Culturally Incorrect... (Over-Sexing the Nation)

The continued discussion on the slow collapse of this nation and the breakdown of society seems to always flow back to two things, the choices we make and the collective values we hold.

I want to redirect the conversation a bit and ask a question of Corporate T&T, why is everything so over-sexed all of a sudden? Our advertising companies seem to be led by the motto - "Have something to sell? Drape a vagina on it." Every other billboard features a scantily clad, usually gyrating young woman looking ready for anything. Offender in Chief Angostura ought to be ashamed of itself with regard to its rum campaigns over the last three or four years where women have been  portrayed as objects to be used rather than people to be respected.

Now, assuming that the Company is populated with educated people, wouldn't you expect them to know better, specifically the widely accepted  link between highly sexualized entertainment and the subsequent increase in violence against women in no small part due to their now 'dehumanized' status?

The other main offender, Carib brewery has for years used women's scantily clad bodies to promote their wares, but the Angostura campaigns have eclipsed even them. Where is our Advertising Council in whom common decency guidelines are entrusted, do we even have one? We have been told that life imitates art, and if this is the sum total of the art being forced down the throats of our young people everywhere they turn, day in and day out, what do we expect them to become? How are our young men supposed to view our young women if our young women appear so keen to give themselves up for this purpose?

What about that other sacred (profane?) cow, carnival, and why is it still being referred to as culture? Whose culture is this? Where is the creativity and originality? One of the accepted definitions of culture is - “The arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively.” So what does that mean in our context? For carnival to be culture designers for bands like Tribe, Spice, etc would have to be considered artists, but where is the art? In what world is decorating a vagina with beads and feathers an art? Hiding a nipple while selling our young women's naked breasts for profit is an art? Based on existing laws, if some of these bands had their band launching in a 'bar' in Central the owners would have been arrested for indecency, so why the double standard?

Why are we not discussing the impact of this 'over-sexing' of the nation's young people on our already challenged social system? Is this how women really see themselves or want to see their gender portrayed? And what do these 'women' think should be done with them when time passes and age changes the value of their taut bodies, should they be relegated to the back of the room, disposed of quietly? How are mothers supposed to see themselves or to be viewed by society for that matter?

There is something fundamentally wrong when a country begins to work AGAINST itself and its own best interests, and giving little girls a skewed self image by teaching them to engage the world genitalia first is not the way to build a first world or a developed nation. Where are the women's groups to express condemnation over this dehumanizing and objectifying of our young girls for profits regardless of cost? We all have a responsibility to shape the type of society we want to live in and pass on to the next generation, and while we may sow this wind in the joy of mindless exuberance, we may well reap a whirlwind of sorrow when the consequences of this obscenely, anti-social behavior finally comes home to roost.