Thursday, July 31, 2008 - Posts
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I'm prepared to take the heat for my controversial opinion that the appearance of Miley Cyrus' cherubic face on the side of a package of condoms would be a positive development and significantly raise the profile of contraception among teens. It's easy to see though why some, if not most of participants in this debate don't see her as the right girl for the job. I still do, for exactly the same reasons that the endorsement seems taboo:
She doesn't have to do it. You're right, Rachael. Miley Cyrus has no obligation to get behind the LifeStyles campaign. I just think that her "do as I say, not as I do" demeanor has been frustrating to watch, especially when so many look to her as a role model. And as I said, I'm not advocating that she break her own vow of chastity. But if she, as a teenager, is going to display her sexuality on a public stage she might as well focus on a positive, as opposed to a hypocritical message while she's at it. I don't think Miley is obligated to provide sex ed to a million young girls, I just think it would be progressive, inspiring, and much more honest if she did.
She's a girl. I've got to protest the suggestion that the role of condom spokesperson be outsourced to Miley's male equivalent. Condoms are worn by men, yes, but their benefits are often much more tangible to women. Females are both more susceptible to infection and slower to exhibit the symptoms that allow for the detection and treatment of many STDs. Many of the most serious problems for women are the result of undetected chlamydia and gonorrheal infections. Ectopic pregnancy, infertility, cervical cancer—these problems are admittedly not those of a pre-teen. Rather they're the problems of an ill-educated preteen who had unprotected sex and didn't suffer the consequences until 20 years down the line.
Beyond these health reasons, however, there's a cultural standard that's begging to be overturned by Cyrus' endorsement. Before Trojan's 2007 "Evolve" campaign, most U.S. condom advertisements not only perpetuated a male-centric model for sex, they were also frequently misogynistic and occasionally violent in the messages they portrayed. Isn't it about time that an intelligent young woman replaced the machismo that dominates the market today?
She's (too) young. According to a Durex Global Sex Survey in 2007 the age at which virginity is lost in developed nations varies between 15 and 19. In the United States, it's 16. And this is the age at which people first have sex, not the first time they think about sex or are exposed to it. Of course, every parent has the right to breach the topic of sex and contraception when they feel that the time is right. But in reality, relying solely on parental and/or scholastic guidance hasn't really been working. Miley's peers are already having sex. Girls younger than Miley are already having sex. By the time they're watching Gossip Girl, it's probably too late. In my opinion kids, specifically girls, should know about contraception long before they know everything there is to know about sex, something I think every parent would like to control but ultimately cannot. Kids learn about sex from other kids. And unfortunately, when they get the message about safe sex from their parents (if they get the message about safe sex from their parents, and the most at-risk teens usually don't) it often comes after they've already become curious or nervous about the subject or received conflicting accounts from their equally uninformed friends.
It's a total sellout. It's undeniable that both Miley and LifeStyles have already gained by the mere hint of their association. Considering the minute possibility that Cyrus would ever get behind their product, this may be all that LifeStyles was hoping to accomplish in the first place. I don't think it's necessarily exploitive for LifeStyles to target Cyrus with their offer—they're looking to make a big impact among teens and she's one of the most visible celebrities in any demographic. For all we know, this was an insider deal and the Cyruses wanted the offer to be extended just so they could shoot it and any rumors of her waning abstinence down. So, if the damage has already been sort-of caused and both sides have already come out ahead—what's the big problem with finishing the deal?
Whether you think it's exploitive or a setup or just plain inappropriate the fact of the matter is that updating the way teens and young girls learn about sex is no easy job but someone's got to do it. Miley Cyrus has this chance. And whether it's Miley or some other courageous young celebrity who ultimately takes up the cause of teen sex in earnest, it's not as if everything will suddenly be changed. But this would be a pretty good start.
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Nayeli,
In regards to LifeStyles offering Miley Cyrus a condom-endorsement deal (talk about a dead-on-arrival proposal), Noreen and Torie made a lot of the points I was going to make, so I won't be redundant. (Except to say I can totally imagine an 8-year-old running up to me, waving a box of Miley condoms, and asking if she could have them. Parents have a responsibility to teach their kids about sex, but they have the right to determine the time and place of that conversation. The pharmacy aisle at Target would not top my list.)
But I'd like to focus on your point about "denying contraceptive education to teens." Cyrus' refusal to take $1 million to endorse a commercial product is not denying anyone an education on birth control. Suggesting as much puts a burden on Cyrus that not only did she not ask for but that runs counter to her abstinence pledge (and so far, she deserves the benefit of the doubt on the authenticity of that pledge). It's the jobs of parents and, in this day and age, schools to teach kids about contraception.
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Nayeli, I think it's pretty clear what Miley Cyrus is afraid of (though the better question might be, "What are Miley Cyrus' handlers afraid of?"). She might want to escape Disney's clutches, but becoming the underage spokesteen for a condom company seems like an easy no. She's a Christian who advocates waiting till marriage, so promoting condoms might make her seem hypocritical. (I'd like to forget I ever saw those much-blogged "sexy" photos allegedly taken from her iPhone—thanks, Perez Hilton.) More importantly, she isn't exactly marketed to her teenage contemporaries. Middle- and high-school shows on Disney, Nick, etc., are aimed at elementary students, not teenagers. They aren't accurate depictions of adolescent life—they're an idealized, sanitized world in which you get punished the first time you make a mistake like cheating, lying to your parents, or drinking. They're morality shows. I was a Saved by the Bell fan as a kid and still love looking back at those shows for the unrealistic way they portrayed high school. People "went steady" and exchanged friendship rings. School dances had punch; prom had a hoedown theme and was held in the gym. And certainly no one had sex. Safe sex is a message that needs to be out there, but someone who actually appeals to teenagers, not the prepubescent, should be making the pitch. I'd like to propose an alternative celeb, but I'm pretty out of touch with who's hip these days. Maybe the cast of Gossip Girl?
Like Noreen (who I think very astutely diagnosed LifeStyle's motivation for the offer—and there's something so exploitative about the company publicly salivating over using a tween star to sell contraceptives), I would be discomfited if I saw 15-year-old Miley Cyrus' just-recently-orthodontiaed grin slapped on a condom box in the "family planning" (what a laughable euphemism that is) section in the grocery store aisle. I can just imagine a 6-year-old walking past the department grabbing the box and saying, "Mommy, can I get this?" That might make me sound prudish, but so be it.
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Evidence today of the persistent nature of the significance of race in the campaign: The percentage of young people who say they're unwilling to vote for a black candidate is 22 percent, according to one poll, and not dropping. Get it together, 18- to 29-year-olds! But Obama's comment is still problematic. He raised race not in terms of voters' attitudes, but in terms of Bush and McCain's—when, John as you say, they haven't given him call to. I suppose the Obama camp could argue that McCain's supporters are doing it for him. But the ellision seems like a bad idea. For one thing, if McCain is going to be accused of race-baiting whether he actually does it or not, doesn't that give him less incentive to muzzle the 527s that might do this? And for another, we expect Obama to be America's leading sensitive spokesman on racial politics. If he's careless about who he tags as a bigot, that gives the rest of us license to be.
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Nayeli, maybe I'm just a little more cynical than you are, but I don't read the Miley Cyrus condom non-deal as a "huge loss," but rather a huge gain for both the starlet and LifeStyles. Though of course you're right that it would be wonderful if someone with the influence and reach Cyrus has among teen girls took on the issue of safe sex (and that missed opportunity, indeed, is a loss), I think the LifeStyles offer has a lot more to do with the buzz generated by even the proposal of the pairing. LifeStyles gets gratis association with the Hannah Montana brand, with all its increasingly fraught but consistently lucrative connotations. Canny Miley gets to continue her coy, stutter-step march toward sexpot-dom, chastely refusing the condom deal but grabbing some column space that portrays her not just as a cute little kid any longer.
I'm also not sure, even if Miley were to take on the issue of safe sex as her particular project, that becoming a spokeswoman for a condom company would be the best soapbox—setting aside issues of objectification and commercialization, women don't wear condoms. It's true that women shouldn't be passive about their sexual health. But why should the onus for safe sex be put only on the woman, as this kind of marketing seems to suggest—couldn't, say, Zac Efron slap that oh-so-manly mug on a condom box and encourage teenage boys to take responsibility to wear them, and not just when nagged to by a pretty girl?
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A guest post from Slate's John Dickerson:
"Nobody thinks that Bush and McCain have a real answer to the challenges we face. So what they're going to try to do is make you scared of me," Obama said this week. "You know, he's not patriotic enough, he's got a funny name, you know, he doesn't look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills."
I'll give Obama "scared," and he's got a good case on the patriotism charge, too, but race? Wouldn't the world have gone nuts if Hillary had said something similar about being a woman? They would have said she's playing the gender card. Despite the reckless McCain attacks, about which I've already written, there's no evidence that he's ever made Obama's race an issue. In fact, he's done the opposite -- he called out one of his supporters for doing so at a public event. Immediately, without it becoming a flap. McCain's "black" daughter (she's actually Bangladeshi), we also might remember, was used in an attack against him. So, why isn't Obama going too far here? I suppose one response is that if McCain can completely make up things about Obama then Obama can make up things about McCain. Of course, yelling racism is taking it one step beyond making up his positions on oil, energy taxes, and his visit to the troops in Germany.
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Hot on the heels of last week's contraceptive debate comes a fresh piece of news that is bound to stir the pot among condom fans and haters alike: Condom manufacturer LifeStyles is courting Miley Cyrus, Hannah Montana star and one-time Vanity Fair pinup, to be its new spokesgirl. Cyrus seems an unlikely candidate. At 15 she is younger than the age of consent in most states and once infamously (and unoriginally) proclaimed her intention to stay a virgin until marriage. Fearing for the already doomed reputation of the Hannah Montana brand's flagship starlet, the Cyrus camp has already denied that any deal with LifeStyles is in the works, and it's pretty much certain that they wouldn't accept it anyway. Despite LifeStyles' offering of $1 million and a lifetime supply of prophylactics to secure Cyrus as the face of safe sex, we're probably never going to see Billy Ray's baby on the side of a box of condoms.
This, to me, seems like a huge loss. Not only for Cyrus (lifetime supply!) but also for young girls who look to her as a trendsetter for both clothes and behavior. Modes of sexual practice seem to follow a trickle-down pattern, with women passing on their wisdom and advice to those less in-the-know. Miley Cyrus, role model to millions, is therefore in an ideal position to promote a healthier example for young women who are probably already contemplating or having some form of sex. Her celebrity endorsement could be the first since that of Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes to significantly de-stigmatize condoms among teens and reverse some of the bad PR they've been receiving lately.
As we've seen, teen celebrities' vows of virginity are hardly guaranteed to stave off unplanned pregnancies, nor have they proven inspirational among their peers. And it's unsurprising that the threat of pregnancy and STDs doesn't stop teens from having sex altogether when it doesn't even stop grown Jezebels who should know better.
So what are Miley's people afraid of? That she's too young to know about condoms? I see denying contraceptive education to teens as akin to preventing alcoholics from entering rehab just because they're too young to legally drink: blind adherence to an ideology that's being flouted at large. Do they fear for her future earning power? It's unlikely that Cyrus' endorsement of LifeStyles would derail her seemingly unflappable star. Her career would continue, albeit probably not with Disney, which has reacted less than happily to displays of sexuality by its young stars in the past. And what's more, Cyrus would be free to keep her promise of premarital chastity (though that, too, seems doubtful). Cyrus' promotion of safe sex needn't be a promotion of licentiousness. It should simply prompt young women to be more scrupulous and pragmatic about the choices they make, encouraging longer, healthier lives among those who've already made up their minds to have sex.
Read more on Miley Cyrus and condoms from XX Factor contributors Noreen Malone, Torie Bosch, and Rachael Larimore.
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