VI. Read the text.
Don't ask your spouse for help around the house. Asking for help gives the impression that the household chores are only your job and responsibility. Instead, ask your spouse to do his/her share. Chores around the house should be shared responsibilities.
Set your priorities as a couple. What is truly important to each of you? Discuss how you both feel about home cooked meals versus quick meals or eating out now and then. Find out your feelings about dusting, cleaning the toilet, making the bed, mowing the lawn, paying bills, etc.
Sit down together and make a list of the chores that each of you absolutely hates to do. What one hates, the other may be able to tolerate. If both of you detest the same chore, then figure out a way to compromise in getting this particular unpleasant task done. Or perhaps you could tackle the horrid chore together, as a team. You could also find some money in your budget to hire someone to do that task.
It is important, too, to be considerate of one another's body clocks. Some folks are morning people and some folks are night owls. Forcing one another to do a project or chore when they really aren't ready to do it only creates tension. Timing is important. So is sharing expectations.
Let one another know what the coming week is going to be like. Meetings, special occasions, things that need to be done, etc. Then decide who is going to do what, make a list, post the list, and then let it go. Don't nag one another about what he/she volunteered to do. Some people dawdle more than others. If the task hasn't been done by the following week, when you next sit down to share expectations, that's the time to bring it up and talk about the undone chore or task.
If one of you doesn't follow through on promises to do his/her share of the work around your home, try and discover together why there is such reluctance. Some husbands may view household chores as woman's work and not manly. Blaming your spouse for what hasn't been accomplished or finished is just wasting energy.
Don't nag. Keep lists of chores written and posted if this is an issue in your home. After a while, the written lists probably won't be necessary.
Be flexible and allow your spouse to accomplish a task in his/her own way. If having the towels folded a certain way is super important to you, then you fold the towels.
Many couples find they look at the division of chores differently. Domestic disorder simply doesn't bother some people. If talking it over with your spouse doesn't improve the situation, then do what many people do. Hire someone else to do it.
If after discussing the situation, your mate absolutely refuses to share equally in household chores, and you're tired of carrying the load yourself, then you have some choices to make. Bottom line, you can't change your spouse. You can hire some outside help, or you can quit doing some tasks that you don't want to do any more. The roof won't fall in just because you don't cook a 3-course meal every night, or you don't clean the bathroom on a daily basis.
Look at some areas of your house and yard that you may want to cut back on to save both time and money. Try to get your home organized so it runs more efficiently. Ask yourself if some chores even have to be done on a regular basis. For instance, I'm a firm believer that if you don't stick to the kitchen floor, it doesn't need scrubbing. If mowing the lawn is taking too much time, sprinkle wildflower seeds out there and let nature do her thing. If you hate ironing, give the clothes away that need ironing and toss the iron. Do the windows have to always sparkle? With this type of downsizing, and an examination of your standard of housekeeping, your domestic chores may become less draining emotionally and physically.
V. Read the text. Explain and memorize the words in bold.
It all starts with a proposal. Traditionally the man goes down on one knee to pop the question. If he receives a "yes", the couple are engaged. It is customary for the man to buy his fiancee an engagement ring, most commonly a diamond ring. Engagements can last for years, and if neither of the couple breaks off the engagement, the next step is marriage.
Most weddings in the UK take the form of either a civil ceremony (conducted at the Registry Office) or a traditional white wedding, held in a church. (There are other ceremonies for different religions.) If the couple chooses a church service, the planning can become quite complex. The church must be booked, the service has to be chosen, flowers arranged and so on. Other arrangements (for both traditional and civil) are to draw up a guest list, send out invitations, book a reception venue (for after the ceremony), choose bridesmaids (the girls who traditionally accompany the bride in the church) and the best man (the bridegroom's friend who accompanies him to the ceremony), buy the wedding dress, arrange a honeymoon (the holiday after the wedding), compile a wedding list (a list of presents that guests can choose to buy the couple) and of course, to select the wedding ring(s).
The groom and best man arrive at the church first, and then the guests arrive. Last to arrive is the bride, normally dressed in a long white wedding dress with a train (material from the dress that covers the floor behind her), her face covered in a veil, carrying a bouquet of flowers, and accompanied by a couple of bridesmaids in matching dresses. Usually the bride's father walks her down the aisle until they reach the priest / vicar at the altar. The church organ plays the Wedding March, and the guests rise to their feet to watch the procession. Once they reach the altar, the bride stands with the groom, and the service begins. The service lasts for about half an hour, and contains readings (extracts from the Bible) and a couple of hymns (religious songs). The priest always asks if there are any objections to the marriage (someone can speak or forever hold their peace = never have the opportunity again to object), and at the end of the service, the couple exchange rings and are proclaimed “man and wife”. At that point, the groom is allowed to kiss his wife. The guests leave and the couple then sign the marriage register. When they come out of the church, the guests often throw confetti(small pieces of coloured paper), and the photographer takes various formal photographs.
Next in the big day is the reception, which is often a formal lunch in a hotel. After lunch there are various speeches. The bride's father normally gives a speech, then the best man gives a speech (which is often a funny speech designed to embarrass the groom), and the bridegroom and / or the bride give a short speech to thank their guests
Some couples also arrange an evening reception, and hire a disco or band to play music for their friends.
At the end of the day, the happy couple traditionally leave on honeymoon.
VI. Read the text. Explain and memorize the words in bold.
The Russian wedding usually lasts for 2 days. The bridegroom and the bride have their family and friends with them. The bridegroom's company meets at the bridegroom's place and the bride's company meets at the bride's place. The bridegroom comes to pick up the bride and they go to the registry office where the official ceremony takes place. Usually it is only the immediate family and closest friends who accompany them. The rest of the guests join at the reception. The best friends of the bridegroom and bride usually act as their "witnesses".
The bridegroom and the bride go in the same train but in different cars. All cars are decorated with ribbons and balloons, often the bride's car has a doll on the bonnet, or two golden rings on top of the car (one bigger and one smaller), or both. Two crossed golden rings are a symbol of marriage that may also be seen on wedding invitations.
At the registry office the bridegroom and bride will be asked if they want to marry each other, and they are supposed to answer "Yes", then they exchange the wedding rings, then they kiss each other, then they sign in the registry, then the witnesses sign. The official representative of the registry office says a few words of greeting, and then the official hymn of the marriage ceremony is played – the march of Mendelssohn. The guests who are present give flowers to the bride, and drink a bottle of Champagne.
Nowadays many couples opt for a marriage in church but church marriages still do not have official status in Russia, and the church requires a civil marriage certificate to arrange the ceremony for the couple.
After the marriage ceremony the couple leaves the guests for a tour around the city. Usually it is only the couple and the witnesses in one car but sometimes it may be two cars and the closest friends. The couple visits memorials to people who died in the Second World War and lays flowers there.
After 2 or 3 hours of the city tour the couple arrives at the reception. The first thing to start the reception with is a toast. The first toast is to the new couple. One of the witnesses proposes the first toast, and then the parents have their say. For the first toast people usually drink champagne, and after the first sip somebody says "Gor'ko!" ("Bitter!"); it means the wine is bitter. All guests together start to shout "Gor'ko! Gor'ko!" To make the wine sweet, the newlyweds must kiss each other. They must stand up and kiss each other for as long as possible, and all the guests start counting "1, 2, 3, 4 , 5..." while they are kissing. This happens after almost every toast, so the couple has lots of kissing during the wedding.
Usually when a person proposes the toast, he gives his gift to the newlyweds. Traditionally money is considered to be the best gift, and is given in an envelope. Then people have time to dance.
On the following day the party is given at the place where the newlyweds are going to live. It starts in the morning or early afternoon. The couple wears different clothes but it must be something new bought specially for the occasion. The number of guests on the second day is smaller; actually anyone from day one can attend the party but it is usually only the closest friends and members of the family that do.
TOPICAL VOCABULARY (* optional words)
|
|
|
RELATED READING II
TEXT 1.
EIGHT KEYS TO A HAPPIER MARRIAGE
Newlyweds are often asked ‘how’s married life?’ As with everything in life, the answer depends on you. For some, marriage is another word for frustration and even misery. For others it is the bedrock of strength and support they build the rest of their lives around.
What are the differences that lead such a fundamental part of daily life down two totally opposing avenues? I don’t pretend to have all the answers, but I can share with you the things that have helped me in my years of marriage to what I feel is a very strong and happy relationship.
1. Work on Your Marriage. Like most of us, I learnt what I know about marriage from my parents. When my father once said to me ‘marriage requires attention, the moment you stop working on your marriage is the moment it begins to falter’ I can remember thinking, this didn’t sound very much like the movies. After all a wedding is the culmination of a movie, that’s when everything is all sorted out and you don’t have to worry about anything anymore, right? Alas, like in many other things, my father has proven correct.
As we’ll discuss in the proceeding paragraphs, maintaining a healthy marriage requires sacrifices, attention and care. It helps to think of your marriage as a living thing in itself. Like all living things, it needs nourishment and protection, healing when it is sick, and space to grow and flourish.
These are all nice words, but what does that mean on a practical level? It means you need to always think about your marriage and not take it for granted. It means you need to be vigilant against things that might threaten it, not just the obvious things like temptation, but the subtle things like imbalances in responsibility and duty, comparisons to others, jealousy and so on. It means you need to nourish your marriage with thoughtfulness for the other’s needs, find time together and sometimes even time apart. It means when things are going wrong you need to stop and think about how you can improve them and perhaps what sacrifices you need to make. It means that a marriage needs to go forward, to change as you both change and to grow stronger.
2. Don’t Leave Things Unsaid. I watched a movie once – I think it was one of those British romantic comedies – where a man is asked why his marriage failed and he replies “Because we left too many things unsaid” and though I don’t normally take advice from movies, this one I took to heart.
If you don’t voice your problems they have nowhere to go. Worse if you voice them to people not in your marriage – i.e. friends, coworkers, anyone else – then instead of airing your dirty laundry you let it fester.
No matter how long two people have known each other there will still be things that they don’t pick up when unspoken. Sure you may think your partner knows what you’re thinking, but what if they don’t? Which leads us to number 3…
3. Speak Plainly. The very worst thing you can do in a relationship is play games with each other. No, not the twister or monopoly varieties, I mean mind games. It’s tempting when you are in a bad mood or when you don’t want to be hurt to be passively aggressive, to not say what you mean, to make veiled hints in order to test the other person and so on. Tempting, but it doesn’t go anywhere except sour.
I think it’s fairly obvious why clear communication leads to a better marriage, and yet it can be difficult to do. But if you have something to say, whether it is to voice some upset, to show that you care or anything else, then you must speak plainly if you hope for the other person to understand. And if you weren’t hoping for them to understand, why are you talking?
Speaking indirectly usually begins during dating or courting. We do it because it avoids us opening up to being hurt. At this early stage if you were to tell someone how much you liked them and they shot you down it would be painful. So to compensate we move slowly and only hint at our feelings until we see enough back from the other person that we start to open up. This is OK.
The problem is when speaking indirectly continues on into the relationship. At that point you should be able to trust the person enough to express your feelings. If they abuse them then you leave. By keeping your guard up you only put huge barriers in the middle of your relationship.
Speaking indirectly is also a bad idea when one person just doesn’t get it. When you have one partner playing games and the other doesn’t really understand their behaviour at times they will begin to resent the other and inevitably this will lead to problems.
Passive aggression on the other hand is when a partner rather than voicing their upsets appears to be smiling, calm, and usually puts bite into words that shouldn’t have it. Over time passive aggression can become less and less veiled and turn into exasperation, distain, even disgust.
Another bad habit is what is called stonewalling. This is when a partner simply shuts the other out, going silent, ignoring them or even leaving for a time. Stonewalling has obvious consequences of frustration and anger and quickly leads to cycles of increasing problems as one person stonewalls while the other becomes more and more frustrated, then becomes less and less reasonable leading to further stonewalling.
If you only take one thing away from my words, let it be to speak plainly, avoid passive aggression, avoid games and avoid speaking indirectly. When you say what you mean and communicate your feelings clearly the other person has a proper chance to respond.
4. Be Vulnerable. Too often we don’t want to put our feelings and thoughts out there. Particularly if we’ve had bad experiences when younger, or if simply taught to be that way by watching our parents and peers. Admitting that you are vulnerable – everyone is – is the corollary to speaking plainly.
It is important to remember that this is your partner and they love you and you love them. Between the two of you, if you both speak plainly and admit vulnerability, then you will be able to resolve problems. It may take time, you may have many hurdles to get over, but what other recourse is there than resolution? After all neither of you are out to get the other - remember you love each other!
The flipside to being vulnerable is you get hurt sometimes. Don’t let this close you off, remember this just means that wasn’t the right person, circumstances or perhaps even a little closer to home, there were other things going wrong. Whatever the case, you don’t need to hide away. Without being open to hurt, you won’t be open to the joys of marriage and relationships.
5. Accept your Partner. It is tempting to find a person and try to shape them into the partner you really want. Trying to change a person never works. People know when they are not accepted in their entirety and it hurts.
You shouldn’t go into a marriage or a relationship thinking to change someone. And if you do remember the most you can do is explain what it is, explain how it affects you or why it affects you and if it’s important, then they may change. And if they don’t, then think about all the things that they may wish changed in you.
Of course if there are too many things you want to change, it is important to face that this may not be the right person for you, or you may be expecting too much. People will be what they will be; spending your marriage life trying to shift habits and personalities is like trying to push boulders up a mountain, tiring and not very fun.
6. Spend Time Together. It’s obvious, but a relationship without any face time is going to have problems. I have met happy couples who spend months apart because of work commitments, but they are few and far between and more often than not, their happiness is more a testament to their character and emotional abilities than anything else.
Of course spending time together doesn’t simply mean being in the same room, it means actively finding time where you engage with each other. It may even take work and effort, but remember from above, a happy marriage takes work!
Spending time together, also often entails spending some time alone. Children, even pets can sometimes be barriers to engaging with one another. Even if you simply have a few moments while they run off, it’s important to be alone too.
7. Make Time for Both Your Ambitions and Goals. It is all too easy to focus on your own goals and ambitions and hope or even assume that your partner shares them. If you don’t know what your partner’s life goals are, ask them.
In my marriage, I have goals that are to do largely with working, whereas my wife wants to travel the world. If we did either and not the other, one of us would feel unfulfilled. The solution is of course balance. We try to do one then a little of the other, then switch.
8. Be Clear and Assertive. While it is important to be vulnerable, to make sure your partners goals are being looked after, that you accept your partner and all the other things we’ve talked about, it’s equally important not to be trampled over. You should always be clear and assertive about your own feelings, your own needs and your own goals. Remember that your own happiness is essential to a happy marriage.
Martin Black
TEXT 2.
NURTURING YOUR RELATIONSHIPS
As a staff support officer I am seeing an increasing number of people who are sadly splitting up having been together, in a lot of cases, for many years. They say that the magic has gone and they have grown apart, and perhaps they have taken each other for granted over several years. Each has become complacent and then suddenly they start evaluating their lives, or someone else starts showing an interest, and they begin to realize that they want more from the lives and relationships.
I suggest therefore that if we have thoughts towards nurturing our relationship, it is worth evaluating your relationship, see to what extent it is working or not, as the case may be, and considering what you might do if you both want to keep things together.
Maybe first of all be conscious of your arguments and disagreements. What is the basis for them, is there a common denominator? If you are constantly finding fault with your partner, why is that, is it important, if so communicate and discuss and sort it out. Perhaps you can let some things go, being right all the time can be infuriating, and if you are fault finding, you could be bullying your partner and reducing their confidence. Ultimately you cannot change people, and you have to let them be, and celebrate who and what they are. If you are not right for each other it is better to move on than to continue hurting each other.
You could start dating again, making things seem fresh and new, respecting each other, being polite and kind and watching your manners. (No passing wind in bed is a good start!) This may sound daft but it can be very exciting, therapeutic and effective so please do not write it off without trying first. You might even choose to surprise your mate with a special night out or a little gift for no particular reason. Let them see again your personality, charm, sensitivity and spontaneity, which is what perhaps attracted them in the beginning, apart from your stunning good looks of course!
Try not to hang on too tightly – your grip can damage a relationship if it is too strong! Let them have their friends, express and be themselves – we all need more than one person to meet all our needs, and our friends are important too, so try to be more easy and free.
Take the time and interest to know your partner and to know what they need. We are all different and there are not always rights and wrongs, just variations and differences of opinion. Some of us need more physical love and affection and reassurance of our partners love and commitment. Some of us show love by being more practical. So be willing to make an effort to give in your relationship, because by giving genuine love and affection, you will by nature receive it in return.
There is no doubt that we can sustain and nurture our relationships if we care enough and we are prepared to work at them. Try not to be too complacent, there are no guarantees in life, and some things are not forever. However to love and to be loved are the greatest of gifts in life, and it has to be worth some real investment and nurture.
David Swan
TEXT 3.
THE ART OF MARITAL CONVERSATION
The
problem with communication … is the illusion that it has been
accomplished.
George
Bernard Shaw
The day at work has been horrific. Emails never stopped. The voicemail light kept flashing. The boss needed the information yesterday. And to top it all off, you had a fight with your wife as you left this morning.
You feel the tension coming from the house when you get out of your car in the driveway. The kids are in their rooms doing homework and your wife approaches you and says the words most men dread: “we need to talk.”
It seems at this moment, most men have the fight or flight response. I can berate her about the timing of things, continue to insist that I’m right and she’s wrong. Or I can shrug it off and disappear with the TV, the Internet, alcohol, or the work I conveniently brought home.
What is it about talking that is so difficult for men? Granted, this does not apply to all men, but most have some trouble with deep conversation. Especially when it comes to conversing with our spouse.
A brief history
Men have been educated from birth to compete, judge, demand, and diagnose. We are very adept at seeing a problem that needs fixing and developing a way to fix the problem. Unfortunately, this fix is according to the man, possibly not taking into account those around him. This is due in part to our learning to think and communicate in terms of what is “right” or what is “wrong.”
To add to this, we often express our feelings in terms of what has been “done to us” rather than being independent of those around us. We mix up our needs and we ask for what we’d like using demands, guilt, or even the promise of rewards. This should come as no surprise since this is how many of us were raised by our parents.
At best, the basic ways men think and communicate hinder communication and create both misunderstanding and frustration. At worst, they can lead to anger, depression and even violence.
Communicating with your spouse do’s and don’ts
Talk face to face. Anytime you are in a discussion with your spouse that is beyond the scheduling or surface level, do it face to face. If this is not possible, the phone will work, although this can limit the connection and increase the possibility of misunderstandings. Never try to cover deeper issues via email or text messages.
Turn off other distractions during the conversation. If you’re working on the computer, minimize the work or better yet, shut the whole thing off. If you’re watching TV, turn it off. If you are afraid of missing something in the game, get Tivo.
Don’t answer the phone. If it rings in the middle of the conversation, you have voicemail for a reason. Let it do its job.
Take the time to listen to her point of view. You are only one part of the relationship. Consider her side of things and ask for clarity if you don’t get what she’s saying. You don’t have to agree with everything she says to still love her. But it will help to understand her if you listen.
Forget about being right or wrong. As soon as the discussion turns to who’s right and who’s wrong, you’ve both lost. If you have an insatiable need to always be right when it comes to your spouse, riddle me this: what’s it like to be married to a loser? If you have to always be right, that makes your spouse always wrong. It’s not about right or wrong most of the time.
Communication leads to community, that is, to understanding, intimacy and mutual valuing. Rollo May
The art of non-violent communication
Do you think it is possible to connect with what is alive in ourselves and in others from moment-to-moment? Dr. Marshall Rosenberg says yes. His non-violent communication techniques focus on how we express ourselves, how we hear those around us and how to resolve conflict by focusing our consciousness on what we are observing, feeling, needing, and requesting.
In order to connect on a deeper level, we have to check ourselves throughout the conversation. Often, whenever our emotions spike during the discussion, we will change the subject or attack the other person in order to help us feel better about whatever is going on at the moment.
My grandfather once said that when a person involved in a conversation raises their voice, it’s no longer about what best for all involved and the current situation. It’s about their power and their pride.
The art of conversation at a deeper level:
Focus on the intention. Most marital conversations can be simplified down into one of two categories. A chance to be closer together or a chance to be my own person. Humans vacillate between being too close together or too far apart. Conversations are often used to either bring us closer together or create some space between us. If what you are really wanting is companionship, understanding, compassion, then say so outright. If on the other hand you are wanting some space to chart your own course, speak up. Both connection and separateness are necessary parts of every relationship (for more information on this subject check out my Ebook, The Simple Marriage Matrix).
Seek compassionate connection. This is done primarily by the conversations not being tied to a particular outcome, like being right or something you’d like the other person to do. Focus on being clear with your side of the conversation and then clearly hearing their side. This may mean you don’t agree. So what. You are two separate individuals. You are not going to see eye to eye on everything.
The conflict or issue may not be resolved, that’s not the point. A mutually satisfying outcome is where both people are heard and understood. Think of your conversations in terms of sex. When both people are satisfied, the connection is much deeper and lasting.
Many attempts to communicate are nullified by saying too much. Robert Greenleaf
Corey Allan
GENERATION SEX
Remember that Hilaire Belloc`s cautionary tale – Matilda told such dreadful lies, it made one gasp and stretch ones`s eyes? I used to love it as a child when telling lies was one of the naughtiest things you could do: Matilda ended up getting burned to death.
These days, however, everything has changed and it`s the truths that children tell that make one gasp and stretch one`s eyes.
A couple of years ago, my daughter Francesca, then aged 13, told me about a party she had been to one Saturday night.
In the course of the evening, she came upon one of her friends, also aged 13, performing oral sex on a boy in the garden; the boy was standing and videoing the event on his mobile phone.
My daughter, in whom the feisty gene has always found strong expression, pulled her friend off the boy, knocked the phone out of his hand and slapped him round the face.
I apologise for shocking you, but then there are a number of things shocking about this event: the casual nature in which such an intimate act is performed in public, the young age of the participants and last, but by no means least, the fact that it is being filmed. This not only signals the boy`s disassociation from the physical experience, it also indicated his intention to replay the event and, no doubt, to share his triumph with his friends as one might brandish a trophy above one`s head for all to see.
Nor was this the only such event on this particular evening. I am no prude, but Francesca painted a picture of Bacchanalia that certainly made me gasp.
That week at school, when conducting a postmortem of their weekend as teenagers do (and always have done), the girls at her then school (she`s since moved), a private girls` school in London exclaimed: ‘Hurrah, now we are more slutty than Slutney’, the affectionate nickname of another school.
Call me old-fashioned, but when I was a gal, sluttishness was not a condition one aspired to.
That year, they were all dressing in Hooters T-shirts (the uniform of the well-endowed waitresses of a U.S restaurant chain whose slogan ‘delightfully tacky yet unrefined’ sums up its approach) and buttock-skimming shorts. They looked, as girls so often do, far older than their 13 years and not unlike the Playboy Bunnies who incensed a generation of feminists. (Interestingly, clothing depicting the distinctive Playboy bunny is highly popular now among teenage girls.)
When one considers our society, it`s no surprise that our children have lost all sense of modesty.
Not only do social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and Bebo encourage teens to share information about themselves; but when they are not taking their clothes off, their role models are spilling their guts about their ‘private’ lives all over the pages of every national newspaper, magazine and television. We have an immoderate interest in the private lives of perfect strangers. Pop stars like Amy Winehouse and Britney Spears expose the car crash that their life for all to see. Jordan, who won fame by revealing her breasts, has a documentary series where she and her husband, Peter Andre, discuss their sex life (or lack of it) in intimate detail.
The Osbournes revealed all for our entertainment in their television series. Was this extraordinary exposure responsible in part for the subsequent drug and alcohol abuse of the two of their children who participated? One can`t help feeling it might have been. Their third child, Amy, wisely chose to stay out of the limelight. Whatever its exponents may say, reality television has a lot to answer for. I have been a documentary film-maker for more than two decades and am well aware of the power of the medium. Today`s teenagers are staring in the reality show of their own lives and doing all they can to make it as dramatic as possible.
Where before mistakes we made when young – excessive drinking, acts of promiscuity – were quietly forgotten, now they are recorded and broadcast on the internet for all to see. From happy slapping to amateur sex videos (Paris Hilton rose to fame when a shamelessly intimate video of her and her boyfriend found its way on to the internet, a reality TV show followed, and the rest, as they say, is history).
The sexualisation of our young is ubiquitous: boys caught cheating on their girlfriends on mobile phones, ritual humiliation and worse by YouTube (In February 2008, a gang of London teenagers aged 14 to 16 drugged and raped a woman in front of her children and then posted the film of the attack, videoed on a mobile phone, on YouTube), television programmes like Sex And The City with man-eating Samantha as the living embodiment of casual libidinous sex, all provide the back projection to our children`s lives.
Instant fame is all. In today`s celebrity culture, no one cares how you made your name, as long as you`ve made it; there is no distinction between fame and notoriety. Do you really want things that you`ve done when drunk to be plastered all over the internet? These images are like puppies: they are not just for Christmas, they are for life.
Would the 13-year-old girl administering oral sex in a London garden have done so if she`d fully considered the possible repercussions of the video the boy was taking of her?
Once broadcast on the internet the images would have become available not merely to the boy`s friends, but to the whole world; to paedophiles and to prospective employers in the future.
In her book, Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Cultre, Ariel Levy writes about the American experience, where many a young girl`s dream seems to be the desire to dance around a pole or cheer while others do. She says that feminist terms such as liberation and empowerment, that used to describe women`s fight for equality, have been perverted.
Now the freedom to be sexually provocative or promiscuous is not enough – now it can mean the freedom to an exhibitionist.
During the same summer as the party my daughter had told me about, she casually mentioned at a lunch gathering of family and friends how another of her friends allowed boys to ‘touch them up’. There was a sharp, shocked intake of breath around the table; the casual use of language and the public mention of such an act astonished us. Although many of us might have engaged in such activities at a similar age, none of us could have imagined discussing it in front of our parents` friends.
It is precisely this erosion of the boundaries of privacy and the absence of taboo that is so shocking about today`s teenagers. Modern technology allows children access to images and information we, as children, could scarcely have imagined.
You want to see a naked girl? Click on to the internet. You want to hear exactly what your friend got up to the night before? Log on to Facebook. Not only will their boasts tell you that they are recovering from the excesses of the night before, there will be the pictures to prove it.
In today`s world of fast information and access to all areas, too many – particularly the young – are having to up the stakes to chase their particular dragon and get the high they crave. Sometimes they are so busy creating drama and tension in the movie of their own lives that they`ve forgotten to be human beings.
A video I was told about shows how far things have gone: a dying woman lay inert on a street while a man urinated on her, saying as he did so: “This is a YouTube moment.”
When I was young, secretly looking up the word ‘penis’ in the dictionary and sniggering was how we got our thrills. This is small beer for today`s children: the girls especially, who, where once they might have struck a pose in front of mirrors on the privacy of their own bedrooms, now exhibit themselves scantily clad in hookers` poses in photo albums on social networking sites.
There is something about the one step removal into cyber space that allows people to behave even more outrageously than they might in person. Now, even this boundary is becoming blurred.
Perhaps it`s the freedom or lack of boundaries they`ve learned from virtual reality that give them permission to behave with such frightening lack of inhibition in person. That and the demon drink, for today`s teenage girls drink in a way we rarely did.
So how much are the parents to blame? Those of us who grew up in the Sixties and Seventies will do almost anything to appear ‘cool’ to our children; we certainly don`t wish to come across as some sort of Mary Whitehouse scandalized by today`s youth. Nor do we wish to appear as joyless, men-hating feminists, although many of us remember that we fought hard for the right to do as men have always done.
One can`t help but wonder what happened to feminism and its lessons. On the one hand, girls drink like men; on the other they dress in a manner that invites sexual objectification. Do these young girls even know what feminism is?
According to a sample group of 17-year-olds I spoke to, there are enormous double standards between the sexes. Boys treat sex as being a sign of ‘laddishness’ and masculinity, they say; promiscuous behaviour on their part is an achievement. Girls, on the other hand, are caught between a rock and a hard place. “Boys demand that they go further before they are ready; if they do, they will quickly be labeled as sluts, and gain a reputation as an easy target, so that drunk boys will seek them expecting that they we`ll be easy to get off with. If they don`t, they will be labeled as a frigid and become instantaneously unattractive; most boys won`t bother investing time and energy flirting with a girl if they think there is little prospect of pulling.
“Girls I know often get drunk and allow themselves to be touched up at bus stops or up against walls,” says my daughter, Francesca. Many of her classmates, she says, have been sleeping with their boyfriends since the age of 14 or 15.
“Peer pressure has always been a persistent factor of teenage life. The stakes are higher now and teenagers, not surprisingly, have become even more competitive and paranoid. They may often find themselves in situations they are not equipped to deal with.
The internet personae that children create turn them into avatars – online personae – in their own lives and diminish their empathy for each other. It becomes hard to tell what is real and what isn`t.
Facebook has an application called the Honesty Box, which invites you to send and receive anonymous messages to discover what people really think of you. The application`s blurb declares triumphantly that messages cannot be removed: “Once you send a message, it`s forever.” Thus has bullying moved from the playground into cyber space? The implications of all this behaviour are far reaching. A survey about violence in teenage relationships released last month by Women`s Aid and Bliss magazine found that nearly a quarter of 14-year-old girls who responded had been pressured into engaging in sexual activity with somebody they`ve dated.
According to the survey, boys see girls as sexual commodities and one in four 16-year-olds had been hit or hurt in some other way. Many felt it was OK to hit a girl if she`d been unfaithful. It also found that more than half of 14 and 15-year-olds have been humiliated in front of others by someone they were dating.
“There used to be a stricter and more regulated approach to bringing up children,” says Dr. Pat Spungin. “Parents should take back some of the control they`ve ceded.” We don`t say “no” enough, so vulnerable girls don`t have enough experience of saying “no” themselves.” This is not to say that we should be condemning teenagers for being sexual and proposing that they take chastity vows and attend purity balls as is fashionable in parts of the U.S.
However, we do need to consider what is appropriate behavior and to help our teens ensure that ill-considered or drunken acts which are sometimes a part of growing up won`t come back and hurt them in the future.
There have, of course, always girls and boys who are sexually precocious. When I was in the fifth form (Year 11) at my girls’ grammar school, I remember a classmate going to Majorca and returning to boast that she`d slept with six boys in a week. Luckily, neither she, nor they, had the pictures to prove it. These days they might well have had.
The girls who are most vulnerable and have the most desire to be liked are the ones who are tempted to cross these boundaries.
Of course, others will have similar stories, and it is symptomatic of a worrying tendency among our teens to live their lives in an inappropriately public arena where they reveal far more of themselves, both literally and metaphorically, than is wise.
Barack Obama recently commented on the fashion among young men for wearing their trousers low on their hips: “Brothers should pull up their pants you`re walking by your mother, your grandmother, and your underwear is showing. (Some people might not want to see your underwear – I`m one of them.)”
Few would wish a return to the hypocritical constraints of life before the sexual revolution; however, the trouble with the pendulum is that it has a habit of swinging too far the other way.
Perhaps it`s time for everyone to pull up their pants and show each other a little more respect; and, since we are supposed to be the adults, it has to start with us, with how we behave, how we draw boundaries and what we put in our newspapers and magazines and on our television screens.
Olivia Lichtenstein, Daily Mail, 2009