Lauren Greenfield Photography

Lauren Greenfield's photography, as well as her "artist statement," struck a cord in me that forced self-examination/analysis of my deeply embedded assumptions about teens. I realized that, while it is true: every youthful generation deals with issues/obstacles surrounding drugs, sexuality, violence, cultural norms, so-called subversive behavior, etc., that does not take away from the fact that... well, times really are different. At the risk of sounding like an old woman in her rocking chair, lecturing "When I was your age...", I would argue that today's youth indeed face moral dilemmas and a variety of problems that yesterday's youth did not confront. These photographs portrayed the degree to which desensitization, disillusionment, and destruction have become the rule, not the exception.
Even when examining my own junior high and high schools, I see the kids dealing with topics I never had to figure out. The only drama I had as a 12 yr old in seventh grade was finding the courage to ask a boy to dance with me at a Halloween school dance, (which my father was kind enough to chaperone, of course). The pre-teens and teens that attend KP North Regional nowadays are having oral sex on the back of schoolbuses because their peers/the media place pressure/emphasis on having sex to be popular. My little brother has told me horror stories that shock me... when often, there is no shock factor for him anymore. They seem quite jaded for their age, while I, on the other hand, read old journals I kept as a kid, and see how innocent/curious/sensitive I was at the time.
I think through education, we can teach youth to reject the dominant ideologies of our culture/country, but in the meantime, so many of them suffer unnecessarily, being raised on too much tv and junk food, numbed by games like Grand Theft Auto, losing their childhood in the process.

...or maybe I'm just seeing the glass half-empty?