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6 February 1996
Are Teen Magazines Obscene?
The Periodical (Protection of Children) Bill introduced by Peter Luff
MP (Con:Worcester) is insulting and patronising to parents and young people.
Luff is concerned about the sexually explicit content of magazines such
as Just 17 and Sugar. His Bill would require publishers to print the recommended
minimum readership age on the front of teenage magazines.
Luff should understand the following:
- Teenage magazines, like the rest of the media, do not dictate young
people's behaviour pattern; they reflect it. They write about sex because
that is what young people are interested in. If they did not address the
concerns of young people in the language they want to read, the magazines
would not sell.
- Luff says he wants to protect young people's innocence - in fact he
wants to keep them in ignorance. A third of young people aged 16 and under
claim to have had full sexual intercourse. Most young people claim to get
most of their information about sex and contraception from magazines, preferring
to pick up the facts in this way than via moralistic lectures from teachers
and parents.
- Luff does not seem to realise that the magazines he condemns have
a very moral message of their own. Their pages are about the only place
you will see references to the importance of the age of consent - it is
routinely included in any article which talks about sex. What is more, the
message to young people unsure about whether to have sex is always - don't
do it; if you are unsure, you are not ready. An old-fashioned message delivered
in youth-speak.
- But most importantly, what Luff misses is that his very attempt to
promote parental responsibility undermines it. Luff wants minimum readership
ages on magazines so that parents can check their daughters' magazines are
suitable. But parents don't need government certification to tell them that.
They can look between the covers and find out. By suggesting that a regulatory
body decides what is and is not suitable for a teenager to read, Luff undermines
parents' role in deciding.
Supporters of Luff's Bill complain that young people 'grow up too quickly'
today. The opposite is the truth. Luff's Bill is typical of an age in which
everybody is being treated like infants. Fourteen year old girls who (understandably)
want to find out more about boys are to be wrapped in cotton wool like little
babies. And parents who are quite capable of controlling their daughters
reading matter are to be treated like incapable and irresponsible children
themselves.
The irony is that, the more the state tries to intervene in matters like
this in the name of upholding 'family values', the more the role of parents
is undermined.
Ann Bradley
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