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Goodbye to Innocence

Canadian filmmaker Sharlene Azam tells Mahalakshmi Prabhakaran how middle class girls in Canada are being recruited by their teenaged friends and trafficked for sex.
 
At a time when parents and politicians in India continue to voice their regressive opinions about why Sex education shouldn’t be taught in schools, Canada-based author and film maker Sharlene Azam’s documentary and book “Oral Sex Is The New Good Night Kiss” has the West waking up to a shocking reality: Teenage girls, as young as 13 years, are casually trading sex for goodies. And we are talking about girls belonging to affluent families, here.

In an email interview with Bangalore Mirror, the 38-year-old South Asian from Canada, who is also the author of Rebel, Rogue, Mischievous Babe (Harper Collins, 2001) and has been featured in popular shows including ABC’s Good Morning America and The View, talks about the documentary and the hypersexual culture kids live in today.  Excerpts from the interview :

1.  Oral sex is the new goodnight kiss. Interesting title that. Given that your film talks of 13-year-olds from good families trading sex for goodies, question is when it comes to sex have the lines of age, class, gender blurred today?
If you are asking me if 13-year-olds are having sex and trading sex for the things that they want (clothes, jewellery, drugs) - Absolutely. If you think about it, if kids are making and distributing pornography of themselves – sexting – why wouldn’t they also be capable of prostituting themselves and each other?

2. How did the idea come about? And during the filming, did some of the responses make you go—- whoa?
I was at a high school in Canada researching sexual attitudes for a film I was working on when I was asked to talk to the students in the Flex Program. The Flex kids have been out of school for various problems. In that class, I met a lovely blonde girl with perfect make up and a Louis Vuitton bag who seemed completely out of place. I asked the teacher about her and was told that she had been recruited by a girl at the school and trafficked to a small town where she was kept in a motel. That was the beginning of my research into teenage recruiters and the middle class girls they target. This was a new kind of predator.

3. A significant amount of your work is centred around teenagers and sex issues. What got you into it?
Actually, this is my first book on teens and sex. However, I have always been interested in the lives of teenage girls and the subculture of teens.

4. All the work and interactions you have had till now for the film, your book, your magazine et al… some key learning you have gleaned and can share?
We are in the midst of a cultural meltdown, the likes of which we have never seen before. I hope my book will serve as a warning. Who is going to save our girls?  Who is the voice for our girls? Is it the media? Is it the boys’ opinions of them? Is it the negative images of themselves that they have created from advertising imagery? Parents have to be the voice for their daughters. They have to help mitigate the influence of pornography in their daughters’ lives.
  
5. Five year ago and now...What do you think has changed for the generation today? What are they missing out on that we had five to 10 year ago maybe?
The Internet has changed everything. Images of sex and the most degrading kinds of sex are readily available and are being downloaded by kids aged 12 years on their phones. For many of the girls I interviewed, giving oral sex in the boy’s bathroom is as benign and as acceptable as kissing. This is what our culture has become. Think back to the 80s when girls would blush when talking about their first kiss. We are way past that point with blow jobs. The real question is, “What’s next?”
 
6. Do you think the girls have gone and behave way beyond their age compared to boys? Are they more emboldened? What spurs them, in your view?
Girls and boys live in a hypersexual culture. Girls are bombarded with images (from music, TV, online, magazines) of girls as porn stars, strippers, hooters girls, girls gone wild. Those are the dominant images of girls in the Western culture. We are seeing girls model their behaviour on those ideas and images because there is nothing out there countering the “Girls Gone Wild” culture.

7.About boys, is there a sense that they have been left behind? Where I come from, while girls are taking on roles that were traditionally done by the boys, the boys continue to do what they have been doing since Neanderthal times?
Boys are becoming sexually callous. The culture is grooming them to be users, takers, pornography makers (playground pimp, pimp squad).  Check out the first Google hit for “porn”. It’s hardcore and the girls look very young. I don’t think boys are being left behind. They are very much a part of the behaviour that girls are engaging in - they share nude photos of their girlfriends with other boys (sexting), they encourage girls to act out scenarios from pornography and Girls Gone Wild. In cases here where they have been caught receiving oral sex at school, their parents will come to their rescue and say, “boys will be boys”, but that’s just an excuse for poor parenting, since these boys will also experience an inability to have trusting, full relationships in the future. You can’t see girls as being interchangable and disposable during your adolescence and suddenly develop respect for your wife or girlfriend.

8. The movie has everyone stunned. Did you expect this reaction? What next?
I am definitely surprised by how quickly my book and film have been embraced by the media. I have been working on this in isolation for so long (four years) that I think I forgot how shocking it is. I hope it gets the attention of parents who might be dealing with some of these issues and not know where to turn for help. I think the fact that people are “stunned” has a lot to do with how normalised pornography has become. It is all around us and it seems acceptable, but when young girls start trading their virginity for $1000, we can assume that this is the result of the culture we have created.



 


Comments

Virginia Lamb

06/18/2009 00:39:53

The idea that girls at school would recruit other girls for sexual trafficking, particularly girls from successful, good families shows that promiscuity has entered the mainstream. If the moral decline continues, not only will diseases like AIDs and STDs be on the increase, but people will become more and more out of touch with what it is to be human and how to have caring relationships. I believe there will be an increase in social ills and mental illness if this trend is not reversed. We need to turn this around to where we value the family and living for others, and not just live shallow lives of self-gratification and materialism, as though our actions have no consequences on others.
I think the Christian world-view does not have the strength it once had to be a moral guide in people's lives. I think we need a faith that will embrace all faiths and that sees others in the world as part of their extended family. This is the vision we need to instill idealism into this materialistic, hedonistic culture.

 

Thisisfake

07/25/2009 07:09:03

This is moral panic myth-making at its finest. Oprah did this in 2003. Don't believe the hype. This "author" is making money by parading teenagers around as sex-crazed maniacs. Its about as widespread as satanic cult rituals famous in the 80's and 90's. Yawn.

 

this is real

04/13/2010 08:35:43

 

laura

04/13/2010 08:37:21

are you nuts, this is really happening. Live in denial, that works better for your kid but not mine.

 

dani

10/05/2010 18:32:24

these young ladies that dress and act far beyond their age for the sole reason to lure young men. Once lured in, the young ladies act on it. If they feel pressured or guilty the blame is always put on the young men.

 

Tanya

01/17/2011 21:00:14

You are insane if you think that this is NOT happening. I have coached Teenage basketball teams for years and have been trusted far more than the parents of the girls that I coach and therefore have been admitted into their confidence and I can tell you, this is real.

Forget the prostitution and money for sex (this is not as common although it is real), I am more concerned about the number of teenage girls using oral sex as a currency for love, attention and affection. As early as 2001 I was hearing girls talk of 'having' to 'do it' to get a boy's attention or to have him like them.

I am concerned about the trend that allows girls to objectify themselves and teaches boys that girls are interchangable and disposable. Clearly, we are failing both sexes, the responsibility should not be thrust on the girls (making them, once again, guardians of chastity..) but should also be shared by the young men sho are, in all reality, surely capable of exercising respect and judgement in sexual matters or are we actually claiming that they are not equal to the task???

I am now a parent of 11 year old twin girls and I have ensured that they are aware of sex (and sex acts) and all it's ramificatons, social, emotional and physical instead of dealing with it as a morality issue.

 

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