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Thursday, December 22, 2011

Irony on the Bus

In some of the articles I've written for various publications about Bleep!, I use the following introduction:

You’re walking on the street and pass a person. Let’s call her Jo. She’s dressed from head to toe in Prada and is talking on her cell phone, the newest BlackBerry. What do you think of her? You’re probably impressed by Jo’s style and obvious wealth. (After all, who doesn’t want the newest BlackBerry?) “What the f**k are you talking about?” she exclaims. What do you think of Jo now? I definitely think less of her for cursing. Because of my strong feelings against cursing, I created an organization called Bleep!, whose mission is to eradicate the usage of cursing among kids and teens today. Bleep!’s mission is not to tell people that it's illegal to curse; its mission is to illustrate the negative effects of cursing and show people the reasons they shouldn’t use bad words.

Recently, bizarrely enough, this situation actually happened to me.

I was sitting on the bus, and two well-dressed women got on and sat across from me. They were both wearing designer clothing, had expensive accessories, and were discussing their travels abroad and complaining about how people in foreign countries try to rip off Americans. The air they had about them was clearly upper class.

In the middle of their conversation, one of the women dropped the f-bomb. Ironic much?

Monday, December 12, 2011

Pageants and Cursing

I recently started getting into the TLC show Toddlers and Tiaras, which features little kids who participate in pageants. Yeah, I know, it's freaky, but bizarrely addictive. I noticed that a significant portion of these kids, who range in age from two to ten, will use bad words. They often call their parents or pageant coaches names.

I find this absolutely appalling. I mean, the show's name is TODDLERS and Tiaras - these are really little kids who do these pageants, and it's absolutely unacceptable that they not only have heard bad words, but use them. I can't automatically blame their parents for using those kinds of words around their children, since it's possible they learned the words from an outside source, but it's likely that they heard this language from family members.

I find this really ironic, since these girls are preparing to go into the big-time pageants like Miss America and Miss USA. The winners of these pageants are supposed to be wholesome, all-American girls, certainly not people that use bad words on a regular basis. While these pageants are obviously extremely troublesome, since they objectify women and create a societal value system for women based on beauty, at least they have one thing right - cursing is not the thing to do!