Moralismo ianque

Tenho vários rascunhos sobre como estou ficando velho. talvez por estar ficando velho, ainda não deixaram de ser rascunhos. Será que um dos sintomas de ficar velho é ficar meio moralista? Acho que não, provavelmente sem rep tive algo de moralista. Sei lá.

Neste artigo do New York Times, a colunista fica horrorizada ao testemunhar um show de talentos em uma escola chique em Long Island. As meninas são da sexta ou sétima série, e fazem coreografias iguaizinhas às de Janet Jackson em seus videoclips. Rebolando, rasteando no chão, cantando ou sussurando "não pare, não pare, estou tão estimulada, me sinto tão pornô”.

Que beleza. Sou um véio coroca mesmo. Pelo menos os ianques ainda questionam isso. Por aqui, as Tatis e Sheilas rolam soltas. Vamos lá:

(...)
The scene is a middle school auditorium, where girls in teams of three or four are bopping to pop songs at a student talent show. Not bopping, actually, but doing elaborately choreographed re-creations of music videos, in tiny skirts or tight shorts, with bare bellies, rouged cheeks and glittery eyes.

They writhe and strut, shake their bottoms, splay their legs, thrust their chests out and in and out again. Some straddle empty chairs, like lap dancers without laps. They don’t smile much. Their faces are locked from grim exertion, from all that leaping up and lying down without poles to hold onto. “Don’t stop don’t stop,” sings Janet Jackson, all whispery. “Jerk it like you’re making it choke. ...Ohh. I’m so stimulated. Feel so X-rated.” The girls spend a lot of time lying on the floor. They are in the sixth, seventh and eighth grades. (...)

My parental brain rebels. Suburban parents dote on and hover over their children, micromanaging their appointments and shielding them in helmets, kneepads and thick layers of S.U.V. steel. But they allow the culture of boy-toy sexuality to bore unchecked into their little ones’ ears and eyeballs, displacing their nimble and growing brains and impoverishing the sense of wider possibilities in life.

There is no reason adulthood should be a low plateau we all clamber onto around age 10. And it’s a cramped vision of girlhood that enshrines sexual allure as the best or only form of power and esteem. It’s as if there were now Three Ages of Woman: first Mary-Kate, then Britney, then Courtney. Boys don’t seem to have such constricted horizons. They wouldn’t stand for it — much less waggle their butts and roll around for applause on the floor of a school auditorium.