Last Friday a group of friends in the office were discussing about this special investigative report a local news reporter is doing on a group of teenaged girls who were apparently offering sex for money. What made this story rather unique is that the kids were mostly below 18 and weren’t at all poor. Some even came from good upper middle class families. They spoke perfect English and had the latest trendy cell phone models. One even had two cell phones, “This one is for personal use, and this one is for business.”
The girls said that their clienteles range from horny teenaged boys to high-ranking military officials. When asked why they were doing it, the common reply was simply to be able to sustain their lifestyle of partying out with friends. Tips alone go as high as fifty thousand pesos.
Though it’s definitely prostitution, as in soliciting money in exchange for sex, it’s not about survival. And it’s scary to think how the morals of today’s youth has reached an all time low that they casually market themselves just so that they can have extra spending money for cell phones and partying.
Usually these things don’t shock me anymore. Part of my work here in the office before was to review, rate and ban websites that had adult related content. And I’ve seen a lot of sick things on the net. But after becoming a dad to a little adorable daughter, you tend to think and worry about how things might be like ten years from now. Ten years from now I would be (gulp!) forty and Frances would only be 12. I imagine us having arguments like, “But Daddy! All my classmates have nose rings!!! Robin even has a padlock for a nose ring and her dad is ok with it! I’m twelve years old! Why are you treating me like I’m some kid! I hate you, I hate you!” “No! You are still not getting a nose ring! Wait, that was your friend Robin I saw on the internet!?!”
The moral trend line will go down and continue to go down. Though it’s sad, it’s no longer surprising either. I got a quick preview on how sexually aware kids are becoming even back then.
It was during my senior high school. I was just hanging around with a bunch of friends during lunch hour in school when I noticed two cute little boys carefully stalking two insects near the benches where I was sitting. Because they were wearing their school uniforms, I could easily tell that they were probably no older than grade 2 elementary students. The object of their curiosity happened to be two large houseflies. They were cunningly observing the insects that decided to land and rest on the nearby bushes. As I was watching them I saw how one of the boys noticed one of the flies was on top of the other. He immediately called out his friend and said, “Bilis! Tignan mo o! Yung mga langaw, nag kakant***n!” (Quick! Check it out! The flies are fucking!”)
I was so shocked that I nearly fell from the bench were I was sitting. A friend who was also there choked on the food he was eating after hearing what was just said. He took the liberty of reprimanding the two boys saying that they shouldn’t use the “K” word (the exact equivalent of the F word in the English language). I can’t remember when I actually learned the K word, but I am sure as hell it wasn’t during grade two!
I was brought up in a relatively conservative family. I know I’m a good dad and Cathy is an excellent caring mother. And to some extent I believe we both can be looked up to as role models for our own child. Still I’ll admit that I’m extremely concerned. Things have significantly changed a great deal since the late 80’s. And what’s even scarier is that that wasn’t too long ago!
Call me sheltered, but I learned about the birds and the bees a little later than the rest of the boys my age. I started wondering about the strange artwork that the older students sketched on the walls of the boy’s rest rooms when I was in grade 5. Sure, sex ed books in school tells you how the sperm cell and the egg cell goes into the process of fertilization, but its mostly campus bullies that lets you in on the secret of how the sperm actually got there in the first place! Sexual intercourse in what was considered as porn back then (usually in the form of betamax tapes or glossy foreign magazines) was simulated and getting your hands on it was always a covert mission.
But now sex is just everywhere. It’s in the movies, billboards, magazines, pirated DVDs, local and cable television, songs, music videos, mobile phones, emails and of course the Internet. Getting your hands on porn today is almost as easy as going to the refrigerator to make your self a sandwich! Come to think of it, making a sandwich might even require more effort! What was considered as obscene and scandalous back then is slowly evolving as the norm. With the momentum we are all building, there is simply no telling what will show up in TV and the newspapers one day that will eventually be dismissed as tolerable.
So now I ask the perennial question that all parents ask: What do you do? With how sex has crept it’s way into every single form of media there is simply no way on earth you can shield a child from it. They will eventually get curious and find out like we did, just not the way we probably did. I think setting expectations and being as open as possible to your child makes a huge difference. There will always be things that children would rather confide with their friends, but letting them know that mom and dad is always an option would go a long way.
People who’ve seen how Frances is growing up to be a lovely little girl often kid me and ask if I’m at all worried about eventually having to deal with pesky suitors when she’s really all grown up. I tell them that it’s too far off into the future. I just want to enjoy the innocence for now, enjoy being a dad and worry about milk and diapers. Besides, I don’t see suitors to be that much of a problem. That’s what the brass knuckles and the baseball bat are for.
