Not For Young Eyes
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Last week, on an endlessly rainy day, my son had an orthodontist appointment across town. His younger brother and sister decided to tag along for the ride, as the orthodontist has a plush supply of goody prizes that she generously distributes to all who attend the retainer tune-up.
We waited 10 minutes for a cab outside our building before one finally arrived, carrying an elderly neighbor and her plentiful Fairway bags. For more than a minute, we watched as the woman slowly reached for her money and paid the driver.
While she paid, I noticed a pyramid-shaped advertisement for Joe’s Jeans on top of the taxi. In this ad — the one directly facing my three, young children — was a glamorously golden woman, face down and naked, with her backside thrust up in the air toward us. I guess her jeans were somewhere in the ad, down around mid-thigh, I think.
My second oldest son, Josh, a sharp-eyed boy, was the first to notice. He was glued to the image, so much so that my oldest son, oblivious at first, noticed it only by following Josh’s sightline to see what he was so busy looking at.
It was my 4-year-old daughter who was the first to say something.
“There’s a tushy on the taxi!” she squealed. “Look Mommy, I can see her tushy. “All four of us — and the doorman — giggled.
I feel like an old-fashioned, American prude voicing my discomfort with this advertisement. Where is my artistic sensibility? My deep appreciation for the First Amendment? My desire to have a pair of Joe’s Jeans, that instant, so that my backside might look as luscious as the one on the taxi?
Those sentiments are outweighed by my concern for my children. I can tuck the Abercrombie advertisements out of sight. I can say no to an R-rated movie. I can turn the television off if I don’t like the program’s content. And I do understand that short of moving to a ranch in Montana, there are limitations to my ability to prevent my children from eventually being exposed to racy material.
But certainly it’s fair to venture that this kind of material makes it more difficult to explain to my children that certain parts of their body are private, when one of them is plastered across something as ubiquitous as a yellow cab.
“Do you think her butt is still there?” Josh asked.
“Of course it is,” my oldest said with audible disdain.
My daughter’s eyes twinkled mischievously.
“I saw her butt,” she sang as she flung herself across all our laps and pulled down her pants. “Like this,” she said as she imitated the pose.
Great. Just great, I thought. Never was I was so happy to arrive at the orthodontist.
“My son passes the Gap Body stores where there are mannequins wearing bras and underpants and shields his eyes,” a mother of two told me. “He says ‘inappropriate material, inappropriate material,’ as he passes by. He really self-regulates, which I guess is healthy. But it is sort of crazy that he has to do it,” she said.
An uptown psychologist who has been treating children for more than 20 years told me that he sees the negative outcome of exposure to sexual material in his patients. “I see more and more girls, young girls, that are eight or nine, who think they need to be sexy to be popular,” he said. “They pout. They pose. They see their bodies as a sex object. And I see more and more boys who worry about their weight and their physique. Kids can’t avoid seeing and hearing information that they really aren’t ready to handle.”
There are scantily clad men and women hanging high above us in Times Square. Seventeen magazine is filled with provocative articles and advertising. Television shows aimed at teenagers are filled with experimental sex, drugs, and alcohol. The content isn’t going to change, so what’s a prudish parent to do?
I think the tush on the taxi is a reminder to all of us metropolitan moms and dads that our children’s world is different than the one in which we were raised. My husband, raised in apartheid-era South Africa when pornography was illegal, still talks about the poster of Farrah Fawcett in a bathing suit that hung in his room during high school. What was provocative by yesterday’s standards sounds remarkably sweet today.
The over-stimulation of our children isn’t their — or our — fault. We need to be extra-vigilant to guard them when we can, but also recognize that there are limitations to our ability to insulate them, and remind ourselves often that the next-best protection we can offer is information and open discussion about our own values and sense of right and wrong.
So the next time I see that advertisement on a taxi, I’m going to explain to my daughter why she needs to be at least 21 before she pulls down her pants like that woman. Or maybe I’ll just cover her eyes.