go to prison if convicted of a crime
as a juror, send a convict to prison or worse
enter a contract
get a tattoo
join the armed forces
get an abortion (actually, they think girls under 18 should have that right as well)
and anything else the boys age 18-and-up can do...
...except show their tits to a camera. I bullshit you not:
Wall Street Journal
This idiocy has been picked up by others calling themselves feminists. Apparently, they think a coed showing her boobs to a camera in exchange for a T-shirt or hat is making a more important decision than if she chooses to join the Army. These yentas are no different from the fundies, who want to ban or restrict abortion and birth control on the grounds that adult females are such witless creatures that they can't be trusted to handle tough decisions. So which is it? Are they adults or aren't they?Garance Franke-Ruta wrote:Is there anything to be done? Curtailing the demand side of such a "market" is difficult, requiring moralistic sermons and abridgements of speech. But the supply side is more vulnerable to change. It is time to raise the age of consent from 18 to 21--"consent," in this case, referring not to sexual relations but to providing erotic content on film.
Current federal laws bar the production or possession of erotic images of individuals under 18. These laws are hardly a matter of long custom: The first was passed only in 1977, after a spate of interest in child pornography, and until superseded in 1984, only covered those under age 16. A variety of state laws add their own controls on youthful sexuality, trying to keep minors free of exploitation by defining the age, usually under 18, at which adult consent may be freely and responsibly given.
In certain obvious respects, 18 years is old enough to ward off the threat of "child porn." But the "Girls Gone Wild" problem concerns adult porn: At what age is a girl ready to make that decision, one that she will live with--technologically speaking, at least--for the rest of her life? A woman of 18 may be physically indistinguishable from one who is 21, but they are developmentally worlds apart.
Think only of the difference between a college freshman and a recent college graduate, or between a high-school senior and a young woman with a job and apartment of her own. Or think of the difference between a 19-year-old girl--intoxicated by both a Scorpion Bowl (illegally served) and her own newly developed form--and a woman who has been through her first heartbreak and has had to think long and hard about what her value is, both in her personal life and at the office. The second woman is more likely to nurse a chardonnay with friends than "go wild" in the sense that Mr. Francis' cameras are so eager to record. Surely the porn industry can survive without the participation of teenagers.
It is true that teenagers become legal adults at the age of 18, right around the time they graduate from high school. The age of consent to serve in the armed forces is also 18 (17 with parental consent), as is the minimum voting age since 1971, when an amendment to the Constitution lowered it from 21. But the federal government is already happy to bar legal adults from engaging in certain activities. Most notably, the National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984 raised the drinking age to 21 (by threatening to withhold highway funds from states that did not go along). In practice, the age limit is flouted on college campuses and in private homes. But it has still had a positive effect, not least by driving down fatalities from drunk driving.
A new legal age for participating in the making of erotic imagery--that is, for participating in pornography--would most likely operate in the same way, sometimes honored in the breach more than the observance. But a 21-year-old barrier would save a lot of young women from being manipulated into an indelible error, while burdening the world's next Joe Francis with an aptly limited supply of "talent." And it would surely have a tonic cultural effect. We are so numb to the coarse imagery around us that we have come to accept not just pornography itself--long since routinized--but its "barely legal" category. "Girls Gone Wild"--like its counterparts on the Web--is treated as a kind of joke. It isn't. There ought to be a law.
[
