Teens hanging out on the corner, tattooed up, pants hanging suggestively off their hips, underwear hanging out. It's alright because the teens are just expressing themselves right?
You see the country I have as an image has people who care about what they look like. Now I know I might get some heat that dressing in the current style is caring about your image. What I mean by caring is a stylistic approach to your appearance. You look back just a few decades and you see men in buttoned down shirts, with a tie usually, a dressy styled hat on their heads. Casual pants in place and dress shoes on their feet. The women usually wore dresses, they looked very stylish, but sometimes pants were worn and they too were stylish. When you shopped for clothes sometimes you didn't have a great budget but you still cared about your appearance. I think back to my grandparents as an example, these are fond memories. I look back to even the ghetto pictures from the 20's and the residents there wore conservative and stylish clothing. They might not have had money or prestige but believe me I would take them more seriously than I would anyone from the cast of Jersey Shore.
I blame television and the program producers as much as I do flawed parenting. When I grew up it was with such television shows as Emergency, CHIPS, and other type shows, it showed emergency personnel as heroes, and when they went home it was to a simple lifestyle that most of us have. What do we have now? Shows like the Sopranos, The Shield, Oz, and others. Do I think these shows should not be on television? Absolutely I think they should, but I do not think our young teens or pre-teens should be allowed to watch them, its a recipe for disaster. I also think our youth looking to the current bunch of celebrities for guidance is just as much a disaster. Lindsay Lohan, Gaga, Lil Wayne, Katy Perry all strut around in ridiculous outfits, sport new body modifications and put out that this is a normal thing that everyone should do. The thing is these people now have money and do not have to worry about presenting themselves for job interviews.
The big danger is somewhere the message has changed from responsible choices to "do what feels good". This is a foreign concept to me, life should not be just about feeling good, it contains struggle and to be properly faced you need experience in life making hard choices to face and eventually beat that challenge. Why do so many of our childhood celebrities have a horrible track record in sustaining their lifestyles? Its a simple thing, too much of a good thing is doomed to fail. The brighter a star glows the quicker it usually burns out and with great show.
To return to a better place in the way the world looks upon our country we need to be more responsible to our next generation and show them that a gluttonous lifestyle filled with excess only leads to downfall.
