Fast Times at Ridgemont High came out in 1982. Thats 25 years ago. Can we give up the idea that something here is new?

Didn't take long for the moth-eaten meme of "aging, white men..shocked and appalled at the behavior of young women" to appear, did it?

You circle-jerks need new material.

Okay, that bit about retro brooks made my day.

Her song is about being objectified and harassed at clubs. "I'm not here for your entertainment," she snarls. And isn't she right?

Well, maybe not harrassed, but (i) specifically, it's hilarious for a multi-millionaire entertainer to "snarl" (groan) that she's not here for our entertainment, and (ii) more generally, if the she in question happens to be an attractive and sexily dressed young woman at a club, then of course she's there for our entertainment -- if anyone cares about her thoughts and feelings it'll a nice bonus for her, but she's dressed to attract base attention and that's what she'll get. Except from sensitive male liberal bloggers, I guess, who'll try to talk with her about their econ degrees.

Ezra, maybe set a few boundaries for yourself, yo.

Justin,

I know some people have to settle for state schools, but as delightful as it feels to rub yourself there, what I said is by no means equivalent to "bitches are asking for it."

--Work in a flower shop, perhaps? There are lots of pretty colors, without all these complicated ideas.

I agree that lumping these three points of view in one is odd - but then, Brooks has been a lousy pop culture critic for so long, this hardly seems surprising from him (I actually expect it of Michelle Malkin; I'm sure she's annoyed she didn't get there first). The Lavigne song is troubling, but mostly cause I think her "angry grrl" bit used to be from an outsider stance, and the song (as well as the video) lacks that perspective. Underwood's song seems an odd choice all the way around, even for its sublimated revenge fantasy. As for the Pink song, I find almost everyone sings along like they get it (men too, which seems like the real advance here). I also think of all people, Brooks is hardly in a position to decide that the popularity of the "angry bitch" perspective is somehow not a valid approach - it's certainly not new.

And Mari, while I'd rather not get your cutting reply, I'd say too that sounded a lot like "she's asking for it" - I don't think the protagonist of the song is meant to be Pink as celeb, but Pink as everygirl out for a girls night and getting bugged by some jerk. In which case, whatever she's wearing, no, she's not there for anyone's entertainment but her own.

Take it from an aging white man (64)
who played in traveling rock bands in
his younger days, Young American Womanhood is a lot closer to Girls Gone
Wild than it is to Brooks' conservative virgin/bride fantasy. Let's allow the young to be young, shall we? They'll have plenty of time to be stodgy and virtuous.

Wow, mari lup is as hostile to complete strangers as he/she thinks all strangers are hostile to women in bars. Incredible projection there.

I agree with Justin, for such a short thread we seem to be swarming with apologists for misogyny and sexual harrassment. The proper response to Brooks' tired old shtick of tired old white guy angst is to say--didja ever hear of Edith Piaf? You might even want to go check out the easy viewing movie to find out that *women have been talking about sex* and singing about sex for *quite some time* and not always in a purely submissive and romantic mode.

And, more to the point, sex and sexual relations *for young women and men* have been more fraught and complex than Brook's vaseline smeared lens would make them. But that doesn't make for a good column because to actually look at it and talk about it brooks would actually have to give a flying girl's song about sex to actually observing and understanding the world instead of just using his column to bash the disfavored imaginary liberal group of the week. Brooks doesn't even really pretend to be a social observer any more, he really wants to be a right wing gossip columnist whose column explicitly and implicitly spreads right wing propaganda. Rather like that awful column that appears in Parade where every teeny "fact" about a celebrity turns out to hide a little gift or a little knife depending on whether the author thinks they represent conservative or liberal "sides" to his imagined america.

aimai

That was an awesome "state school" crack -- so TAPPED!

I'm shocked to discover that while all the rest of us his age were listening to Chrissie Hynde and the Pretenders, Martha Davis and the Motels, and god forbid, even Pat Benatar, that Brooks lived without a radio in a fallout shelter somewhere beneath the University of Chicago. How sad it must be for him to realize that the world no longer matches the 1950s stereotype he read about in the magazines down there.

Does seem like an odd time for him to be catching up, but I guess he's been busy watching Bourgeois Bohemians in the wild.

Brooks is just silly. I'm 37 years old and I remember angry- and aggressive young women all the back to Joan Jett. Are you going to tell me she wasn't sexually aggressive or bitchy? And before her there was Patty Smith and Janis Joplin.

And mari lup, when you say this:

she's dressed to attract base attention and that's what she'll get

she's just going to think you're the creepy guy in the corner she explicitly doesn't want to get attention from.

I wonder if Brooks has ever heard Betty Davis?

Can I recommend "Why'd you do it?" by Marianne Faithfull or "Up the Neck" "Private Life" or "Tatooed Love Boys" among others from The Pretenders all circa the late 1970s. David would soil himself.

mari lup, mari lup...

Hey, wait, is that you, Lee Siegel?

How many right-wing trolls name themselves with puns on historic French leaders? DaGall? Freedom fries with that?

I always read Brooks with gritted teeth, waiting for his reasonable-sounding intros to devolve into his standard partisan polemic. With this piece though, I have to admit, I don't think he devolved at all. IMHO, he wasn't criticizing the singers, the songs or the sentiment they expressed. He was identifying an increasingly popular & positive cultural archetype: the tough, independent girl/woman who doesn't suffer male fools, even briefly. I think it's an older & more realistic archetype than Brooks realizes, but I think by comparing it to the frontier cowboy/urban PI archetypes he was praising it as a positive archetype/role model for young women in a new & challenging socio-sexual millieu. David Brooks is almost always an utter tool, but it seems to me this is one of those rare instances where he actually isn't.

I must say, this place hasn't been the same since you people ran off Charlie Pierce...

Brooks must be flashing back to his youth.

I can't speak for other places, but back in the old days, it was almost expected of a Catholic schoolgirl in Boston to slash her boyfriend's tires if he dared look at another girl.