the
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Across the generations, the style - and sexual content - of music has changed. Here’s a brief evolution of popular music from decades past.
Vol. 33, No. 1
Oct, 11 2013
Homestead High School, Mequon
SE : S u g g e s t i o n s X to Simulations By Sydney Benson
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What’s Inside
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Cyrus’s behavior, Mr. Woessner said, is part human development and part competition for attention. From a child development perspective, Mr. Woessner said that young children are expected to absorb all of the rules their parents, school and community pours into them. During their adolescence, “they start to sift and winnow those things and decide on a core set of beliefs,” according to Mr. Woessner. From a competition for attention perspective, everything is instantaneous in today’s media; in order to really get people’s attention “you have to shock them,” Mr. Woessner said. The desire for this shock value is “awarded” in today’s society with press coverage, magazine covers, television appearances and record deals. However, the interpretation of the message this controversey sends varies among generations. For example, Grant Brogan, senior, said that Cyrus’s message in her VMA performance is telling young girls that “you can do whatever you want. If you want to be something, be it.” Katie O’Brien, senior, agreed and thinks it’s “cool” that Cyrus “does whatever she wants.” In contrast, Ms. Lueders believes that the message Cyrus is sending is “harmful because it is sexualizing young girls.” Mrs. Jennifer Zortman, math teacher, agreed that the message Cyrus is sending has a negative effect on young girls, making them “think more about their appearance than their personality and intelligence.” Mr. Woessner concluded that reactions vary because what is considered the norm for the younger generation differs from what is considered the norm for the previous generations. For example, “twerking is not new to us,” Mr. Woessner said. “Ten years ago, kids were grinding at school dances.” Without a doubt, social boundaries have been pushed since Elvis Presley gyrated his hips in the 1950s. The question is, how much further will it go? “At some point, the boundary would have been pushed so far that there’s nowhere left to go,” Mr. Woessner said. “Now we’re doing simulated sex on stage, how do we top that?” With television, Youtube and various social media sites accessible at almost all times, avoiding society’s media is next to impossible. Hence, ignoring it is not always an option. Rather, Tenley Sanduski, junior, said that others should look up to role models like Kate Middleton -- someone who “shows class, poise and intelligence, which is what our generation needs.”
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A naked 20-year-old girl with spiky dirty-blonde hair straddles a wreck“Presley sings his latest single, "Hound Dog," ing ball. As controversial as this with all the pelvis-shaking intensity his fans image in Miley Cyrus’s recent scream for. Television critics across the video may seem, “Wreckcountry slam the performance for its "appalling Ball” has earned the ing lack of musicality," for its "vulgarity" and top spot for most views "animalism."” - PBS.org on Youtube with 176 million as of Oct. 1. Whether people choose to give this “With the prominence they accorded women kind of media their in their songs and lives and the way they focus or not, the spoke to millions of young teenage girls about numbers don’t new possibilities, the Beatles tapped into lie. People are something much larger than themselves...The searching, Beatles set the tone for feminism.” - The viewing and Rutherford Institute discussing this content every minute “because “Since Madonna was such a prominent sex the social symbol of the 80’s because of her shameless boundaries attitude and sexualized appearance, many keep getting young girls were attracted to the idea of pushed,” being someone so confident and sexy, and according replicated her image.” - Longwood.edu to Mr. William Woessner, school psychologist. “After Britney Spears' debut album hit the This issue pre-teen scene in the late 1990s, her debut of sex and its music video was not far behind. Dancing in prevalence in the hallways of a school and clad in a sexedthe media is an up and skimped-down version of the issue “as old as standard plaid-and-button-up ensemble, the Bible,” Spears paraded in her pigtails for her youthMs. Susan Luedful audience's viewing pleasure. Other stars ers, social studies followed suit.” - byu.edu teacher, said. On the timeline of music and media, the barrier between normalcy and "Her [Miley Cyrus] behavior sets 50 deviance is persistently exto 60 years of women's forward tended decade by decade. progress back a long way when you In the 1980s, Madonna consider that her huge fan base created a whirlwind of controreally only consists of young and versy after showing her bare back impressionable girls and horny in her music video “Vogue.” In the young boys, who, unfortunately on 1990s, a teenage Britney Spears opened many levels, are our future leaders." an entirely new social boderline by ex- CNN posing her midriff in a schoolgirl outfit in her music video “One More Time.” In August of 2013, viewers witnessed the ki urs definition of “shock value” as they watched d n Photos provided Ba ie a nearly naked Miley Cyrus “twerk” at the t a by Britannica yK Image Quest on b Video Music Awards (VMA’s). According to i t a tr and Flickr Illus Mr. Woessner, this performance shows the o t o Ph transition in this generation from “making suggestions to sex to actually simulating sex.”