Sure I had my fair share of butterflies in the tummy way back my teenybopper days. I had my first serious crush (and I call it serious because it was rather long-term) in grade 5. I remember trying to hide stupid smiles when our eyes accidentally meet. I recall feigning nonchalance after receiving my first Valentine’s gift, attempting to sound ladylike cool whenever he called on the phone, finding excuses to go to the cafeteria (even though I had baon) just so I could bump into him, and above all trying to deny to death that I was actually crushing!
Aaaah, kapag tumibok nga naman ang puso. Or puso nga ba? But I call it young unadulterated affections. I wouldn’t dare call it love to avoid self-incrimination. It was just a simple throb of the heart – or rather, the hypothalamus. Or a plain surge of hormones. We had no magazines to drool over boys back in grade school; sweat-laden, pigtail-pulling creatures were sooo not drool-worthy. There was nothing to try to legitimize (and encourage in order to exploit) too much attention to the XY specie. Not that noticing them is bad; it’s natural! It’s normal! Hurrah, hurrah. You’re abnormal if you haven’t felt a teeny-weeny bit of kilig. But the danger of too much spells fixation that’s out of all proportion.
Earlier this week, I had a rather hearty lunch with some girl friends at Banapple (highly recommended, by the way). It was too hearty in fact that we had to deliberately pause for breaks before desserts. One friend grabbed a Candy magazine and gave a brief shriek after seeing some Jackson kid on the cover. Then there was Nick Jonas on the other side; another friend seated next to me announced her distaste for the other Jonas brother (Joe, I think) to which I professed my disinterest to those young lads because I personally would rather drool over the oldies RDJ, Hugh Jackman, Gerald Butler and the likes. Call me old school, I wouldn’t mind. So we went into girl talk, but when my friend browsed through the pages, I noticed – and with utter amazement – that majority of the folios served to hail and highlight pictures, profiles and juicy curios of… tandarararan… BOYS. And more boys. Young men, school boys, cute and pa-cute boys, pretty boys, local biz boys, Hollywood boys, random boys, Justine Bieber wannabes, Jonases, and even all-grown-up-Peter-Pan-Jeremy-Sumpter – NAME IT. They all grace the insides of the glossy publication. This was the publication I once enjoyed for its fashion advices and I-so-can-totally-relate teen stories.
Whut! Have I been missing out on the youth too much? As far as I can remember, I’m just three years sailing away from teenage life.
Don’t get me wrong, I totally understand the process of puberty. I have nothing against the opposite sex ‘coz I’m looking forward to ending up with one for life. During my time, which was not so long ago (and I’m not playing pretend here), those magazines always had pages (sometimes, centerfold) that featured ‘ze crush-worthy. So then…what’s your problem, dudette???
Well, I totally get it but I don’t totally dig it.
What I don’t dig is how indulgent and exploitative print media can become in terms of teenage mania. And teen magazines are just one of the many serious letdowns nowadays. Adult publications (i.e., those debasing the female as object of lust and those that market superficial beauty), for a lack of a politically correct term, are becoming hard to stomach. You can blame my ego for all this bashing, but I will definitely drive my point.
In a way, I am generalizing and not generalizing. I’m not singling out any magazine because the trend is manifest in other forms of media too. And the imminent menace of this is reflected in ways more than one. Children are advancing to the stage of premature adulthood with the way they pick their clothes, the way they learn expletives at an early age, the way they’d rather spend weekends in front of the computer than outdoors, the way they scurry to get into relationships, and the way they
rush in where angels fear to tread.
Actually, that single observation led to a lot of realizations. You can easily connect the dots from a starting point. The youth are corruptible and school, media, the family, society and other institutions have respective prerogatives to tackle this fact. Either they allow for aggravation of worsening worldviews of the youth or rectify the crooked (and hiding in the guise of liberalism) stance of the status quo.
So obviously, this entry is no tribute to the male specie. It’s another violent musing. Hate me or love me, but seriously, I worry what kind of generation we might be raising. Don’t you?
