I think. They recreate the world in their images and I have to go along or drop out?