My sister had homecoming this weekend. Apart from looking like a pretty pretty princess, in the recap she called it "disappointing" and her friend seconded that.
The expectations that these magazines present these girls with are killing them from the inside out. No amount of streamers and disco balls will make your high school gym an enchanted forest. Likewise, no straight teenage guy is going to be able to fulfill the dreams that the magazines promote.
We shouldn't wonder why these kids are listening to Joy Division and The Cure and moping around - their short lives are inundated by disappointment because their little heads are filled with these goofy Platonic ideal of these situations that can never ever be fulfilled.
Of course, do you think the magazines are going to stop? Of course not. They're in cahoots with the big drug companies who are profiting off the misery these kids experience from reading these magazines. They're hopped up on anti-depressants or anti-histamines or cholesterol lowering stuff. And if the kids are uninsured or underinsured, they turn to milkshakes or wine coolers or beef sticks. They're all hanging out at the pharmacy getting their fix.
And because they're all medicated and numb, what choice do they have but to start seeking out sources of endorphin releases? That's why all these kids are hanging out at the park seeing how long they can hold their breath or shoplifting candy or licking batteries. Our nation's young folks are lost - they don't know they're on a spiralling highway to more misery and self-destructive behavior. We've got to stop these magazines - they at the root of all of society's problems, not the least of which is juvenile delinquency, the spread of STDs, rising prescription drug prices, a Social Security funding crisis (because these kids are too depressed or stoned on prescription drugs to get decent jobs), increasingly boring graffiti, bad television and bland corporate dining establishments. Write your teen media editor and tell them that their content is killing our children and we need them alive and productive if we're ever going to collect our Social Security benefit.
FULL DISCLOSURE: At the time of this writing, the author's investment portfolio includes big drug companies.
