My (then) 8 year old was choosing a comic at the local newsagent. He stared at the magazines on the shelf, and he continued to stare, even taking a step nearer to get a better view.
He wanted to know why there are magazines with pictures of ladies with no clothes on and wanted a closer look *gulp*. A number of reasons for the availability of these pictures of scantily-clad, nubile young ladies ran through my head:
- they are hot
- they are on their way to bed
- they are about to take a shower/bath
but I know that none of these answers will sate an inquisitive mind. I managed to manoeuvre him out of the shop with the explanation that the magazines are not for children and you can only buy them when you are tall enough to reach them.
Later, at home, he took a couple of (safe) magazines that I had bought into the kitchen and I could hear him snipping away with the scissors. I shouted through to see what he was doing and he says. “I’m cutting up all the dirty pictures!”
He brought the TV Guide back to me (now minus a front cover) and showed that he had cut out the “free wallpapers” for mobile phones from the adverts at the back of the magazine - the “rude girls” who had their bits covered with stars – and was going to put them in the bin !!!!
Later that night he woke up and called out to me. I asked him what was wrong. He explained that he had been “thinking about the magazines”. I asked him what he meant and what he felt. He replied with, “Nothing. I’m just thinking about them.”
He was obviously subconsciously confused about what he had seen and, up until then, I had never had to have a conversation with him about development, sexuality, the basic difference between girls and boys, but now I could see that he was definitely mulling it all over. I wanted my children to be children for as long as possible but the images of sexuality that are so easily available today can be quite disturbing. There’s a time and a (private) place for these images and it’s not on the shelf next to, or above, the comics.
Mumable Author: Nickie O'Hara
