And so we have the overprotective mother...

Hokay so it’s my turn to write a blog post, bit late I know. And while the issue about France’s recent ban on burkas has got me thinking about the imposing of clothes on women by state and/or religion, I found that writing as a white, atheistic-secularist male I wouldn’t really be able to comment much beyond that of wtf. So instead this post is about three articles by Penny Marshall, Middle-England’s defender from sex and pornography.

Anyway, there are three articles in the Daily Fail archives to choose from. The most recent is about lipstick lesbianism and how it is an evil and corrupting force that destroys young girls, the next is about the TV and how it is an evil and corrupting force that destroys young girls, and finally an article about teenagers making their own porn (which actually is disturbing, but the scapegoat of TV returns as the evil and corrupting force that destroys young girls). And from these three articles I got the picture that Penny Marshall is conservative and over-protective and elitist. Three properties of an individual I consider diabolical and unnerving.

The first article, that is the one about lipstick lesbians, I got the feeling that the writer was not only homophobic but also shocked at the type of culture her conservative upbringing never allowed. However in trying to defend her way of thinking, that sexuality should be like a binary labelled object such as a consumer product might have, and pointing to the problems of peer pressure that occurs in youth culture, she comes off as sounding a wee bit homophobic and sounding more like Mary Whitehouse. Pointing at famous lady liplockers (horrible phrase I know), whose lip-shtick whatever shenanigans are more likely to appeal to lonely male divorcees than teenage females; it hawks more of Edward Woodward’s Sergeant Howie screaming at the Wicker man than a serious article about the connotations of association from the media-infused culture delegating the practices of young women.

But then the problem, that they are doing it for the sake to appeal more attractive to potential mate, is surely a problem about the current media obsessed necessity in coupling, pregnancies, marriage and the alienation of people being single for the sake of being single. Shoot if two girls are kissing to appeal more attractive to males then surely the problem is not the kissing but the apparent necessity to be non-single. But we can’t be blaming the press can we?

As to article two, the TV viewing, this is just hilarious. ‘PARENTS YOUR CHILDREN ARE WATCHING FILTH’ to paraphrase the humour. I’m not sure whether I’m a prime candidate to criticise, having watched the likes of Monkey Dust, Neco Z Alenky, the Godfather, the Shining, Alien, South Park: the Movie and series and Trainspotting before the age of fifteen, I’ve supposed to be a mass-murdering, cynical junkie with a deeply dark sense of humour. Well the last bit is true but as of twenty I haven’t murdered anyone yet and in being a very moderate drinker I don’t think diving into the filthiest toilet in Scotland for a hit is going to happen anytime soon. But it is funny the angst the author has about what the teenage girls are watching. It is like seeing a nervous breakdown in typographical form. See as TV shows are lined up and criticised for being corrupting and wrongly influential (as opposed to say the popular press pushing criticisms of any famous women who are not married, with children, without a strong voice, within a certain body image, and are not Kelly Brooks).

But then that worried mother screaming “Won’t somebody please think of the children!?” (as Helen Lovejoy would cry) is just what suites the Daily Fail. That is, cheap criticism on modern culture (that doesn’t feature ITV) and the degradation of youths, and the collapse of morals. This brings me onto the third article, the actually mildly disturbing article.

This article’s content is mildly alarming. Not because what is happening, that teenagers are making their own porn and distributing it among their peers (this is more disturbing than alarming and has a whole range of problems not least that the Daily Fail is probably the culprit), but the way that this article insists that this thing is a problem because it has ‘infected’ middle class girls. For the sake of Pete I cannot abide by this elitist bullshit any more than I can abide the Daily Mail itself. Because what it is saying is that it is okay for teenagers to make porn of themselves so long as they are of what was once called the working class. Hence because some prissy private (dick-)eds and grammar girls are doing it it is now a moral decadence that must be stopped for “Won’t somebody please think of the children?”.

In closing I look forward to more Penny Marshall articles, as she strives to defend teenage girls from reality, as they’re nothing short of stereotypical wailing that can never be taken seriously.