Britney and Lindsay and Paris, Oh My!

I went into this article in my usual contrarian mood. Here we go again, I thought, with the terrible plight of American girls. Their idols are baring their bikini waxes and partying themselves into rehab, and we're all going to hell in a handbasket.

Only it didn't turn out that way. Sure there's a weird detour into the history of American "bad girls," which certainly does seem to imply (that is, to accept the idea) that if you have sex, you're a bad girl. But overall, Kathleen Deveny (should I know who that is?) makes a lot of the same kinds of points I would make: we like celebrity gossip and were naughty in high school, and we still turned out to be sensible high-achieving women; even as girls are barraged by sex-and-the-media, they are going wild on the soccer field and doing well in school; girls have always been obsessed with their idols, and then they grow out of it; the messages they receive at home matter more, and lots of them are receiving good messages.

She even goes farther than I could--which one would hope, given that she is the reporter with the time to research this stuff--and points out that statistics on sexual activity and drug and alcohol use among teens are the lowest they've been in a long time.

So points to Deveny for showing some sense, but serious demerits to Newsweek for the revenue-seeking cover and the sensationalist title and header.