Razor Blades

Courtesy o' the Llamas, we have Michelle Malkin on cutting:

Have you heard of "cutting"? If you're a parent, you'd better read up. "Cutting" refers to self-mutilation -- using knives, razor blades or even safety pins to deliberately harm one's own body -- and it's spreading to a school near you.

Actresses Angelina Jolie and Christina Ricci did it. So did Courtney Love and the late Princess Diana. On the Internet, there are scores of websites (with titles such as "Blood Red," "Razor Blade Kisses" and "The Cutting World") featuring "famous self-injurers," photos of teenagers' self-inflicted wounds and descriptions of their techniques. 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.

In Britain, health care researchers estimate that one in 10 teenagers engages in addictive self injury. According to psychiatrist Gary Litovitz, medical director of Dominion Hospital in Falls Church, Va., the growing trend here in America has alarmed school guidance counselors around the country.{...}

Go read the whole thing.

While Malkin is quick to lay the blame of this alarming practice at the feet on Hollywood, I, just like Robbo, think she's way off the mark. The girl referred to in the piece is a child of divorce and is no doubt seeking attention. Cutting is just the hip way to do this.

When I was that age, well, sleeping around or getting obnoxiously drunk on a regular basis was the way to garner the attention of one's parents. And yes, at age fourteen, people in my eighth grade class were sleeping around and getting loaded regularly. This was in in 1985. The phrase "bl0w j0b" had entered into my lexicon when I was twelve, two years earlier.

And I went to Catholic school.

Yet, since those are commonly accepted activities for teenagers nowadays and there is no stigma attached to them, well, the kids have to look elsewhere for outrageous things to do to make mommy and daddy pay attention. I never drank in high school or slept around: my parents would have killed me if I had done either. Never mind the peer pressure, or the fact I knew I wasn't ready for either activity, the main reason I never did those things was because I didn't want to have to sit and be yelled at by my father for days. And, wow, can my father ever bellow. You don't want to sit through it. Trust me on this one. That was enough to keep me in line.

What's surprising to me about this article is that Malkin took the cheap and easy way out. She pulls out her old battle ax once again and blames Hollywood for this new and disturbing trend. Well, ok, but it seems to me that she missed the greater opportunity to make some points about how society encourages parents to handle teenage rebellion today.

Teenagers are going to rebel. That's just a fact of life. I did it. I'm sure you did, too. There is a point in every adolescent's life where whatever yoke a teenager is burdened with, whether it be light or heavy, becomes a bit much to take. It seems to me they will find things to rebel against, no matter what. This is the time when a teenager is preparing themselves to enter the adult world. Rebelling against authority is part of the game. It is an age where you're figuring out your capabilities as a human being; where you test your limits. If you have no limits to test against, you're going to find new things to do, like cutting.

I'm sure you know what I'm talking about when I claim those limits have been removed. In an effort to lessen the damage of teenagedom, some parents try to make those years safe for their kids, like they were trying to childproof the cabinet under the kitchen sink. They're going to drink, lets buy the beer so they don't have to proposition someone at the 7-11. Let them drink at the house, so they're not out on the roads. They're going to have sex, let's get them set up for birth-control. Let's tell them about HIV/AIDS and STD's, so they'll use a condom. Let's let them use their bedrooms, so they're not doing it in the backseat of a car. And so on and so forth. The "they're going to do it anyway" reasoning has led to activities like cutting, in my humble, non-kid-owning opinion. When you're a teenager and you feel the need to rebel, and your parents take away the commonly accepted ways of showing that rebellion, well, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that the kids are going to find other ways to rebel.

Now, like I said above, I don't have kids. I could be way the hell off the mark here. This is just what I've observed with friends and family. I'm not saying that trying to keep your kids safe is a bad thing. It's a scary world out there and I can understand the desire to protect and defend. But I believe there is a point where plain old fashioned parental disapproval has to come into the equation if you want your children to become productive adults. After all, if your parents tell you that you can't go to a party without parental supervision and they're going to keep you in the house that night as a result, if you're a teenager you're going to stew about that, aren't you? You'll be pissed and frustrated, and you might think of all the things that you can't do because you're a teenager...and you can't wait until you grow up and move out of the house so you can do what you want to do. Right? That was my common complaint when I was a kid. I couldn't wait until I got out of there so I could start living my life. I wanted to grow up. I wanted to make my own decisions. I wanted to be an adult. My parents lived up to their end of the bargain. They disapproved and they showed it. I whined and complained, but I also grew up, too. Given the extended adolescence of some young adults today, you have to think that if only their parents had said 'no' once in a while, they'd be much more productive adults.

Malkin missed the bigger picture here. She laid it all on Christina Ricci's shoulders, because, I have to think, they were a convenient place to put her angst. If anything, good ol' Wednesday Addams has proved my point about teenagers finding new ways to test themselves. Her comments go a long ways toward showing exactly what the problem is.

Posted by Kathy at February 23, 2005 12:10 PM