well, where do we start? speaking as someone who ACTUALLY HAS EXPERIENCE OF 13/14/15 YR OLD BOYS (in particular) AND GIRLS i feel i have some information which may shed light on this oh so difficult issue. (should mention that this experience comes from my proffessional capacity as a newsagent assitant and bored-kid-babysitter. i'm not coming out as a child-tamperer. i'm gonna leave that for a few months.) the thing is, the chances of boys (on reflection maybe i don't know a girl's mind so well. sniff) turning gay upon viewing two men kissing in a marmite advert are about the same as my chances of typing a cojedjtenmt semtrembes wkgnj mre wjwsa xkikasiws - "coherent sentence with my eyes closed". there, proved that one. lets set up another simple comparison:
chances of boy turning gay after watching marmite advert -> minimal.
chances of boy kicking corpse in street if said corpse is labelled "gay" -> really really really high.
y'see, basically kids hate gays. seems to be the deal. i doubt that even eminem coming out of the closet would convince boys to renounce their gay-hatred. concerned religious moralists worrying about our precious youth (little shits begging to turn 16 so they can become grown-up tossers) should know that their fears are hardly likely to come true. unfortunately. same-sex relationships are better than the traditional form for the simple fact that its harder to produce children in them. and thats reason enough for every boy to
love his brother and every girl to love her sister. can't see that its anyones business beyond that. or something. anyway, the youth of today see things differently to that. sure, right now there are boys realising that they are different to their peers (thank jeff) but the boys who surround them (statistically, and in the more physical sense of surrounding them after school and beating the shit out of them) know which side of the fence they stand. its laughable that people express outrage at the evil Gay Turners behind the marmite advert. these sick fiends who promote their product with the unholy blasphemy of two men (can bearly bring myself to type it) k-i-s-s-i-n-g are like a tiny fly on an elephants back. lets just say their chances of creating a world where a strong teacher presence is required in school changing rooms are veeerrrrryyyy slight. only yesterday two paperboys made numerous referrences to "batty boys", words clearly picked up from popular culture.....which i fear has again gone back to being crappy and "traditional male". the resurgence of lad culture, particularly thru mens mags in recent years, started as a semi-ironic anti-political correctness thing, a place when men could escape to and investigate the important issues of the day, like "totty" and "booze". somewhere safe to hide from increasingly liberated women that men were finding (to their horror) to be just as smart, selfish and predatory as they were. (related issue, simplified: men used to be oppressive shits, and then women decided to break free and, once free, behave differently to selfish men. years later and the deal now is: men are oppressive shits, and women are oppressive shits. its an equality of sorts.) anyhoo, this lad culture now seems to be male culture in general. (and maybe female too) "gay" now means "bad", and peppers the conversations of young males in baseball caps. scantily clad females with cartoon proportions have returned to music videos and stars of pop/rock/hip-hop queue up to say naughty things because thats what authentic rebellious rock'n'rollers do.
the return of grand theory = i guess "back in the day" there used to be a dominant culture and then smaller sub-cultures ("normal people" and various groups of "different people"), but now there seems to be just lots of different groups/cultures, with more of an even standing, who have to work to maintain their position. have to fight their corner against all. hmmm. not very clear. ok, youth - when i was a young metaller i had about...6/7 (?) comrades in denim at school. we didn't get any real grief from other kids - we were a tiny weird fringe (excellent! another hair referrence). buuuuuuuuut now, with all flavours being more equal etc and there being few dark recesses in music (etc) not taken up by youth culture (i think gabba has a shout here. as does skiffle) its a battleground, baby. some kids like nu-metal, some like "punk", some like r'n'b, some like garage....."dance"....d'n'b....pop/rock........ this is all fine. there doesn't seem to be any real genre tyranny in the playgrounds. buuuuttt now you have to fight yr corner it appears. kids were telling me that there is genuine tension at school between "townies" (in totton that means cool kids in sportswear) and "gothics" (alas, nothing to do with the sisters or the neph, but instead nu-metal etc), which often explodes into violence of the sort you expect to see between schools, not within schools. maybe this is a good thing..maybe its a return to er passionate defence of the music you like...rather than my "all good music is good music" stance. some kind of re-run of late 70s punk's conflict with mainstream society... tho there i the violence seeemed to be between the authorities/adult figures and punks, rather than between punks and their peers. (tho teddy boys = punk peers?)
blah blah blah blah
what was this meant to be about? oh yeah - boys won't be turning gay. full stop. maybe in our dreams, but nowhere else. doubt we'll see a male version of tatu that soon...
(keep saying "turning gay" which sounds really clumsy, but it does remind me of homer j's equally clumsy "did he give you gay, marge?!" outburst...so thats fine.