Ok I can’t not say anything about this anymore. It’s crazy! A few weeks ago we were at the Payless store at the mall, which is like a light to my wife’s moth. So in we go. She’s looking at shoes, and I don’t really care so I take Claire to the kid shoe aisle. A few minutes later, when Donna’s finished, she sees some Hannah Montana paraphernalia and proceeds to show it to my three year old. I immediately become incensed and pull her from the situation. I tell my wife in no uncertain terms will my own daughter be associating with anything that deals with underage girls posing naked (yeah year she probably had on panties, but the male gaze is suppose to block that fact from their voyeuristic minds when drooling) with or without her father’s permission (look who he is anyway, achy breaky facey if more fathers out there cared to show him what we think!) and with or without the pictures taken by the most famous living photographer in contemporary society. You don’t do that. It’s not right.

My high school students always tell me I would like High School Musical (at last count the third one’s coming out this summer), and I always said I’d get around to it sometime. Well, not now! A few months ago the being hoo-hah was lead Vanessa Hudgens posed naked (yes, full frontal) and leaked the pictures online. Why? Wasn’t the movies making enough money? Weren’t they already filming a sequel? Sure sure Vanessa and Hannah are a little different. Vanessa is 18 (barely!) but she sure doesn’t look it.

Now I am sitting here in a hotel in California where I like to watch CNN while I pack to fly back to hell (read: Phoenix from mid-June to mid-July) and they’ve got a news story on about a group (more than a dozen) teens who suddenly got pregnant at a high school in Gloucester, MA. Turns out they made a "pregnancy pact" and wanted to raise the kids together. (Awwww how nice….. buy a damn puppy!). The very next story is about Jamie Lynn Spears giving birth. CNN reported that she’s still with the father (now don’t get me wrong, people can raise kids alone all they want, but gimme a break!), well how special is that? (Don’t even get me started on her older sister!). The boy should be in jail for statutory rape.

What’s this world coming to? I have a three year old daughter  who I am trying to raise in this world of underage, in-your-face, smut accepted by the mainstream media. (Yes, accepted. If it’s not, then do NOT write or report about it! Pull a Toohey and cut ‘em off!). I can no longer sit passively aside and roll my eyes at all of this. I took my kid to Disneyworld two weeks ago, and I was reminded that Hannah Montana (read: Miley Cyrus) was a Disney "product". I’ve always been reminded of my study of Henry A. Giroux that there’s definitely concerns of the patterns of Disney and their affects on children everywhere, especially girls (read The Mouse That Roared if you want to know more). How do I shield Claire from the sexualization of girls in our society, which I think are even more prevalent today? It use to be like the Calvin Klein ad in ’95 that depicted 18+ models as younger than such sexual beings, but now the beings themselves are actually underage and ?today’s media seems to make it look ok.

Well, it’s not ok for this dad.