Greg beat me to the good jokes, but this is really the funniest thing anyone's ever tried to pass off in the name of fearmongering. Your favorite scarecrow and mine, Michelle Malkin:
Actresses Angelina Jolie and Christina Ricci did it. So did Courtney Love and the late Princess Diana. . . . The destructive practice has been depicted in films targeting young girls and teens (such as "Thirteen"). There is even a new genre of music—"emo"—associated with promoting the cutting culture.Oh, that kills me—that slays me. If I think about it, I can get worked up about Malkin calling a severe impulse control disorder a "new teen craze," but I'm just not sure I can get beyond that emo business.
These guys will surely play The Promise Ring in the series of Oxygen and Lifetime cutting dramas that Malkin no doubt launched with this column. Hide your daughters! And what about Sunny Day Real Estate? So bad.
Posted by Kriston at February 24, 2005 9:15 AMMan, and all this time I was blaming my cutting addiction on my old Cutting Crew records. Rites of Spring, this all your fault!
Posted by: Drew at February 24, 2005 10:27 AMHow can an R-rated movie be "targeted" at young girls?
Posted by: matty at February 24, 2005 2:46 PMthat's unreal. please don't tell me that anyone's taking that seriously.
Posted by: amy at February 24, 2005 3:03 PM(the emo part, not the cutting).
Posted by: amy at February 24, 2005 3:04 PMFunny, I usually cut myself to classical music.
Posted by: BTD Steve at February 24, 2005 5:30 PMMan, and all this time I was blaming my cutting addiction on my old Cutting Crew records. Rites of Spring, this all your fault!
This warms my heart. Like you I learned to use "emo" to mean, more or less, "punk or hardcore with emotionally raw lyrical content." But, Drew, it turns out that what the kids these days call emo is stuff like Cat Power. If you tell 'em that guys from Fugazi used to be in an emo band they get really confused.
Posted by: bza at February 24, 2005 6:35 PM'If you tell 'em that guys from Fugazi used to be in an emo band they get really confused.'
True, that. It's tragic that girls younger than I are getting depressed. Did I miss out on a crucial rite of passage? Maybe, maybe.
Posted by: Alia at February 24, 2005 9:38 PMI am a psychotherapist who sees a lot of adolescent girls, and it really is amazing how many of them are cutters. Not too many years ago, cutting (and its variants) was considered a classic symptom of Borderline Personality Disorder among males and females, and indeed, that is usually the context in which I saw it. But now it is part and parcel of all kinds of depression and adolescent female angst. It does seem to have gained a kind of popularity. The majority of cutters I've seen, though, have been careful not to inflict serious wounds.
Posted by: Diane at February 25, 2005 12:55 PMWhat about 80s college rock and 90s indie? Malkin is missing such pro-cutting anthems like Barbara Manning's "Scissors", Throwing Muses "Delicate Cutters", and Bauhaus's "Stigmata Martyr." Gen-Y is getting a bum rap!
Posted by: Chris Cagle at February 26, 2005 5:44 PM... oh, and don't forget the Smiths - "scratch my name on your arm with a fountain pen..."
Posted by: Chris Cagle at February 26, 2005 5:47 PMAlmost everything written about teenagers these days feels vaguely voyeuristic and cheap thrillish. Perhaps there should be a moratorium on people's writing about teenagers once they themselves have passed a Certain Age.
Of course, that might force a little too much honesty about exactly how grave a problem teenage sex is, as the 20somethings tasked with the teen beat reveal that they don't see what the big deal is. "Yeah, OK, teach abstinence if you want, but a little sex didn't hurt any of us..."
Though this may be a selection problem. Perhaps the 25 year olds who are still dealing with their herpes, abortion trauma and seven year old kids won't be the ones writing the articles.
Posted by: PG at March 1, 2005 2:02 AM