style over content

with this summer's iPhone 3G from Apple and Google's latest unveiling of the G1 smartphone, mobility seems to be the current communications tech buzzword, especially for so-called social media. having just acquired a new iPhone myself, i admit i'm pretty excited by its possibilities -- continuous data, location-based services, and a superslick interface that may indicate the future of touch-based interfaces. i've been especially impressed by the free applications offered by established social media sites, like Facebook, MySpace, Last.fm, and Twitter. where internet services have tended to focus on web-based applications, the iPhone redirects usage back to standalone apps which implement their own framework while drawing on networked content.

i find myself updating my Facebook and checking my Myspace messages more often, as the iPhone apps are often quicker and cleaner than their web-based counterparts, and more fun to use. i'm titillated (and a little creeped out) by how Yelp and Google Maps can now figure out where i am, and deliver data specific to my location. i'm beginning to envision how devices like the iPhone and G1 might allow for more constant engagement and interactivity with peers -- as long as, of course, they also own the pricey equipment and pay for the data subscription (not to mention having a working wireless network, which neither AT&T nor T-Mobile consistently provide).

this brings me to my current question concerning increasing mobility -- whose mobility is at stake here? the "digital divide" between technological haves and have-nots may not be a foreign concept in tech circles, but it's not one that has been very well addressed either, as it's often chalked up to socio-economic inequities that must be solved separately. certainly it's not surprising that tricked-out web-capable smartphones are mostly available to consumers in the upper social strata (with devices starting at $179 and combined voice/data plans running $55/month and up). moreover, social and geographic mobility have often been the purview of the middle (and upper middle) classes, those who are more likely to leave home for college, take jobs in different cities, and establish themselves far away from their extended families.

migration, of course, is a reality for many working-class people in the US and abroad, whose ability to earn a living is often tied to the movement of global capital. the demands of the global market tend to drive mass labor migrations, as people must move to find jobs that can support them and their families -- often living far from home and working abroad illegally (from migrant Mexican and Central American laborers in the US, to domestic workers in Europe and the Gulf states who come from South Asia, the Phillipines, and elsewhere). mobility per se may not be limited to those with greater resources, but voluntary mobility is still a privilege.

yet by contrast, mobile communications technologies have precisely been adopted in places where more extensive infrastructure may not exist. in the US, for instance, mobile phones were adopted first by younger users, partly because they're less likely to have their own landline (or own a home), and also because cell phone carriers began offering pre-paid plans that made phones accessible to those without steady incomes (the Pew Internet Project has some interesting reports on cell phone and internet use among different American demographics, though their methodology is limited to phone interviews, and they appear to conflate race with regional ethnic identity). outside the industrialized world, furthermore, mobile phones increasingly provide communications access to low-income regions and neighborhoods where landlines are simply unavailable. according to this article on MobileActive.org, for example, Brazilians living in favelas (slums) have taken up cell phone use, as have low-income youth in South Africa. free incoming calls and text messaging make mobile phones useable where landlines aren't, and encourage different ways of engaging with mobile technologies. according to Jeffrey Juris' review, The Cell Phone: An Anthropology of Communication, shows how mobile phones in Jamaica allow low-income users to intensify their social networks in beneficial ways.

what's clear is that mobile technologies are used differently by different groups, often in ways not intended or imagined by marketers or tech companies. marginalized populations are probably less likely to be targeted by companies like Apple or Google, but at the same time, new technologies do present novel possibilities for social interaction at multiple social strata. text messaging, as the New York Times anxiously warned last week, is on the rise, often over and against voice calls, while improved handheld devices might actually provide web access to those who can't afford more expensive computer equipment (though Apple and Google for now are both assuming their devices will be paired with a home computer and broadband connection). mobility may turn out to mean more than just the latest toys for those of us who can afford them, and perhaps suggests an emerging way to think about and analyze new patterns in technology practice.

Posted by jordan at 02:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Mommy Is Truly Dearest - New York Times

i'm not entirely sure why this is news, but the Times reported last week that young middle-class women are increasingly close to and connected with their moms -- and that this constitues a trend worthy of social scientific study. i suspect that as communications technologies come to permeate our daily lives, our social and personal relationships will be transformed as a result -- but conversely, social organization can also affect the technologies we cultivate and develop.

but there's a certain shortsightedness in suggesting that it's a new development for daughters to stay emotionally close to their mothers. on the contrary, i think the unprecedented mobility of the middle classes in the past half century has separated adult children from their families to a degree that may be unusual compared to most other cultures and time periods. although traditional marriage practices have often taken young women away from their parents, closely knit extended families are historically more the norm than the highly mobile nuclear families of the postindustrial United States. perhaps the ubiquity of cellphones is reconnecting young women to their mothers, and permitting the kinds of close relationshops that are beneficial for many people, rather than somehow prolonging childhood in an unhealthy way.

to report this as newsworthy suggests more about American conceptions of maturity and adulthood, in which independence and individualism are valued over close family relationships. i think these underlying assumptions represent a much more interesting topic of study than the fact that daughters like to spend time on the phone with their mothers.

Posted by jordan at 03:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

MySpace reaches accord with Attorneys General - May. 21, 2007

so via Broadsheet, i noticed the news that MySpace has partnered with a "background verificantion" firm (Sentinel Tech Holdings Corp) to create a database of convicted sex offenders, which MySpace then used to begin expunging users who were cross-listed. of course, not all sex offenders are pedophiles, and statutory rape laws still mean that sometimes consenting teen couples have sex across age lines, and the older partner is charged and becomes a registered offender. but fine, so MySpace is trying to keep convicted sex offenders off the site, as a way to respond to charges from both legislators, the press, parents and others that social networking sites are havens for predators seeking to lure naive children to their lairs (or wherever) and abuse them.

According to CNN (via Reuters), MySpace worked out a legal way to hand over this information to government officials (a group of state attorney generals). So far, they've deleted about 7,000 profiles identified as belong to sex offenders (out of a total of about 180 million (that's about 0.00004% for the curious).

as usual, i think this raises some issues of privacy -- does being convicted of a sexual offense deprive you of your right to create online profiles, and is any profile you create subject to government surveillance? i imagine MySpace has some legal standing in denying accounts to sex offenders, but i think targeting all sex offenders so widely tends to conflate a range of offenses as equally dangerous, when they may not be.

but in my mind, the bigger question still revolves around the visibility of MySpace against the actual risk to young people who use the service. the Connecticut attorney general was quoted as saying "Social networking sites should not be playgrounds for predators." and yet, most children are still at much greater risk from people they know than strangers on the internet -- a risk which can be further minimized by basic safety practices around meeting new people online.

perhaps it makes sense for all minors with MySpace accounts to have private profiles, so only their friends can see their personal info -- but digital technologies tend to make it difficult to ascertain the real age of members. digital media require learning new habits for safety and protection, similar to being cautious with personal financial information. the danger of "predators" on MySpace is continually hyped in the media (even the usually critical blog Broadsheet jumping in), at the expense of the most common forms of abuse experienced by children. perhaps after we insure that all American children have health insurance and are free from violence or abuse at home, we can begin to concern ourselves with digital dangers. until then, though, we have to keep asking why sex offenders seem to capture the legal imagination and divert our attention away from the less sensationalistic violence of the everyday.

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here's a little refreshing back-talk from a recent college grad, giving some badly needed lip to all the recent moralizing over young women's increasingly public sex lives:

Sex-Crazed Co-Eds! - Nerve.com Screening Room

the author, Annsley Chapman, isn't exactly flawless in her logic (young women today are just unashamed of casual sex, and are too busy pursuing the opportunities furnished to them by feminists of yore to focus on establishing more longterm, committed relationships), but it's nice to hear a little dissent from actual college-aged women, over and against the tiresome clamor of older feminist and non-feminists alike (Ariel Levy and Caitlin Flanagan come to mind, and Chapman points to a number of others equally poorly poised to speak for young women).

Chapman's gloss of the current fruits of feminism remains a little thin, though -- i'm not remotely convinced that today's college women are graduating into a world of boundless gender equality and consequence-free casual sex (rates of HPV and HSV are still pretty high last time i looked, a reminder to be attentive to safer sex, not give up on sexual freedom altogether). and she explicitly emphasizes the lives of white, middle-class, straight girls, typically minimizing the visibility of women whose experiences and social positions often place them outside mainstream public debate.

but Chapman is right to call attention to both the tone of recent critics, and their tenuous claims to speak with authority about the lives of young women today. girls and not boys are still being held disproportionately accountable for changing attitudes towards sex, which only reinforces the reality of unequal gender relations that persist in our culture.

Posted by jordan at 01:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

there was a piece in the Atlantic Monthly a few months back that was a thoughtful but ultimately disappointing musing on the alleged oral sex craze among teenagers today (Are You There God? It's Me, Monica).

Caitlin Flanagan (about whom I have many reservations, thanks to reading Salon's Broadsheet too frequently) succeeds in resisting the tempting moral outrage over the news that young people are having oral sex, in particular, girls casually performing fellatio on their male acquaintances. but despite Flanagan's willingness to probe the topic of youthful hummers with some measure of sensitivity and introspection (including some meandering through Judy Blume and other young adult novels), she contributes to the distorted media contention that teens today are having disproportionate amounts of oral sex, in which young women have renegged on their own sexual desire in favor of performing a media-inspired, pornified sexuality for their peers.

in particular, Flanagan doesn't appear to have looked closely at the very study which supposedly bolsters the controversy over teen oral sex, writing "[a] huge report was issued by the National Center for Health Statistics. It covered the topic of teenage oral sex more extensively than any previous study, and the news was devastating: A quarter of girls aged fifteen had engaged in it, and more than half aged seventeen." interestingly, what the study actually reports (the pdf from the CDC can be found here) is that a third of all boys 15-17 have had vaginal intercourse, while slightly less (28%) have given oral sex and slightly more (40%) have received it, and of young men 18-19, two-thirds had had vaginal sex, 52% had performed oral sex on a woman, and 66% had received oral sex -- that is, the same percentage of men 18-19 had engaged in vaginal sex as had received oral sex. among teenage girls and young women, over one-third of 15-17 year olds had had vaginal sex (39%), 30% had given oral sex, and 38% had received it -- again, fewer had actually performed oral sex on a male partner than had engaged in vaginal sex, and the same percentage had received oral sex as had had intercourse. for older girls, the study repeats the findings, that as girls get older, most of those who are having vaginal sex are also engaging in oral activities. the study further explains that in each age group, about 10-14% of young men and boys who had had oral sex had not had intercourse, and about 9-11% of young women aged 15-19 had engaged in oral sex only. as the percentage of young men 15-24 increases who have had intercourse, the percent who have only tried oral sex declines to 3%.

these data, shockingly, suggest that sexually active teens who are engaging in vaginal intercourse are also likely to experiment with oral sex (giving and receiving), and that only a small proportion have had oral sex but not intercourse. over time, the majority of sexually active young people will be having intercourse as well as oral sex. and while slightly more men report receiving oral sex than giving it, of the young women surveyed, more actually reported receiving it than giving it (how this adds up remains to be seen).

so what gives? why is the media continuing to promote the myth that girl-on-boy oral sex is rampant amongst youth (in place of good old-fashioned intercourse), when the data indicate that young people begin experimenting with oral sex, but ultimately resort to the heteronormative standby? this report seems consistent with my own recollection of sexual exploration among my peers at that age -- perhaps attitudes toward oral sex have changed in the past 30 years, so that it's now considered an intermediate step between heavy making out and intercourse, but that doesn't remotely support the premise that scads of young women are suddenly going down on their male peers without reservation.

unfortunately, not only does Flanagan accept the media reports in place of reading the statistics for herself, she ultimately reduces female sexuality to women's delicate, emotional nature: "I am old-fashioned enough to believe that men and boys are not as likely to be wounded, emotionally and spiritually, by early sexual experience, or by sexual experience entered into without romantic commitment, as are women and girls." boys, of course, have unlimited sexual appetites whose bases are unquestionably biological and unemotional, whereas women are fragile flowers who need to be loved and cared for to protect them from the dangers of sexual pleasure. not only is this line of thinking offensive and demeaning to women, but it perpetuates the equally damaging idea that men don't bring emotional needs to sexual relationships.

finally, she comes to the sparkling conclusion that "...the forces of feminism have worked relentlessly to erode the patriarchy--which, despite its manifold evils, held that providing for the sexual safety of young girls was among its primary reasons for existence." yes, that's right, the systematic domination of women in Western society actually represents a safety net that protects the delicacy of youthful femininity from the ravages of early sexuality, and has nothing to do with controlling and exploiting female reproductive capacity. i think the prevalance of rape and domestic violence in Western societies offers an excellent testament to the protective role of the Patriarchy (TM). if anyone is going to challenge the media's portrayal of youthful sexual behavior, or investigate how sexual norms are changing and what implicatons that might entail, clearly it's not going to be Ms. Flanagan. parents, the media, and other public voices too often retain this prurient tone in which their fears over female sexual desire overshadow the ways in which teens are actually exploring and experimenting with their sexuality in a decade of abstinence-only education and abundant internet porn. perhaps instead of frothing over "rainbow parties" and other urban legends, we should be thinking through what kinds of positive messages about sexuality we actually want to be transmitting to young people.

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is it porn when college students pose naked for campus magazines with literary intentions, or just ironic, erotic photography? has sex-positivism among young people been twisted into another expression of so-called "raunch" feminism, or does gender diversity shift the power dynamics inherent in consuming images of naked sexuality? the times' magazine last week published a reasonably even-handed piece on the increasing prevalence of campus nude mags, sometimes offered as porn, but often couched in more aspirational terms (Campus Exposure - Alexandra Jacobs - New York Times).

i was in graduate school at the University of Chicago when Vita Excolatur was first published (prompting me to write my own proposal for a more genderqueer magazine called "Cum Laude," but the demands of my thesis prevented anything from coming to, um, fruition). at the time, i was largely unimpressed by the amateur and somewhat pretentious forays into "polyamory" and "sadomasochism," neither of which appeared to have been informed by participants in those sexual subcultures (polyamory was imagined as a typical menage-a-trois, and the S&M surely would've disappointed Foucault).

still, the article alights on a number of themes which have been recurring in the media on the topics of youth, sex, exhibitionism, and social media. author alexandra jacobs repeats the popular notion that young people today are so saturated with "overt sexual imagery" even among the "educated elite" that "maybe it's not so strange that students are confronting their own sex lives so graphically and publicly." our culture, we are reminded, increasingly embraces fetishistic exhibitionism, especially for women, who attract inappropriate sexual attention through suggestive clothing and provocative pictures. jacobs stops short of concluding that young women today are proof that the patriarchy has won, subjecting them to its overarching ideology of female sexual display for masculine consumption.

but neither can jacobs resist the ubiquity of social networking sites in the lives of young people, such as Facebook and MySpace: "to attend college now means to participate in a culture of constant two-dimensional preening" where students can immediately check one another's online profiles, complete with revealing photos. but what, exactly, is so flat and superficial about online profiles? of course, these websites streamline individual interests into predetermined categories, producing identities which revolve around popular media and digital imagery. at the same time, digital spaces often reproduce the kinds of semiotic indicators we all deploy in the three-dimensional world of flesh to communicate social and cultural positions to each other, such as fashion, bodily comportment, brand labels, and consumer products. social networking sites may intensify these tendencies, but they also provide spaces for youth to engage in creative appropriation of popular media, reconfiguring music, words, and images in a semiotic assemblage of individual subject position.

the world of college porn ultimately emerges as too diverse to summarize or criticize easily in a few words, when some of the magazines challenge gender norms, while the editor of Harvards' H-Bomb was quoted as saying "I don't think men and women are equal at all. I think we're different, and what's wrong with that?" clearly, she's never read Donna Haraway or Anne Fausto-Sterling on the social and cultural conditions under which sciences like biology are produced, including the biological construction of sex. but i remain suspicious of how young women today are frequently depicted as conflicted about sexuality, unhappy with the reality of their erotic encounters, and displacing personal desire onto performed sexuality, expressed in the emerging predilection for "slutty" and "sexy" costumes on Halloween (or just out at clubs and parties). without seeking to dismiss these concerns, it strikes me that there may be deeper currents beneath the surface of co-ed porn rags and risque MySpace profiles which deserve greater critical analysis and attention.

Posted by jordan at 12:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

in further video news, i'm not sure how i missed last week's perceptive news report from WDAZ in North Dakota, but clearly, emo really is the new goth. and just like goth, emo began as a subgenre of punk music (emotive hardcore) that has morphed into a distinctive youth style complete with fashion codes (skinny clothes, floppy black hair) and alleged behavior norms (self harm, mopey poetry, morbid introspection). this current version of emo strikes me as difficult to distinguish from the darker side of indie/hipster style, and has become inseparably imagined alongside myspace and youtube, and similar digital sites of youthful social interaction.

the video is pretty predictable -- new youth subculture poses risks to YOUR kids! be on the look out for skinny pants and tight sweaters in dark colors -- they might lead to suicidal ideation! but the best part appears to be the newscasters' misrecognition of internet humor sites as legitimate guides to emo culture. such as the "Insta Emo Kit" at Sykospark.net. they also report on a supposed "point" system, which they acknowledge may be more symbolic than literal -- and of course, youth subculture often does rely on schema of cultural capital (specialized knowledge of scene norms, taste preferences, and slang) to confer status and credibility.

but as usual, hyping fears of the internet, self harm, and youth subculture does little to address the real difficulties many young people face navigating the educational system, media, and consumerism in a postindustrial world where they are frequently targeted by mass media and corporate interests, and where "youth" has become a dominant symbol for what's new, hip, and desirable in mass culture.

I Must Be Emo - News Report

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i woke up this morning to more social anxiety about youth -- this time, NPR's Day to Day was covering a recent study which claims that "[college] students today are more narcissistic and self-centered than a generation ago." now, my mother assures me that she never told me i was special, so perhaps i escaped the worst of the "self-esteem movement." but according to psychologists at San Diego State, this recent trend can be traced to the indiscriminate emphasis on self-esteem and praise popular in parenting during the 80s. of course, the researchers then went on to add that this growing narcisissism is "fueled by current technologies such as MySpace and YouTube." ah, technological determinism.

at the risk of tooting the same tinny horn all the time, this just clamors "social anxiety! social anxiety!" the study purports to have relied on the "Narcissistic Personality Inventory," in which over 16,000 college-age students were surveyed between 1982 and 2006 using this psychological evaluation survey. admittedly, i tend to be wary of this kind of quantitative data, largely due to my own investments in ethnography and qualitative methods. what does it really tell us that students are increasingly agreeing with statements like "I think I am a special person" and "I can live my life any way I want to?" could this represent a part of larger cultural shifts in how we conceive of ourselves in American society? does this index actually indicate anything about social and behavioral changes, and is it sufficient to assess such cognitive trends?

but now i'm confused, because only a few days ago, APA researchers were all worked up about the negative effects of media on girl's self-esteem -- so it self-esteem good, or bad? or are researchers just bandying the term about without careful definition? given the cultural specificity of Western conceptions of selfhood, some care and clarity would be welcomed here. still, lead author Jean Twenge seems to think that today's youth are less empathic and more self-centered, and cautions that this shift could have damaging ramifications for society generally. as i've said before, youth are often a site where social anxieties are expressed concerning social reproduction, and youth are frequently and vaguely blamed for social changes that many find threatening. but are youth initiating these changes, or products of them?

the best part of this morning's interview with Twenge was when she claimed to hold the media responsible first, then parents and schools. ah, of course. but which media? that's right, magazines and television, in particular those that pander to youth. at no time did she point out that those media are generated for the sake of attracting advertising revenues, and that corporate interests tend to shape the media through which they promote their products. lastly, of course, Twenge includes MySpace and YouTube as proof that media are increasingly capitalizing on the narcissistic tendencies of today's youth, sites which revolve around individual identity. but perhaps these websites embody the same kind of cultural shifts that lead students to respond differently to the Narcissistic Personality Inventory. before asserting that changing attitudes signal dangerous trends in personal relationships, clearly closer research is needed to investigate how young people conceive of themselves, how they relate to others, and how they use (and produce) media.

Posted by jordan at 09:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

i meant to post about this earlier, but apropos of my thoughts on discouraging all women under thirty from having sex, a recent study at Columbia University has demonstrated that yes, access to birth control really does reduce teen pregnancy, moreso than "abstinence" education:

Birth control credited with drop in teen pregnancy�

these results just reinforce my conviction that many on the right are more concerned with unmarried women having sex than with any concerted effort to reduce unwanted pregnancy. as you'll recall, Wade Horn at the Dept. of Health and Human Services suggested advocating abstinence to women aged 19-29, "because more unmarried women in that age group are having children."

yet this new study, published in the American Journal of Public Health, supports what many of us have been arguing for a long time -- consistent access to contraception and sexual health information is a much more effective way to reduce teen (and other unwanted) pregnancy. if reducing unwed pregnancy is the goal of rightwing policymakers, why continue to support abstinence education that clearly doesn't work? unless, of course, that's not really your ultimate intent.

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bitch, slut, freak, fag. my friends in SF laughingly address each other in all manner of slurs once meant to degrade queers, loose women, outcasts, and misfits. we rarely if ever use these words as they were intended -- without irony, to demean and lambaste someone we disapprove of, or hold power over.

still, queers calling each other faggots doesn't seem to elicit the same amount of nervous commentary as rappers and comedians calling eachother "niggaz." leaders in the black community this week announced a voluntary ban or boycott on the use of the word "nigger" and its colloquial stepchild, nigga. even the white commentator on NPR yesterday couldn't bring himself to say the word, which still carries the legacy of its malevolent origins. i don't want to wade into the central debate over whether or not young black men can re-appropriate the word to promote solidarity, as a form of ironic commentary on their social position, or if its use can only serve to express internalized racial hatred.

but i do wonder about the attempt to curb popular culture through a voluntary ban like this. my general approach to speech i dislike is to offer more speech in critique, rather than promoting bans or censorship. still, i can't argue with comedians and artists voluntarily agreeing to avoid a word they find problematic -- or worse, subject to misuse by whites and other non-black fans. i might prefer to see an ongoing dialogue rather than an outright ban, but then again, perhaps the publicity over this issue will accomplish just that.

from the perspective of youth and popular culture, however, i'm wary of simply boycotting a word that's so deeply entrenched in hip hop and youth culture. disposing of its use won't erase the racial tensions that underlie it, and in fact, this kind of approach fails to engage the reasons why young black men might call eachother "nigga" in the first place (as a side note, most of the commentary seemed to gloss over the fact that young black women are rarely called "niggaz"). i suspect there's more going on here than either self-hate or solidarity-building, but i'm not quite sure what it is. there's a particular register that has currency in the hip-hop community, and "nigga," for good or for ill, has a key place in that lexicon. instead of banning or defending the word, how about investigating its use more closely, to better understand why and how young people use it? i'd rather see engaged debate and education over the issue, so members of the black community, and producers of hip hop, can come to their own analysis on the use (and abuse) of the word.

Posted by jordan at 02:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

you know, I've been wondering when it would occur to the Bush administration that teaching teens to abstain from sex seems a bit shortsighted, given that in a few years, most will turn eighteen and be legally allowed into sex shops and porn stores, or maybe even go to college and discover condoms and sex-ed and free little packets of lube. teenagers may be taught to avoid (straight, vaginal) sex, but what about young adults?

ah, have no fear! the government is watching out for all young people, not just teens. according to USA Today, the federal government has allocated $50 million to programs that advocate abstinence for unmarried people up to 29 years of age.

but here's the clincher: "...Wade Horn, assistant secretary for children and families at the Department of Health and Human Services, said the revision is aimed at 19- to 29-year-olds because more unmarried women in that age group are having children." that's right, not just unmarried people, but unmarried women. because really, unmarried women just shouldn't be having sex.

if this doesn't further illustrate the right wing's opposition to young women having and enjoying sex and sexuality, i can't imagine what will.

Posted by jordan at 11:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

as danah boyd mentioned in her blog today, an Iranian student was tasered by campus police at UCLA last Tuesday, triggering protests from the student body. the event, however, was captured by a student's video phone, and quickly disseminated around the internet and on television networks. by Thursday night, a friend of mine was showing me the clip on Youtube, whose video-sharing capabilities had undoubtably facilitated circulation. as Roxanne Varzi, a professor of Iranian studies and visual anthropology at UC Irvine said to me, emerging media technologies such as camera phones and video sites now allow the surveilled to become the surveillant.

media analysis aside, i hope the exposure of this event leads to a meaningful investigation of the actions of the UCLA police, and to thinking more critically about the ways in which some students (middle eastern, students of color, etc.) are treated, especially in our current political climate of fearmongering.

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according to Bones, Fox's latest forensic drama and David Boreanaz vehicle, smug, angsty teens dressed in black and sporting lip-piercings are... emo? i suppose this is what i get for tuning in to mediocre primetime television (sadly, i have class when Veronica Mars airs on Tuesdays). last night's episode turned on the classic plot twist where the most likely suspect, in this case, the spooky teen, is absolved of the crime in favor of the less obvious "normal" character, his pageant-contestant younger sister (the emo teen, on the plus side, was played by cutie Kyle Gallner, whose quirky character on Veronica Mars was not similarly redeemed).

it's the character's mother, however, that outs him to the audience as "emo," and expresses her revulsion and despair at his sartorial choices. on the one hand, the show seems to be trying to keep up with the times and with current trends in youth culture. but on the other, the imagery of the angsty teen in black mostly serves to reproduce adult fears about youth as rebellious and violent, and doesn't seem particularly grounded in "emo" style or affect at all.

Posted by jordan at 02:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Nothing like a little moral panic to bolster your murder case -- remember Scott Dyleski, the trenchcoat-wearing teenager implicated in the bizarre murder of California resident Pam Vitale last October? He'll be standing trial this week, and apparently so will his alleged subculture, according to the
SF Chronicle:

Acquaintances have described Dyleski as a typical suburban kid who later began to embrace the Goth culture, dying his brown hair black and wearing a trench coat.

Jewett, a 24-year veteran of the Contra Costa County district attorney's office, is expected to introduce witnesses who will discuss elements of Goth culture and music as it pertained to Dyleski.

So what, exactly, does his taste in clothes and music have to do with his alleged criminal activity? Perhaps the prosecuter missed out on a recent study published in New Scientist under the succint title "Goth subculture may protect vulnerable children." Without getting into a long discussion of what constitues a subculture in the first place, it troubles me to have the prosecution buy into the same flavor of moral panic that seems to spur the news media so often when it comes to young people.

I'm just surprised they haven't tried to work MySpace into this somehow -- but maybe that's because this case involves a white youth with a predilection for trenchcoats and possibly violence, rather than a teen girl at risk from imagined predators.

Posted by jordan at 01:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(from a proposed paper on the role of digital media in the lives of young people)

For young people, commodity culture offers an important site for the production of individual and collective meanings. Digital spaces such as the internet provide an excellent arena for do-it-yourself culture and creative consumption, but are ultimately structured by the same logics that determine how popular culture operates more generally. Discourses of credibility and authenticity afford us a glimpse into how young people navigate the complex interplay of social networks, cultural commodities, and subcultures in a mobile, mediated society. Given the role of cultural engagement in developing social capital, digital media offer a means for young people to become more invested in their social and cultural worlds.

Continue reading "Authentic Youth: Cultural Capital and Credibility in Digital Youth Culture" »

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i'm doing some research on youth and civic engagement for howard, which reiterates the longtime vogue of peer education when it comes to reaching out to young people. at the youth nonprofit i work for, youth-led social action is key, and we train young people to devise their own projects for social justice.

certainly, youth should be engaged directly, especially when it comes to the issues that affect them most. and young people may respond better to their peers than to adults who often represent external authority. but i find myself wondering about the widescale impact of our educational system, in which students are grouped narrowly by age. there's plenty of good research pointing to the role of the modern education system in producing "youth culture," a cultural space inhabited specifically by young people. this concept is so familiar to us now that it seems commonsense and obvious to emphasize the value of peer education -- and to worry about peer pressure.

but maybe it's not an ideal setup to isolate young people and educate them in large communal institutions, especially if it creates a hierarchy in which all adults are in some position of authority -- teachers, administrators, staff. while considering the positive effects of peer-to-peer influence and education, it might be worth critiquing the assumption that youth culture occupies a perennial and permanent place in society, rather than a historically specific one.

Posted by jordan at 10:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

While Salon's feminist blog, Broadsheet, has been excellent since its
inception, I wish I could say the same for the rest of their coverage when
it comes to teen girls and young women. In their lastest hand-waving over
those wacky coeds, "Live girl-on-girl action!" Whitney Joiner highlights a
few studies and talks to a few real, live girls and warns us of the dangers
of pseudo-empowerment through sexual manipulation and faux-lesbianism.

Just to step back for a moment, I'm not even sure why this is news -- my
queer friends and I have been complaining for years about women who make out
with other women for male attention, and many have suggested the
connection to male-fantasy lesbianism as portrayed in mainstream porn.

Is this kind of behavior demeaning to straight women and insulting to queer
women? Sure. But why do we automatically blame teen girls for the sex and
gender norms to which we subject them? And how exactly can you qualify "real
desire?" Sex and desire are culturally specific in how we experience them --
who's to say that kissing can only be an expression of "authentic" sexual
desire to be enjoyable? Many girls may only feel safe kissing other girls
for male sexual attention, but does that mean they can't also enjoy it?

Before we get our Playboy-themed thongs in a twist, I think it's worth
pausing for a moment to think about why we respond to these supposed
"trends" the way we do. Perhaps teen girls and young women do perceive less
of a stigma attached to same-sex experimentation, with or without male
voyeurs. Is "staged bisexuality" the problem, or the underlying gender norms
in which women perform for male attention, rather than identifying and
pursuing their own desires?

The broader context here requires examining why young women feel pressured
to attract men, and how exactly they absorb cultural norms about sex. While
faux lesbianism may (or may not) be on the rise, performing gender is
nothing new, and media freak-outs over young women's behavior just
reinforces the tendency to blame girls rather than examine the social
pressures they experience. Sadly, this should come as no surprise in a
society that emphasizes abstinence over informed decisions, punishment for
female sexual expression instead of reproductive rights, and "protection"
from promiscuity (that dangerous HPV vaccine!) over real empowerment.

Posted by jordan at 05:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

i finally took a look at Adam Sternbergh's article on "grups" in the New York Metro (Up with Grups), who theorizes that the latest generation of adults (read: mostly white, college-eduated, in professional careers) doesn't want to grow up. instead, they insist on wearing distressed designer jeans and the converse they wore in high school, while listening to the latest indie hits on their iPods. Sternbergh contends that "grups" (from a star trek episode about a planet run by children who never grow up) are eliding the "generation gap," hanging on to youthfulness, listening to the same music and wearing the same styles as the younger generation -- including their own children.

but Sternbergh seems to be raising alarm without considering the broader cultural context of youth and consumerism. pop culture overall has become increasingly difficult to distinguish from youth culture -- most popular music, movies, and websites are all the domain of the under 30. images of youthfulness drive advertising, and business itself was revolutionized in the sixties by the youth counterculture, which emphasized individuality, originality, novelty and creativity (according to Thomas Frank). i've often wondered if the esteem placed on being young would ultimately rob many of us from enjoying our adulthood -- but perhaps, as Sternbergh ultimately concludes, adulthood itself will take on new meanings and possibilities.

underlying Sternbergh's concerns about grups, however, lurk insidious cultural ideas about the value and meaning of maturity. he doesn't come out and say it, but really the article is questioning whether nor not GenXers are turning into immature adults who groom their kids to listen to whatever's hip this week, and who won't settle down and accept adult responsibilities. they don't want to become middle managers, accept 9-5 hours, or wear suits like their own parents did. some of these notions regarding maturity, however, reflect a strange adherence to certain cultural relativisms. i understand that suits signify a particular competence and masculine maturity -- but even the modern suit is more streamlined than its Victorian (and earlier) predecessors. norms do change, especially given both the accelerated rate of consumption in our society, and an economy that depends on new trends and fashions to spur ongoing acquisition.

if anything, Sternbergh's "grups" embody the height of late modern consumerism, and the shift from meaningful work to meaningful leisure. grups find meaning through leisure activities -- their passion for music, fashion, even surfing. it's leisure that drives consumption -- new cds, new tech gadgets and appliances, new clothes. so i don't find it surprising that grups, like many people, want to have kids, nor that they're raising their kids according to their values, which emphasize leisure and consumption. these trends Sternbergh identifies may indicate broader social changes regarding the value of work, leisure, consumerism and youthfulness, but if so, they reflect the ongoing development of late capitalism, as transformed by the cultural movements of the last century.

Posted by jordan at 10:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It's incredibly frustrating to hear about the past two weeks' worth of rioting going on in France. The French have been in denial about their race relations and immigration issues for such a long time, despite the egregious rates of unemployment in the Paris banlieue (where most French North African immigrants live, in a reversal of American social geography). And sadly, it looks like the French are preferring to respond punitively, rather than address the underlying causes of suburban unemployment and disaffection.

What galls me the most, however, is how the rioting has been cast in terms of Muslim terrorism, in this current political climate. While perhaps that connection has been strengthened among French North Africans in the past few years, when I lived in France, young French blacks identified much more strongly with African Americans than Arabs -- producing French rap, adopting hip hop fashion, and using their own particular French street slang. Which isn't to say that the war in Iraq or the increasingly visibility of Al Qaeda might not strike any resonant chords with French North Africans -- but fundamentally, these riots are the result of deeply ingrained racism in a country that is struggling to come to terms with its own post-colonial legacy. Little is to be gained by continuing to pressure French muslims to put aside their cultural and religious identity in favor of some fictionalized white French ideal of nationalism and "egalité."

Posted by jordan at 03:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)