13 February 2011
In the world today, it’s becoming more and more difficult to find a cable television show that has real substance. Especially ones made to entertain the younger population. It’s all about sex, drinking, and having a wild time. Not exactly something our younger generation should be looking up to and aspiring to be like. Don’t get me wrong, it is entertaining. But is idolizing this type of lifestyle really healthy for our future? Since two years ago, a new type of language and lifestyle has been exposed to the world. Now everyone knows the acronym “GTL” and the word “grenade” has a whole new meaning.
Two years ago, the phenomenon began. People all across the nation tuned into MTV to watch the first episode of Jersey Shore. The show was taped on the Jersey Shore, a popular vacation spot in the northwest. Camera crews followed around eight young people, native to the area, who loved to drink, hook up, and party. They were also known as gweedos and gweedettes. It was an instant success. After time, not only were teens watching the show, but idolizing it. Jersey shore glamorized going out every night, hooking up with strangers, and getting intoxicated. Soon enough teens were aspiring to be like the cast they watched every Thursday night.
These young adults are being exposed and representing our generation, and they are giving us a bad name. Kearney points out how young women are taking the opportunities they are given to work and be producers of culture, and using it the wrong way. “With regard to representations of female adolescence in contemporary U.S. teen magazines such as Seventeen and Sassy, we can recognize that, in spite of the growing number of opportunities encouraging girls today to become active producers of culture, as well as magazines’ increasing attention to female youth who seize such opportunities (especially media celebrities like Alicia Silverstone, Claire Dances, and Brandy Norwood), most girls’ magazines continue to over-privilege the spheres of consumption and leisure in comparison to production and work.” (Kearney)
Although she speaks of magazines, television shows are no different. Television is no longer idolizing people who make the world a better place, who work hard, or who are good role models for adolescents. That’s not considered exciting enough to show as entertainment anymore. Now all you see on T.V. is young people who have it all handed to them, and use it in all the wrong ways. They exploit themselves with sex and risky situations and make it look like the good life.
In this show, the young adults go out, get drunk, and try to find someone to hook up with. Not only are just the men participating, but the women as well. They dress up in little clothing, and make themselves look as available as possible. It usually works to their advantage, and they bring home a new stranger to have sex with multiple times a week. I have fear that even more people, outside the Jersey Shore, are going out and doing the same after seeing it on the shows. They are putting themselves in compromising situations where they could be raped, taken advantage of, or get STD’s. “Research indicates that the presence of alcohol is one situational factor that often plays a role in risky sexual encounters. Therefore, the CMM specifically focuses on the role that alcohol may play in influencing women’s risky sexual decision-making processes. The CMM posits that alcohol consumption can affect women’s sexual decisions directly through its physiological effects on cognitive appraisals of the situation.” (Kelly Cue Davis, Jeanette Norris, Danielle M. Hessler, Tina Zawacki, Diane M. Morrison, William H. George) These girls are drinking daily, and heavily, and then going out to find sex. This is not the lifestyle that we, as young adults, should be aspiring to have.
When it comes to entertainment, should we be compromising our youth’s future? Exposing the younger populations to these lifestyles could be a risk. The more types of this behavior they are exposed to, the more it will be accepted as ideal. We should not be idolizing people who live a life of drinking, partying, and hooking up. Whatever happened to good ole fashion, wholesome entertainment?
Works Cited
Kearney, Mary Celeste. "Producing Girls: Rethinking the Study of Female Youth Culutre." (n.d.): 291.
Kelly Cue Davis, Jeanette Norris, Danielle M. Hessler, Tina Zawacki, Diane M. Morrison, William H. George. "College Women's Sexual Decision Making Cognitive Mediation of Alchohol Expectancy Effects." JOURNAL OF AMERICAN COLLEGE HEALTH, VOL 58, NO. 5 (2010): 482.
