Pop Culture: The Celebrity Sexual Spectrum and Kids Today

by Lucy Parker

I don’t know what I find more frightening, the guilt of purity rings or the brazen displays of sexual promiscuity of “Gossip Girl”. One thing I am certain of, is that I am happy that I do not have to participate in the time-honored tradition of the “bird and the bees” talk with an adolescent any time soon. I wouldn’t even know where to begin with the recent pop culture onslaught of sexuality, or lack thereof depending on which celebrity you are talking about.

It seems that within the last two years or so Hollywood and pop culture in general has begun to shift on views of sex and sexuality. A lot of older people tend to dismiss much of what is going on in pop culture, but adolescents are being constantly inundated by TV shows, radio, and tabloids. And there seems to be hardly any middle ground on the topic, just extreme opposites. It would confuse anyone.

On one side of the celebrity sexual spectrum there is the Disney group, freakishly popular and powerful. The Jonas Brothers, Selena Gomez, and the High School Musical cast (however, some of them should probably be on Gossip Girl), are multi-million dollar money making machines that adolescents (and my roommate) cannot get enough of. Anything they can put those kids faces on, they will market; pens, pillows, DVD’s, clothing, etc.

However, this marketing isn’t anything that hasn’t been seen before. Actually, one Christmas I received a poster and video tape of a Backstreet Boys concert from Blaine Fridley himself. The big push that gets these usually craptastic items frenzied off the shelf are the parents of these kids who are hopped up on the purity rings a good number of these people wear. The majority of the Disney group kids have sworn to remain chaste until marriage, and to prove their commitment to this promise they wear a ring on their wedding finger. They also go to church a lot, discuss Jesus, and are constantly surrounded by adults deemed “trust worthy”.

Then there are shows like “Gossip Girl” and “90210”. The advertisements alone for “Gossip Girl” caused quite an up stir, OMFG. Basically, these two shows are the same except for the back drop. They’re about a bunch of well to do kids with little to no parental supervision, who somehow get into swanky New York clubs and Hollywood hang-outs to drink/snort the night away, and for their hobbies spend their time giving BJ’s in the school parking lot and bed jumping. But at least they are fashionably dressed while doing so.

Yeah, yeah, yeah there’s other stuff involved, but no one tunes in for that. “90210” is 3 or 4 shows in to the series and people (i.e. me) are already calling for someone to a) lose their v-card, b) get pregnant, c) overdose on something, d) all of the above. Sounds horrible, right? That’s because it is. But these TV shows (including Disney’s) are fantasy, not real; and they are being targeted to young girls who have a hard time distinguishing what is real and what is not.

The kids in Hollywood can’t even distinguish. Case in point, Miley Cyrus of Hannah Montana and Vanessa Hudgens of High School Musical; both brought up in the squeaky clean Disney machine, both have had some very questionable pictures surface, some very Gossip Girl material, all taking place while they were 16 and under. When these pictures surfaced of a naked Hudgens and a, well the list is too long for the range of pictures of Cyrus, both girls had to publicly apologize for something that they did privately. They weren’t doing anything illegal or anything that the majority of this country hasn’t already done, but now these girls are labeled as whores.

The girls on the “Gossip Girl” and “90210” aren’t even labeled as such, in fact those girls are somewhat revered. Cyrus and Hudgens are celebrity sexual spectrum road kill, berated because their personal decisions have fallen somewhere in the middle. They can’t hang with the purity ring people because, you know, they’re “whores”, and they can’t hang out with the “Gossip Girl” people because they’re not vicious enough. So they’re sort of swept to the side.

So, my question is how are teenagers/young adults, now and in the coming years, going to respond to these two extremes in their own lives? Kids in America pretty much do what they want to do based upon who they hang out with and where their interests lie. So my guess, based solely upon my highly scientific celebrity research, is that there will be three groups: group 1) the purity ring group and their diametrically opposed group 2) the gossip girl group, and the middle ground where the majority will lay 3) the sexual spectrum road kill. It’s almost similar to what’s been seen in the past, but with more OMFGs, green bra references, and diamond encrusted purity rings from Tiffany’s.