My first career was in advertising many years ago. I learned marketing is targeted to the ideal customer for that product. You can have a bad marketing effort that misses everybody, but usually, if you don't like the advertising, you weren't the market targeted.
A lot of people have had a lot to say about Sunday night's VMA awards. Some of it was great, some of it was not. A lot of it declared Miley Cyrus to be disgusting. It sounded the same when people complained about Madonna, Lady Gaga, Lil' Kim and Britney Spears. Did we forget Kanye West's ill advised insult to Taylor Swift? The VMA awards are outré. That's their market. They are supposed to be over the top, outlandish. The offense is in the eye of the beholder. Don't sell our kids short. They might have been entertained by last Sunday's show, but I doubt if you'll see a huge uptick in furry fandom.
The current YouTube fad of posting twerking videos is a still a fad. It will pass into something more outrageous. I admit, the permanent damage of posting a less than flattering video is worrisome. That's where you have to believe in yourself as a parent. Have you done a good job of teaching your child that nothing on the internet is private or secure? If you haven't, then you need to fix that. Prove to your child that pictures and videos can turn up years later and get them fired, ridiculed or worse. My experience with teens is to have an open-ended conversation that leads them to decide that posting potentially embarrassing photos is not a good idea. If you don't know how to do that, get help and learn.
What about the obvious sexual performances? If you watch True Blood, Strike Back with teens in the room, then your outrage at the VMA awards is misplaced. The popular show, Under the Dome has some fairly explicit intimate scenes in the first episode - no outrage there. What about So You Think You Can Dance? or Dancing With the Stars? Those shows have some very sexual moves. Again, no outrage.
The misogyny of the VMA's throughout the years has some basis in fact. I don't know why the men keep showing up in suits and tuxedo's and the women come wearing one teeny tiny outfit after another, but apparently these women think it's working for their marketing efforts. For every Rihanna you have four Rose McGowen(s). What I find a bit overdone is the outrage. Sex sells. Why is it ok to do cheesecake, but not do cheesecake? (kudos to Joe Concha for the catch.)
Some mothers have called for boycotts for offensive acts. Ok, really? I seem to recall my parents trying to ban Alice Cooper and Kiss in high school only to have my Dad tapping his toe to School's Out. As a practical matter, how exactly are you going to control those $25 itune cards? Are you going to snatch them away as soon as your kid opens the envelope? Are you going to circulate a letter to friends and family that they shouldn't buy your kid an itunes card or that they should be delivered to you so you can supervise the downloads? What about the cash they get as gifts? What if you force a child to delete a song from a forbidden artist? Are you aware once a song is provably bought via download, it can be redownloaded? Helicopter parenting doesn't teach a child anything about self-control. Don't Sell Our Kids Short. Our children are smarter than we give them credit for being. I doubt if you're going to see any of them sporting a meat dress.
Ahhh, here's the real issue; twerking and those tongue infused facial expressions. It's not pretty. It's not graceful. We call it animalistic, unrefined. It's not....us. These moves are too sexual, too gross, uncivilized. As I see it, twerking is probably great for your abs. Not that you're going to see me do it in the gym or anywhere else, but that's because I'm not in the market for twerking. I'm not in the target age group. Just like my parents weren't in the market for Animal House, short shorts, ZZ Top, disco or Richard Simmons; twerking isn't for me. "Oh, but that's not the same thing!", you say? The critics of twerking sound like my parents throughout the 60's with my oldest siblings about the likes of the Rolling Stones, Jimmy Hendricks and Janis Joplin, the 70's with my sister and me (Donna Summers, SNL & mini skirts). They gave up in the 80's with my younger brother, Dire Straights and the B-52's were just fine with them. We grew up just fine. None of us became reprobates. All of us know right from wrong, live well and know how to safely have a good time. Unfortunately, our children think we're a bit hokey while they watch us have a good time these days. Just as hokey as I thought my parents were for liking Tommy Dorsey, Bridge parties and replays of radio serials.
That's the cool part of this current outrage, in time, you can be certain your grandchildren will find a way to outrage your children and we'll hear our parent's words coming out of our children's mouths. Don't worry, Miley Cyrus will fade there's always next year and the years after.