High school teacher and junior prom chaperon Walter Bowne, one of my neighbors here in Mullica Hill, writes in today's Inquirer that while he tries to stay down with the shorties, he's not ai'ght "with the latest trend of what can only be called simulated-sex dancing and "down the Shore" unsupervised parties." The down-the-shore afterprom isn't exactly new, but yeah, the dancing (and srsly skanky dresses on 16-year-old girls) are both overly sexy. He goes on [emphasis mine]:
Students' behavior on the dance floor is something that every
chaperone talks about: the girl who dances 
with three guys grinding her
from behind; the girl who dances with her hands on the floor; the girl
who never sees the face of her date while they dance. It's become our
version of Girls Gone Wild.
As chaperones we do the best we can to keep order, but there are so many of them and so few of us. Anyway, we're relics of a lost civility. Our censure means nothing against the latest avalanche of popular youth culture.
For the modern, post-feminist woman, it seems perfectly OK to be objectified as a faceless body. Look at the videos. Listen to the songs. Women are valued simply as aesthetic decoration for the amusement of men - and many of these women are super-smart and college-bound.
As he's a teacher, one would assume Mr. Bowne chose his words deliberately, and while I understand his intention -- to get teenage girls to stop allowing themselves to be objectified -- I'd encourage him to expect more of those prom-going young men and boys. Boys who are not taught to respect women can too easily become men who "value women simply as aesthetic decoration."
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