... on my earlier post about our adventures among nudists in the south of France:
1. I do have to say that my exposure to the nudist life did not impress me. The girl seemed normal enough but I couldn't say the same of her parents. Those studies that have been done back this up: nudists are actually considerably more likely to have weird hang ups about their bodies than non-nudists.
2. Something you might not guess if you haven't been is that the nudists you do find on French beaches are mostly German tourists and the locals don't like them at all. Even topless beaches are increasingly unpopular in France and the vast majority of the people you find on beaches where topless sunbathing is permitted do not take advantage of it.
3. Real freedom must include the freedom to pay for the consequences of your actions. One of the odd contradictions about the current pornification of teenage girl dress and culture girls is that critics want to blame what is happening on everything but the girls themselves. All sorts of factors may be affecting what teenage girls and young women are doing when they choose to dress and act as they do but the primary factor is the girls themselves. They are flashing it around because they love the attention this gets them.
4. I very strongly believe in the virtues of modesty and sexual self restraint. My advice to the young women I see walking past my house on campus would be that they dress much more modestly than they do. No daughter of mine would walk out the door the way I see some girls dressed. But I think it's very important to do the right thing for the right reasons. Acting as if teenage girls and young women are tender little innocents who don't understand what they are doing is condescending and demeaning.
I agree, but that's a tough sell to parents who can't imagine their "little girls" as sexual beings. Surely, they think, they're doing it because of peer pressure, the media, the boy next door, etc etc.
ReplyDeleteIn addition, while you say that no daughter of yours would go out of the house looking the way some of the students you see, I feel the same way. But how girls look when they say good bye to Mom in the morning isn't necessarily how they look when they get to school. There's a co-ed Catholic H.S. near where I work, and when the girls leave school at 3:00 pm they have their uniform skirts rolled up at the waist high enough so that little is left to the imagination. I often why the teachers never notice that, when every passer-by on foot or in a car--not to mention the pubescent boys they go to school with--certainly notices.
I also agree about nudism. Irrespective of the laws in the US prohibiting public nudity, nudism doesn't seem to have caught on here to any degree, and those that do espouse it are usually people who are "out there."
From one extreme to another.
ReplyDeleteN.Y. / REGION | October 30, 2010
Big City: Reflecting on a Lawsuit Against a 4-Year-Old
By SUSAN DOMINUS
A ruling to allow a lawsuit against a 4-year-old prompts a mother to reflect on accidents just waiting to happen.
I agree that we live in a litigation-happy society and that we should accept that many things are accidents. However, the story of the four year old looks a little less ridiculous when you read the facts of the case. I see that the parents are also named in it because they were "supervising" the incident. They, of course, are the real targets of the suit.
ReplyDeleteThere is some more of the facts of the case here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/29/nyregion/29young.html?_r=1&ref=nyregion
As to kids disobeying their parents, that would take a long answer. Short version, of course that happens. I also disobeyed my parents when out of their sight but I knew I was disobeying them. In the end it will come down to how much respect the girl (or boy) has for her father and that is a really troublesome issue nowadays. But if you respect your parents the fact that you experiment with morality at the margins when they aren't around won't be a problem. If you don't respect them, OTOH, it's a whole different ball game.
Yes, of course the parents are the real targets of the suit. But I find the wording the judge used in his decision--"reasonably prudent child" a little oxymoronish (if that's a word). The Church for centuries has deemed the age of reason--where a child knows right from wrong--to be 7 y.o. for the purposes of going to Confession and receiving Holy Communion. I think that too is a stretch, and most Protestant denominations--including Anglican--don't allow Communion until after Confirmation or at least until adolescence. What this judge is saying is that at 4 a child should be able to make good judgements. My conservative friend in Philadelphia thinks this is another example of how our society has become "anti-children" and I tend to agree with her. We don't let kids be kids anymore. They're expected to be mini-adults, in part so that their frazzled parents can work the two or more jobs required to keep a roof over their heads. Kids don't have the freedom to fail or make mistakes without the full force of the law coming down on them. This woman's estate--presumably the "grown-ups" here--don't have the maturity to look beyond themselves and see that this unfortunate circumstance could have been a positive learning experience that would enable this child to grow and move on. Now they've turned into a major catastrophe, in part because of the legal fees the parents will need to incur.
ReplyDeleteThe other issue of course is the merit of the suit itself. The additional information in the link you posted said that the woman died three months after the accident--not three weeks--of unrelated causes. Which makes it even more perplexing that the judge allowed the suit to go forward at all. One lawyer scratching the backs of the other lawyers who will profit from this? While what happened to the woman is sad, she was 87 years old and they don't seem to be alleging a causal link between the accident and her death. In addition, her heirs probably benefitted greatly by her death with only some medical bills being deducted from the estate, so what kind of damages are they talking about? As you say, we live in a litigious society and everyone wants to hold somebody responsible for even accidents, but I think good old-fashioned greed--on steroids--is the underlying motive, and nobody even considers the consequences--or "collateral damage" as people like to say nowadays--to others.