h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

My biggest problem with the current music scene is that it is taking sexual imagery to younger and younger children. I am not a prude or a conservative, but I feel strongly that sex, not music, is being used to market the modern artists to kids, and that it is wrong to do so.

Am I the only one who gets uneasy when the Destiny's Child song "Too bootylicious" gets played on a Saturday morning kids' show? Would Kylie's "Can't get you out of my head" have sold so much if she hadn't worn that bedsheet in the video?

Please don't get me wrong:- I liked those videos as much as the next man. But that's the point; the next man is a MAN, not a 10 year old boy.

I dunno...
Kids have always played Drs amd Nurses or show me yours.
It's a very difficult area and I do sometimes wonder. Personally i don't find either of the two images you quote disturbing, though I did find Britney's impersonation of a 15 year old trying to be 18 whilst singing 'Hit Me Baby' a little close to the knuckle in more ways than one...

Kids have alway played doctors and nurses, true. And kids will always play these exploratory games. But in those games there are no adults trying to sell them things, and that's the difference.

Let's be clear here. I'm not talking about young teenagers, (although I think targetting them is wrong); I'm talking about kids of 10 and less being deliberately exposed to sexual imagery and lyrics on dedicated children's television simply in order to produce demand for the record companies' merchandise.

Paedophiles exploit children's sexuality for fun. Record companies do it for money. Which is worse?

You definately have a point here, Geoff. The music industry sells you something old, repackaging it as new, and for youngsters, sex is always part of the unknown. Corporations specialise in co-opting culture, and selling it back to you. Teenagers have raging hormones. The corporations make a bundle...