Sex is FREE!

(I guess that includes me if I’m talking about it…)

I think that yesterday was the last day I will ever care to stop by PerezHilton. Perez posted a picture of Vanessa Hudgens with her mom and little sister with the headline “My sister is a whore”. Such postings are truly disrespectful to Vanessa and her family. She is a young actress who has chosen to act in family films for Disney and seems like an all around good person. She is certainly not doing anything to attract attention to herself. I had excused his inappropriate comments and annoying compulsion for drawing penises on celebrity photos to the fact that he is a sheltered Hollywood fag who doesn’t know any better but this last comment tells me he may lack a soul.

My daughter is a fan of Hudgens and will likely hear of the nudie pic scandal at some point. I do not mind explaining to her that when people take naked photos of themselves, they are usually embarrassed by it down the road. I am still thinking about what I will say to her actually because I have to try to see it the way she will (if she ever does.)

When I was 10 or 11 I found pictures of my mom naked and giving some dude a blowjob. I thought that was icky icky poo! It should have kept me from taking topless pictures of myself when I was a teen, at a Kmart photo booth no less. I have never cared to videotape myself having sex. I hope nobody else has but I fail to see how anybody would care to see that.

What Vanessa did seems to be common among today’s teens. Most have cell phones with cameras. I have never dolled up my daughter, I rarely take posed pictures of her and never keep a webcam on the computer… I tend to think that doing that will establish an expectation of privacy in my daughter. But habits change and the cell phone she will have in 5-6 years will inevitably transmit video. I do spend quite a bit of time thinking about how I can raise a confident girl who will not subscribe to the idea that her purpose in life is to be a Bratz doll.

Something doesn’t change however: Taking revealing pictures of one’s self invites people (i.e. boys mostly) to make dumb comments.

I read both the comments on PerezHilton and Vanessa’s MySpace on the day of the picture was confirmed as authentic. One comment that I saw a dozen times made me laugh. Why do teenage boys feel they must tell Vanessa to shave her pubes? When a guy brings to my attention the topic of going “bare down there” he is telling me that he is ignorant. He is telling me that he has seen so much porn that he thinks girls are genetically modified to never grow hair anywhere. He is telling me that he has only seen strippers naked in person. He is telling that maybe, if he is lucky enough, he has only ever ‘dated’ a sex worker. These are the women who do go bare down there because it is expected in their job. Women who aspire to work in the sex industry or become decorative people may have breast implants and often schedule a Brazilian wax every six weeks… The rest of us don’t really give a fuck what you think.

When I first saw Vanessa’s picture I voted on ‘No, it looks like someone else’ and I was glad that her team came forward and immediately set the record straight. The media is very harsh on actresses for every little things that they do, or don’t do… but rarely vilify actors who live a womanizing, drug and booze lifestyle. I have followed gossip about the lives of celebrities for 20 years and I am starting to think that Hollywood is Hell.

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