Saturday, October 25, 2008

Germany: Where kids can look at porn

Sorry for the delay but between working (almost) full-time and going to school, I've neglected my blog. Fortunately, I have a group of students ending this week so I will have 180 more free minutes starting Wednesday... I will use this free time to blog. Or bake cookies. Or, let's be real, read fashion blogs and watch the Sarah Palin rap for the 17th time.

On Tuesday I was taking the subway to my crime fiction class where we just read Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue." My fellow students are old! At least 30! And they all smoke and wear real trench coats. Needless to say, I felt pretty intimidated during the first two lectures until one girl (woman, actually) asked me to do a co-presentation with her on prison imagery in fiction. I am so desperate for acquaintances and/or peers I actually said yes. Anyway, I was on the subway and noticed an old man reading Bild, the number one picture-packed newspaper in Germany. It's like USA Today with boobs. Boobs, boobs, boobs. Everyday the paper features a naked lady on the bottom front page, except on Sundays when she's inside on page 3. So this guy was reading and there was this 19 year-old Brigitte with her rack out when a group of about 15 fourth-graders got on. They crowded in, sat next to the man, and the boys immediately began to crack up. And it wasn't just laughing, it was a rolling on the floor of the dirty subway, gasping for air annoying but cute display. The best part was that the teachers started laughing too. Then the girls pretended to not know what was going on. It was so refreshing. I was glad to see that German 10 year-olds laughed uncontrollably about nudity and sexuality. They deal with the shame of nudity like the rest of us. That's how it should be. I was thinking that in this culture, with it's nude newspapers would have produced a generation of progressives, but not so.

1 comment:

Mach1 said...

When we were in Switzerland, my eight-year-old brother bought what was probably the German-language equivalent of "Teen Beat!" In the centerfold, between pages of the Disney movie "Tarzan" and Britney Spears, was a spread of porn. The worse part is it was D-list porn, not even worth looking at. My mom took it away from him.