The story was so big it made front page of the New York Times: Jamie Lynn Spears, Britney’s 16-year-old kid sister, and star of Nickelodeon’s squeaky-clean “Zoey 101,” was pregnant by her 19-year-old boyfriend. And everyone was shocked—shocked! There was plenty of derision for Spears’ mother, who was surprised because Jamie Lynn was “never late for curfew”—as if sex happens only… return to article
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Reader Comments (7)Page 1 of 1 pagesI’m glad that at least one writer ‘gets it’ AND has the guts to put it into print.
The whole Hollywood system is rotten to the core. I believe Jamie Lynn has enough sense to see that it has destroyed her sister, and has gotten out before the same thing happens to her. Maybe now she’ll get a chance at that ‘normal life’ she talks about - living in Kentwood where people apparently don’t go insane because they see someone ‘famous’, going to LSU to learn something actually useful. Good for her.
Posted by irvm on Jan 22, 2008 at 3:02 PM The destruction of Brittney is due in large part to the massive wealth she has earned. Give any 20 year old (or almost anyone of any age) $100 million+ and they will become nuts. Excess wealth is a curse!
Posted by wolf on Jan 22, 2008 at 4:45 PM Notwithstanding that any writer worth publishing ought to be the first to admit that explaining the opposite sex is whimsical and anecdotal at best, there remains the question of what women gain by (I’ll defer to the author’s evident mindset) going along with the enticements of their objectification. In other words, women control men with male-baiting sexuality as much as they posture that such behaviour is beneath them and that they are victimized by it. White slavery is one thing. Women behaving badly is another. In the largest context of above-and-beyond all cutures and all times lies a fundamental truth: without sexual enticement, arousal and consummation, I’d not be here to write this in response to what annoyed me about Ms. Douglas’ point of view. Western women telling Muslim women that they’d be happier in bikinis and, were it not for the men who ostensibly loved them, they’d be wearing them, somehow strikes me as disengenuous. The impression that Ms. Douglas makes with this piece, to my mind, leads me to suspect that she would reason that my reasoning thusly is yet more evidence of males’ responsibility for females’ subjugation. Sexual activity among teenagers in a society as puriently charged as ours isn’t men’s fault. It’s all our faults and we gain nothing in advancing to its resolution by he-said-she-said nuances of psuedo-intellectualism. Thinks outside the box, children, there’s much more to life than getting wet or stiff, regardless of what marketing minds have learned about us since prehistoriy gave way to pornographic etchings on cave walls. Can there be any intelligent conversation when the topic is signified by references to the Spears’ sisters? Sounds more like talk-show haberdashery than ITT dialetic. Then again, as my grownup daughters like to tell me, I’m an Old Hippie whose mind, some conclude, was addled by sex, drugs and rock-n-roll when being teenaged was termed a subculture. Most of us know, Ms. Douglas, what’s going on when the TV commercial is a slinky lass in a skimpy dress standing next to an over-powered muscle car. Those that don’t are victims of ignorance, not maleness. Teach the children well. Scolding daddy is impertinent. Paternalism and maternalism can be dangerous to your health. Sex is the mother of all human incentives. No kidding.
Posted by Bud Wizer on Jan 24, 2008 at 6:57 PM I think it’s you, Bud Wizer, who is being disingenuous. I’m not certain if we read the same piece, but I didn’t find one instance in Ms. Douglas’s article in which she blames “maleness” for anything. And while I think it’s true that the patriarchal society we live in often is dangerous for women to navigate, I do believe the point Ms. Douglas makes is regarding GIRLS. That is, young female children who can’t help being ignorant because they are too young to know any better. These are the people who are getting mixed messages and are increasingly being left without the proper tools to sort through it all. These are children, not “[w]omen behaving badly.”
I am also unsure as to how either the concepts of the availability of sex education and contraception, or the discussion of the ever-increasing reliance on sex for entertainment could ever be construed as “he-said-she-said nuances of psuedo-intellectualism.” And as for whether there can be “any intelligent conversation when the topic is signified by references to the Spears’ [sic] sisters,” well, in a society in which Paris Hilton has actual “fans,” we’d better start paying attention (and talking about) what our teen and tween girls are paying attention to and talking about. If I had a young daughter, I KNOW I’d be having more than one conversation with her about Jamie Lynn Spears.
Posted by margymae13 on Jan 29, 2008 at 5:17 AM You may be correct, margymae13. I’m far from perfect, which is the point I’m trying to make: imperfect beings in an imperfect world trivializing the challenges of doing the best we can with what we’ve got. My two daughters, one a Beverly Hills operative and performance artist, the other a Boston graduate student for nurse-anesthetist, have long been sexually active single women. When they were girls, I never failed to warn them of the dangers posed by testosteronic excesses coupled with the flirtatious nature of their, well, natures. I consistently, constantly and, to their adolescent mindset, crucifyingly informed them that it takes two to tango and there was more peril to dancing than breaking off a heel. Perhaps I am reading more into it that was intended by Ms. Douglas, for which I apologize. However, as a writer, activist, journalist and layman, I am, and have been for most of my four decades of adult life, appalled by the notion of female victimization by peckerheads. I’d prefer that feminist or female-supportive writers, especially those fortunate enough to be selected by ITT as contributing writers, would demonstrate more intellect and relevance than the article in question herein, to me, connotes. I very much paid attention to my daughters growing up, and their brother as well. They know better than to discuss with me Britney, Paris, Madonna, etc. I usually, to their chagrin, cut them short by reminding them of the vanity displayed by western women holding hands regarding the anguish of post-industrial Western society while women and girls in other parts of the world dwell in caves of depravity unimaginably horrific because of the very lifestyle we enjoy at their expense. Please excuse my off-the-top-of-my-senior-head reaction to Ms. Douglas’ piece. I’m sure she’s an intelligent, competent, sensitive, insightful, and concerned woman. And I have no doubt that the topic she addresses needs be. By “he said, she said” I mean something on the order of Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus. The differences are obvious and widely known. I’m hopeful that writers and publications like ITT, which I have long respected as a socialist voice in the wilderness of capitalism’s wasteland, might at least remember that, as Kurt Vonnegut urged us, we need to worry that we don’t demonstrate that the problem might be that our brains are too big. In that case, no pun intended, size does matter, as every man and woman should know. Had no byline been atop her article, would you have known it was written by a woman? I think I would have. Perhaps that’s because I’m getting too old to know when to be reticent. It gets that way when you’re sensing time’s running out instead of it being never-ending, as in fairy tales. Then again, “a powerful new patriarchal reformulation that is the latest post-feminist Catch-22,” is not something that I get, being white, male, but neither libertine nor conservative. Someone whom I can’t recall once said or wrote that women aren’t hard to please, they want everything. Men are hard to please, I’d say, they expect women to make sense. There. I’ve revealed myself, a conflicted exhibitionist. No offense intended.
Posted by Bud Wizer on Jan 29, 2008 at 7:12 PM My kids, who now live not far from Los Angeles, tell me that in stores this past Halloween they saw costumes for trick-or-treat that made little girls look like they were selling it; fishnet stockings, stiletto heels, and what would have been a push-up bustier if the girls had any breasts to push up. Comes with a little make-up kit with garish eye-shadow and lipstick colors.
The way the kids described it (and believe me, neither my son nor my daughter is a prude), it sounded like the sort of thing you’d get arrested for having pictures of. But it was right there, on sale. Suitable for ages 7-10.
I think Prof. Douglas has a point. Sex is magnificent, but what’s the good in delivering the message to young girls that they need to be “sexy” in order to be worthy of good attention? It just messes with their heads, helps them make foolish and dangerous choices, and undercuts their self-worth if the boys don’t find them instantly titillating.
Christ, the costumes were for girls not even in middle school yet. Additionally spooky that parents will buy them.
Musn’t teach them about avoiding pregnancy or STDs though. It might make them want to fuck.
Posted by Kuya on Jan 31, 2008 at 9:29 AM Professor Douglas’ perspective, wholly worthwhile and provocatively phrased, needs to be presented in more pertinent forums: popular media. My reaction to it is not that it is incorrect; I find it objectionable as content for ITT. Those of us who read ITT, I have the gall to opine, are far out in front of the leading edge Ms. Douglas presents. When I finished reading her piece, my immediate reaction was: Of course. Let’s hope she can get her byline and content in Parade Magazine, Readers Digest, People, Teen, Seventeen, and countless other publications that are, much more than men or motherhood, the culprits promoting the marketability of whore-ishness as a signifier of admirable femininity. ITT errs when it deviates from its intellectual hallmark: addressing an audience that reads it because popular media has been a disgusting misrepresentation of reality and intelligence. This reader fears that, like so much of his revered “alternative” media, an opportunity for Internet revenue streams might lead ITT editors to fashion an ITT version of MySpace or YouTube, which would, it appears to me, certainly disgrace the tradition and compelling mission of its founding. The work at hand for leftism in the U.S. is far too important for dalliance with sophistry. I’d presume ITT readers might be more inclined to consider Tom Wolfe’s “My Name is Charlotte Simmons” than how the stupid and the ignorant conduct themselves in a culture that exploits those qualities as a moral majority. Feminist Studies, a corollary to Wolfe’s famously trenchant American Studies advances, may be a work in progress; however, it is not beyond reproach and criticism intended constructively should not be viewed as antipathy for the very worthy cause of raising consciousness to a level that precludes participation in the dumbing down of the dialectic. Presumably, critical thinking is the objective, not critical acclaim. Professor Douglas compelled me to think. I’m hoping my reaction may have done likewise and that that is the reason for this forum. Could be I’m wrong. Maybe “hits” on the website to encourage advertising has become what we’re about.
Posted by Bud Wizer on Jan 31, 2008 at 5:00 PM Page 1 of 1 pages -
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