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Jessica Simpson can’t always distinguish between chicken and tuna, but she’s smart enough to know that sex sells. The arguably talented 23-year-old blond babe is a one-woman entertainment conglomerate.
She stars in “Newlyweds,” a successful reality show on MTV; and she sings on best-selling musical CDs. Her star power is so strong that she was able to convince MTV to do a show with her sister Ashlee; but the latest and most controversial move from Simpson, who formerly served as a spokesperson for the “True Love Waits” abstinence campaign, is her Dessert line of erotically charged beauty products.
Simpson told The New York Times that the items are “beauty products, not sex products,” but with names such as Hot Body Topping, Belly Button Love Potion, Whipped Body Cream with Candy Sprinkles and Powdered Sugar Body Shimmer (with a “tickle me anywhere” feather applicator), it’s clear that Simpson knows how nice naughty can be for her bank account.
Simpson isn’t the first celebrity to make the move from entertainment to consumer products. Singer and movie star Jennifer Lopez is more than an entertainer, says one of her handlers. “She’s a movement,” complete with a clothing line, perfume products, a restaurant and a production company.
Other celebs also have jumped on the fashion bandwagon. Now everyone can wear trendy over-priced clothing endorsed by stars such as Eminem, P Diddy, 50 Cent, Eve, Gwen Stefani, Beyonce Knowles, Pamela Anderson, Taryn Manning and Jaime Pressly.
Kids can get confused when they’re constantly bombarded with two self-contradictory messages: 1) “Be yourself,” and 2) “Spend ridiculous amounts of money on all this celebrity-endorsed stuff so your miserable little life can be half as cool and sexy as theirs.”
Sex is everywhere: in movies, commercials and ads; and on TV and the Internet (where one misspelled word can divert you from the Britney Spears or Bob the Builder site you wanted and zoom you straight to sexually explicit porn sites).
Hotornot and Bangable
Some young people are finding creative new ways to use the Internet as a key part of their social lives. If you’ve never heard of sites susch as Hotorot.com and Bangable.com, read on.
Hotornot.com has become the most popular among dozens of new Web sites that rate normal people’s sex appeal. More than four million young people with highspeed connections and plenty of time on their hands have posted their photos on the site. Nearly 10 million people visit the site daily, ranking the photos according to non-scientific numerical scores, ranging from 10 for “Not” to 1 for “Not.”
While Hotornot.com requires that people in the photos be fully dressed. Bodies in varying states of undress are the stars of the show on Bangable.com, a more sexually-oriented site. Other rating sites are even cruder. Howmanywouldittake.com asks viewers to estimate how many beers one would have to drink before the people featured in the photos would become sexually attractive.
Hooking Up
Sites that ask viewers to rate people’s photos are tame when compared to other sites that are designed to help kids “hook up” for sexual liaisons. A stunning article on this brave new world appeared on the cover of the May 30 issue of The New York Times Magazine. It was titled “What Ever Happened to Teen Romance?”
Writer Benoit Denizet-Lewis spent months hanging out with sexually precocious teens and visiting the Web sites—like Facethejury.com—many of them depended on to fill out their social calendars. Her article, which was sad and shocking, gave an inside look at the “under-age sexual revolution, where casual sex is common, online ratings are scrutinized, everybody wants to be so detached—and boys still get what they want on Saturday night.”
The article admitted early on that the term “hooking up” is vague. For some kids, it simply means getting together socially. For others it means anything-goes sex sessions. For many, it involves oral sex, usually performed by girls on boys, and usually not described as “real sex” (which involves intercourse).
NCMOs
Other related terms include “friends with benefits” and NCMOs (“non-committal make-out sessions”). NCMOs are increasingly popular with church kids who don’t want to “go all the way” but still prefer their love lives to be quick, convenient and impersonal.
“It’s a phase kids go through,” one young person told me. “It’s a way of saying, ‘Hey, you’re good looking, and I’m good looking. Let’s get together.'”
Kids who hook up seem to believe one or all of the following propositions:
• Romantic entanglements are too complex, so it’s better to hook up and avoid any pretense of older notions such as love or affection.
• Life is all about keeping one’s options open. Hooking up allows people to remain unencumbered. Relationships are full of commitments and agendas. Or as one youngster told The New York Times, relationships are for when “we turn 30 and no one wants us anymore.”
• Sexual urges are an undeniable, irrepressible biological urge that must be dealt with, even if it never involves deeper feelings.
• Sex is so readily available that guys no longer even need to pretend they’re interested in something more lasting.
It’s understandable that youth workers might want to throw up their hands in despair, but there are some who are developing creative alternatives to our culture’s fascination with impersonal, convenient sex.
Cupids on Ice
For Tricia MacLeod, a Young Life leader in San Francisco, part of the answer was a Valentine’s weekend activity she called “Cupids on Ice.”
She took about 50 high school students and leaders on a weekend retreat and worked with speakers who’d been recommended by a Bay Area Christian pregnancy center named First Resort that has done pioneering work on teaching abstinence. The speakers addressed sex directly, discussing drawing the line and larger life goals. They also discussed biblical views on sex, self-worth, repercussions, forgiveness, healing and starting over.
Instead of hammering the kids over the head, the speakers created an atmosphere in which kids were able to be vulnerable and honest about their lives in small groups. This openness was enhanced by a panel of six people who shared their “sextimonies.” Through these times of sharing, kids saw the possible repercussions of sexual choices, as well as God’s ability to heal, give strength and restore.
At the end of the retreat, kids were encouraged to spend quiet time alone and face-to-face with God. MacLeod said, “Some of them lit candles signifying their desire for light in the dark areas of their lives. Others burned lists of bad names they’ve been called and bad decisions they made. There were many tears as kids worked through the pain in many areas of their lives.”
It’s time to help the kids in your group live lives that counter our current, sex-saturated, appearance-obsessed culture; and it’s going to take more than occasional devotional sessions on inner beauty to have an impact on kids’ lives.
