Especially for Parents

News and Commentary by Sharon Secor
September 2003

Suburban Surprise

'This Could Be Your Kid', warns the title of an August 18, 2003, Newsweek magazine article. Writing about teen-age prostitution, author Suzanne Smalley cites statistics that demonstrate that, in addition to the tragic increase of participation among the socio-economic groups traditionally associated with such behavior, there has been an astounding increase in the number of middle-class, suburban youth becoming involved in prostitution.

“Compared to three years ago, we’ve seen a 70 percent increase in kids from middle- to upper-middle-class backgrounds, many of whom have not suffered mental, sexual or physical abuse,” said Frank Barnaba, of the Paul & Lisa Program, according to Smalley’s article. The Paul & Lisa Program works with the Justice Department and the FBI to track exploited children.

“Potentially good sex is a small price to pay for the freedom to spend money on what I want,” said a 17-year-old girl from an intact family living in an “upscale neighborhood”, as quoted by Smalley. A good student, with plans for her future, she began exchanging her body – first by stripping, then graduating to sex -- for coveted merchandise and cash with men she met at a shopping mall. Shopping malls, according to the Newsweek article, are becoming a favored place for pimps to recruit youth, and for men seeking illicit interactions with teens.

Media outlets covering the story seemed surprised at the aberrant behavior of our more privileged youth and concerned about the condition of our culture. But considering the degree to which media influences modern culture, this surprise and concern seem a bit disingenuous.

Oprah Winfrey, for example, recently taped a program titled Suburban Teen: The New Prostitute, which will be aired on October 19. Topics of discussion include suburban teen prostitution, what the movie Thirteen reveals about teens’ lives, and the ability of parents to keep their teens safe in today’s world. To her credit, Winfrey has distanced herself from the kind of daytime TV talk shows that crassly exploit human folly and misery. But the success she enjoys today is built upon her years in the talk show genre that brought those kinds of shows to TV.

For example, a recurring topic on The Maury Povich Show is on-the-air paternity testing for the teen that is unsure of which sexual partner has fathered her baby, a recent program title being Which Teen Brother Is My Baby’s Father? “These shows are something young viewers can relate to,” said Amy Rosenblum, the executive producer of Povich, according to Paige Albiniak’s August 8, 2003, article for Broadcasting & Cable. Povich is now at the top of the rating chart among 18- to 34-year-olds, gaining 28% over his ratings from last year for this age group.

References to pimping and prostituting abound in popular urban music; and in teen culture, the term pimp is no longer a pejorative. Quite the opposite, the term exudes a certain coolness.

“A growing number of rap performers are trying to redefine the culture,” wrote DeWayne Wickham in an August 5, 2003, article published in USA Today. He described a recent music video, P.I.M.P., in which the wildly popular rappers 50 Cent and Snoop Dog “prance before the camera in the flashy, gaudy attire of a pimp.” Wickham points out that “their video is just the latest in what has become a steady stream of rap songs that celebrate pimps as hot-dressing, slick-talking, women-running men and ignore both the cruelty and criminality of the profession.”

Interestingly, in the same way that porn stars began turning up in cameo appearances in music videos, now real pimps and actors associated with pimp roles are turning up in music videos. In his recent video, Pimp Juice, rapper Nelly included both Max Julien, who portrayed a pimp in The Mack, a “Blaxploitation” film from 1973, and former pimp Bishop Don “Magic” Juan.

In his New York Daily News column of August 11, 2003, Stanley Crouch had harsher words for the pimp trend. Writing of the decline of “black popular culture,” he said, “the most recent and monstrous aspect of it comes, as usual, from the world of hip hop, where thugs and freelance prostitutes have been celebrated for years.”

“This new development,” Crouch continued, “is observable in the work of Snoop Dog, Jay-Z, and 50 Cent: the elevation of pimps as cultural heroes. That’s beyond degraded.”

Yet, is it not mainstream media outlets that elevate these performers to cultural icons? Is it not our “mainstream” corporations that financially back the dysfunctional views of the individual and society that are normalized by constant presentation through every possible outlet?

From their earliest moments of media awareness, today’s teens are bombarded with sexual messages. As these influences filter down into merchandise and marketing, parents of 10-year-old girls find it increasingly difficult to find clothes that meet the standards of modesty and childhood. Thirteen-year old girls buy cosmetics under the brand name of Fetish, and wear push-up bras. What does a 13-year-old need a push-up bra for?

They’ve grown up with sex as a sales tool, a bartering chip, a recreational sport. They’ve grown up in a cultural climate in which sexual deviance and misbehavior are publicly validated, and even promoted. And, in recent years, the observant teen has seen herself sexualized and commodified by media and culture to a greater degree than ever before.

Yet, the problem of suburban teen prostitution doesn’t just implicate the media and our own declining popular culture. It has to do with absent parents leaving a void — physical and moral — and allowing media, which is funded by consumerism, to fill it. It has to do with parents substituting things for time. Guilt payments, perhaps.

In the Newsweek article, Smalley writes that the 17-year-old girl went home from her first encounter with a paying man “with a $250 outfit” and that when she went out with the men that answered her personal ad that offered “an evening of fun” for $400, “she told her parents that she was out with friends or at the mall.” Her parents did not notice the expensive clothing? Nobody noticed an excess of money? And, if she was using the money for drugs, nobody could tell that she was getting high? Did they not meet her friends? Did they not look at her?

Considering the social effects of lax parenting and of our increasingly morally bankrupt media and consumer-based culture, perhaps the element of surprise does not lie in the existence of suburban teen prostitution. Perhaps, the surprise lies in the fact that there is not more of it.