Only a still deeply

Puritan nation could be

so repressed about

the female body,

and yet so crass about

using that body,

“clothed” in attire once

reserved for hookers,

as the cornerstone of its

entire commercial culture

Americans have a problem with sexuality

A schizophrenic nation that

hyper-sexualizes its young women,

yet demands a virtual if not actual chastity?

Disturbed, perhaps -- a word my children use

for anything troubling, or un-cool

Movies, porn, music, fashion, and glossy magazines fixate on the sexualized woman.

All that advice on how to be more attractive, how to give great blow jobs, and how to be good in bed, sexuality and sexual pleasure are still defined on male terms.

Sex is over when the man ejaculates; blow jobs are less gross than “carpet munching;” and sexually experienced men are virile, whereas experienced women are sluts.

Under such slanted expectations and double standards, women are seen not as autonomous sexual actors but as passive sexual objects.

By objectifying women and defining them by their chosen sexual activity, pop culture conflates sexual acts with the entirety of sexuality.

Commercial culture in the United States is schizophrenic towards young women.

We buy and sell the myth that young women should be like “Miss America” -- paragons of virtue and walking advertisements for abstinence. Yet the culture teaches young women to present themselves as sex objects.

Many celebrities are boozing, abusing drugs, and sleeping around. So it should not surprise us when our Miss Americas “go wild” and “do anything to climb the ladder of success.”

I didn’t have to look far for insight into the mixed messages bombarding girls today. I’m the single father of a pre-teen drama queen, Sela, who will soon turn 13, and who lives with me here in Jamaica.

So when Sela proudly showed me the video of Beyoncé’s “Sexuality,” which she found on YouTube, or came home from a birthday party singing “I’m gonna get you drunk . . . on my love humps,” I tuned in.

It’s not far from Beyoncé’s ready-for-prime-time bump-and-grind on “Sexuality,” or the suggestive lyrics and dancing on Fergie’s “Humps,” to the sort of apparent promiscuity, drinking and substance abuse that almost cost Miss USA Tara Conner her crown, or the photographed displays of salacious (and bisexual) behavior that brought down Miss Nevada USA Katie Rees.

This schizophrenia has a history. Vanessa Williams, our first African American Miss America, was jettisoned after some nude photographs came to light during Reagan’s “Morning in America” in 1984.

Twenty years late the nation had a nervous breakdown when Janet Jackson flashed a breast during the Super Bowl.

What has changed? Youthful indiscretions, as well as the mature calculations of women seeking the spotlight, are now instantly available on the internet. The amount of skin being shown to move product has certainly increased.

While the pretence continues that American princesses should be chaste, there is hardly a female singer on the pop charts today who is not flashing flesh and singing about sex in order to sell a line of products including themselves.

Clearly North Americans still have issues with the female body. What other words besides schizophrenic could describe a nation that hyper-sexualizes its young women, yet demands a virtual if not actual chastity?

Disturbed, perhaps -- a word my children use for anything troubling, or un-cool. Only a still deeply Puritan nation could be so repressed about the female body, and yet so crass about using that body, “clothed” in attire once reserved for hookers, as the cornerstone of its entire commercial culture.

Which is to say, the American way of life is something like the prisoners in Plato’s cave, watching a shadow show of semi-clad women moving suggestively on the walls, or screens, which surround us in both public and private spaces.

Seeing the commercial representations of female celebrities through my daughter’s eyes, while living in Jamaica, results in a distilled focus.

“Jamaicans copy the worst of Americans,” my colleague Victor Chang once said to me, and I have yet to meet a Jamaican who does not instantly recognize that as true.

My students are almost all addicted to North American cable TV. The, um, disturbing thing about this is that they are in general unaware of anything else going on in the world.

Over the last year, I have watched Sela become like most Jamaican youths, which is to say like most young North Americans: she become an enthusiastic observer of celebrity culture. Indeed, a would-be participant with certain traits of addiction.

Although this is not just an American phenomenon: a recent UK poll found that children believed the most important things in life were, in order, being famous, being beautiful, and being rich. I’m pretty sure Sela would agree.

Recently we had dinner at a friend’s house and then watched an hour of videos. I was struck by how many female artists who used to sing intelligent lyrics, even rebellious songs, had gotten the sex kitten makeovers and were singing vapid superficialities now.

The Gwen Stefani of No Doubt had morphed into a sort of glam post-dominatrix, who on “Wind It Up” sings about that eternal mystery, “the girls want to know why boys like us so much.”

The Fergie who first came to [my] attention with the Black Eyed Peas’ inspiring remake of “Where is the Love?” is now trading entirely on her sexual appeal.

The message of how girls should use their sexuality comes across clearly in “My Humps” -- a power which bewitches young men into “Spendin' all your money on me.” And to make sure the cash flow continues, Fergie the solo artist has become “Fergalicious”.

And so I still find myself asking: “Who can resist the American Dream?”

If we are talking about those who are spellbound by US celebrity culture, and don’t know where else to look, the answer may be no one.

But there is more than one America, and hence, more than one American dream. So in questioning whether my children will find peers who will legitimate their exploration of alternatives, I must repeat that “America” is not the same as the United States.

America is a continent, and a hemisphere, in which most people speak Spanish. So I find myself increasingly listening to voices from nuestra América, and the broader Spanish-speaking world, which is emerging as a legitimate alternative to the worst excesses of “the American way of life.”

And the music of that world exhibits a degree of innovation, political resistance, and a more relaxed attitude towards sexuality that is absent in U.S. commercial culture. Gregory Stephens @ Dissident Voice