Safe sexting? No such thing
Lori Borgman | Monday, February 23, 2009
Sexting, sending nude pictures to one another
by cell phone, has become a big fad among teens. A reporter covering
the story says it is a new way to flirt. Silly me. I thought flirting
was extended eye contact, a lingering touch or a coy smile. Now
I find out flirting means ripping off your clothes and saying cheese.
Curiosity about the opposite sex certainly isn’t
new. Somewhere in the cave dwellings of early man, we would no doubt
find at least one hieroglyphic of a stick figure with anatomically
correct parts etched by a teen boy.
What is new, is the utter and total lack of discretion.
Lurid ladies let it all hang out in the Victoria’s
Secret windows, actresses intentionally forget their underwear,
and sleaze oozes from the tube like lava flowing down the sides
of a volcano.
Small wonder that parents find themselves confronting
a nationwide epidemic known as sexting. Estimates are that one in
five teens has either sent or received nude photos by cell phone.
A high school girl in Kansas sent her boyfriend
a naughty photo of herself. Then they broke up and he sexted the
photo to his pals. Middle-school students in Massachusetts face
child pornography charges after a boy sexted a nude photo of his
13-year-old girlfriend to his buddies. And then there are the girls
who give new meaning to the term call girl and sext nude photos
of themselves to boys.
All across the country, teens face felony charges
for child pornography. If convicted, some may spend decades on sexual
predator registries. It doesn’t matter if they sent the pictures
or were recipients of pictures. It also doesn’t matter if the pictures
were taken with consent. An under-age child can’t give consent.
An under-age child can, however, do some very stupid things.
Still, there is a sense in which these kids have
grown up “under the influence.” Raunch has become a silent part
of our cultural landscape, like a beige backdrop or small-print
wallpaper. We hardly notice it. We rarely flinch.
Another teacher arrested for molesting a student?
Ho-hum. Did I miss the five-day forecast?
Half-naked women writhe and stretch and caress
themselves in music videos on the television sets suspended from
the ceiling at the family fitness center. Trust me, they’re not
doing Pilates.
A young woman’s derriere is hanging beneath her
short shorts in the checkout line and my concern is whether she
has 10 items or less in her cart.
We have all grown numb. We recognize the symptoms
– adolescent girls aspiring to be pole dancers, boys objectifying
girls, girls objectifying themselves, absentee parents and kids
with no boundaries. But do we ever get at what lies beneath? Do
we ever flip over that big ugly rock to study the sow bugs beneath?
At the core of the problem is a missing component
that goes by the name virtue. Even the word sounds archaic. But
that’s what is missing.
People were once esteemed for their character.
Classical Rome prided itself on citizens who embodied virtues like
dignity, tenacity, prudence and modesty. Virtue was part of Roman
culture. Virtue was once part of our culture. We, too, once shared
a common regard for respectability and wholesomeness.
Ideally, virtue becomes so integral to a human
being that honorable character goes wherever that person goes. Even
into cyberspace.
