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It's a debate that dates back further than today's screen and pop music idols
By Rich Heldenfels
Beacon Journal popular culture writer
Published on Sunday, Aug 17, 2008
On Tuesday, Miley Cyrus' campaign for global entertainment domination continues with the DVD release of Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert.
So when is the next embarrassing revelation scheduled?
At 15, and as a star for the Disney empire, Cyrus is expected to be squeaky-clean. Unfortunately, she has had trouble sticking to the script.
She had to backpedal from revealing photos in Vanity Fair. After saying she loved the very adult Sex and the City, she had to clarify that she watched the edited-down version of the series.
Cyrus is caught in an awkward straddling of childhood, where many of her fans reside, and the adult world, where she works, and where many teens and 'tweens want to live.
She's not the first to be caught in such a conflict, either.
There is plenty to think about in the sexualizing of teens in current culture. For example, when Jamie Lynn Spears became pregnant at 16 — with a boyfriend she had been seeing for more than two years — it was less a matter of embarrassment than exploitation. Her family is believed to have sold the rights to the pregnancy scoop to OK! magazine for seven figures.
That event let Jamie Lynn step briefly out of the shadows of older sister Britney, another former Disney star, who was still in her teens while singing ''I'm not that innocent.'' Vanessa Hudgens of High School Musical fame was 19 — and playing younger onscreen — when nude photos of her leaked onto the Internet.
But the idea of teen, and even preteen, sexuality is complicated in cultural history, especially where young women are concerned. (Boys, popular culture still implies, are sexualized from the moment they escape the womb.)
Teen sexuality can be greeted not only with disapproval but also acceptance and even, in some circles, arousal. The documentary series Indie Sex devoted one of its four telecasts exclusively to teen movies, and especially how young viewers got their sexual cues from them.
Still, we can go back before the advent of film to see that sex and age are a changing combination. In 19th-century America, historian Stephanie Coontz has noted, ''the 'age of consent' for girls in many states was as low as nine or 10.'' As she added, that ''rather makes a mockery'' of the idea of consent.
At the turn of the 20th century, 16-year-old Evelyn Nesbit — later notorious as ''the girl in the red velvet swing'' — was called ''the most beautiful artist's model in America'' (as Nesbit biographer Michael Macdonald Mooney reported). She was also beginning an affair with 50-year-old architect Stanford White.
Leaping ahead, 22-year-old Jerry Lee Lewis scandalized first England and then America when it was learned that his third wife, Myra, was 13 years old. Neither of the newlyweds seemed to understand the shock over the ''child bride.'' Looking at what she knew of love and marriage in the 1950s South, Myra reportedly said, ''You can marry at 10 if you can find a husband.''
Elvis Presley was in his 20s when he met 14-year-old Priscilla Beaulieu. Elvis biographer Peter Guralnick said the singer was ''immediately smitten.'' Though publicly discreet, Elvis' discretion did not keep him from some, if not all, physical intimacies with young Priscilla.
Still, Elvis tried to steer clear of the sort of scandal that entangled Lewis. But the fear of scandal became less powerful in later years. By the '80s, many entertainment efforts featured open teen sexuality — and not just the urge, but the act.
Indie Sex notes the impact of films like The Blue Lagoon (1980), with its romanticized portrayal of sex and nudity outside a social structure, and Porky's (1982), with its rawer, more carnal view of sex. Slasher films — where sex acts always seemed to lead to bloodshed — offered a cautionary counterpoint. But they did not diminish the audiences rushing to see something like Little Darlings, with young women competing to lose their virginity first.
While in many cases it was actors outside their teens who were enjoying onscreen romps, Little Darlings told its story with two stars still in their teens — Tatum O'Neal and Kristy McNicol. And Brooke Shields almost single-handedly represented teen sex in the '80s; by her 16th birthday, she had appeared nude in Pretty Baby, been provocative in jeans ads and starred in two touchstones of teen sex: The Blue Lagoon and Endless Love.
Television also played a role in arguing that teen sex was something to be accepted. In the premiere of Beverly Hills, 90210, in 1990, one character dismisses his ex-girlfriend as ''bad in bed,'' and sweet Minnesota 16-year-old Brenda Walsh (Shannen Doherty) is ready to give up her virginity to a 25-year-old lawyer. She doesn't, but only because he rejects her after learning how young she is. Her brother, Brandon (Jason Priestley), fended off a girl's advances in the series premiere but in the show's fourth episode — called The First Time — his virginity is history.
''Isn't it great to finally be doing what everyone around you has been talking about and doing for so long?'' Brandon says.
Of course, all this talk about sex, especially approving talk, has to have a cumulative effect. And a confusing one. Because as much as some young people in the culture appeared to be sexually active, in other circles, there is a longing for innocence, a wish that children and teens could hold onto their youth a bit longer.
Miley Cyrus is clearly not in the ''best of both worlds,'' but in a place between two conflicting ones, between Disney and Vanity Fair. Still, she is hardly alone there. And her successors in wooing teens and 'tweens will face the same conflicts she has.
Rich Heldenfels writes about popular culture for the Beacon Journal and in the HeldenFiles Online blog at http://www.ohio.com. He can be reached at 330-996-3582 and rheldenfels@thebeaconjournal.com.
On Tuesday, Miley Cyrus' campaign for global entertainment domination continues with the DVD release of Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert.
Get the full article here.
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