Dialogue: My kids deserve better than this

By ROANNE PARKER

Okay, Im going to have a whinge now, so you might want to go and do something else if you don't want to hear it.

I am sick of the distorted images of society that are thrown at my kids via billboards, television show promos, magazine covers, newspapers, news reports, radio and, of course, the internet.

I don't want the images of a thousand acts of real and dramatised aggression imprinted into their developing psyche. I don't want them to know about the latest rape or child-killer case coming up on the news at 6.

Marketing is what I do for a living, and perhaps that's why I am constantly disappointed by brainless marketing with sex-sells-anything-to-the-lowest-common-denominator rolling out campaign after campaign. Couldn't think of anything clever or entertaining? That makes all of you!

I don't want my little cherubs to gaze out of the car window to see a woman spreadeagled on a bed on a huge billboard for a clothing brand, or on the cover of Metro, or on the side of the bus shelter.

Censorship via the remote is fine in theory, but it is not enough to monitor the TV programme they are watching, because the promos for other shows are blasted out during breaks.

I don't want them to hear about what the promiscuous naked people on get-into-it island coming up tonight are doing with each other's partners.

What do my spirited, strong-minded little girls think of themselves and of me when they are exposed to this stuff day in day out? I wonder why it is that when they have always thought Barbie was stupid, and left her head down in the toy box, they are now, at nearly 6 and 8 years old, dragging her out and putting mini skirts on her?

What does it say to my son, despite the influence of a stroppy wannabe feminist mum?

I shudder to think of the impact it all has on their perceptions of themselves and each other.

I read last week of a NZ website set to publish the names of known paedophiles. It also blacklists porn sites through ISP notifications.

The guy who started it visited a Pokemon chat site his young son had been into and discovered that one click on a link there took him directly to graphic images of child porn. Aaarrgghh!

I used to think the animals who did this in their own neighbourhoods were as low as it gets but now there are few limits or boundaries to who can be violated by these images. It leaves me gasping with indignation.

I am quite sure that our grandparents thought society had nowhere to go in the depravity stakes when swimsuits barely covered the knee. Our parents thought it was pretty risque when Little Susie and her beau fell asleep at the drive-in and had to get home to her parents later than curfew.

I thought it was fantastic when I was 14 and I heard that Girls Just Want to Have Fun, but I am aghast when I hear my 7-year-old singing along to Shaggy chanting "Picture this, we were both butt naked banging on the bathroom floor. Is this just the way it goes?"

When my kids see this stuff they have to decide one of two things: either the values I try to model and teach them are wrong, or the endless media images are wrong.

I am not ashamed to say that my premiere defence strategy is to bring up three little cynics. I actively encourage them to see the advertisements that are thrust at them as efforts by companies to suck money out of our pockets.

I explain that sticking sugar to cornflakes doesn't cost the cereal company three times more than it does to make plain cornflakes, which is why I won't buy them.

I teach them to see things realistically, to question stupid stereotypes and rules no matter where they are decreed from, and to think for themselves.

I absolutely believe that everything we see stays with us, becomes a part of us. I am at a loss to understand how there can even be a debate over whether violent and explicit images affect kids.

And over and over I wince at an image that streaks past the eyes and ears and psyches of my children while I flounder around trying to protect them.

It won't be long until they are out there on their own, sharing the world with kids who have been unprotected and who, as a consequence, are desensitised to all that blackness, without conscience, sociopathic. And they'll be sharing the world with you, too.