Read a Rediff article on the same topic:
http://www.rediff.com/money/2008/jun/23mrv.htm
http://www.rediff.com/money/2008/jun/23mrv.htm
Recently, there was this item in the news, where a group of seventeen "yet-to-turn-16" high school students made a pregnancy pact in the US, and succeeded. The reason? Well, the insidious effect of the coverage that celebrity pregnancies got in recent times. If you keep glorifying unmarried, under-aged pregnancies like that of Britney Spears' sister, and you keep pointing cameras at celebrity pregnancy bumps - what would you expect kids to learn?
A friend of mine who's into fashion, once told me how new fashions were invented. According to him, there weren't many avenues left for creative expression in clothing. So, designers had a choice - either they could drag themes back from the past, or they could shorten or lengthen existing clothes. He gave a very insightful description of how thongs were invented, but in the interest of your stomach, I'll let it pass. Anyway, what was even more interesting was their promotion strategy, which was two-fold: get celebrities to endorse the design, and demean those who stick with existing ones. For instance, to popularize women's pants, they'd associate it with feminism, so that anyone who didn't wear them, wasn't with the times, and was therefore, a supporter of male chauvinism. Similarly, to sell over-sized clothes, you glorify pregnancy, make motherhood the in thing for the times, get celebrities to advertise their pregnancies, and make a quick buck.
Now you know where I'm going with this line of argument. The loonies who control the fashion world, the loonier celebrities who model for them, and the still loonier media that covers these like there is no tomorrow - these are flooding adolescent minds with a steady supply of utter crap. Add to it, declining family cohesion, and the obsession with adultifying our kids to the point that 10-year olds start dictating their parents, and you have situations like the ones Massachusetts is trying to grapple with. With an underdeveloped pre-frontal cortex, adolescents who are not in a position to make sound judgements, are ruining their lives and the lives of others, causing serious harm to the health of a society.
Scroll your favourite maps to India. We have a similar recipe brewing in our midst. Will this soup turn as sour as that of the Americans?
2 comments:
boy, this is the age of female-chaunism. Pregnancy-pacts and high-5s on one side and holding the unknown fathers' for financial and rape charges on the other. A few months ago, on boston legal they were mocking the man who apparently couldnt get the bit#$ who gave him a bl$%-j$b and got herself pregnant (how did that happen?!) for any kind of lawsuit. He'll be fortunate if she didnt press rape charges against him! And behold this is a world phenomenon... so its surely and certainly coming to a place near you...
whats the fuss all about? selling is so much of an art you'll never know what hit you... look around there will be gazillion things you never needed but still bot them anyway!
Karthi, thanks for the 'uplifting' forecast! No fuss though. :) If someone wants to import wholesale American nonsense, who am I to prevent it? :)
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