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Is This Creepy?

In the clip above, the country music star Carrie Underwood gives a blushing 12 year old boy his first-ever kiss. It’s really sweet. If a male country music star gave a 12 year old girl her first kiss in exactly the same way, it would be creepy. Right? Why is that? I can’t explain why […]

In the clip above, the country music star Carrie Underwood gives a blushing 12 year old boy his first-ever kiss. It’s really sweet.

If a male country music star gave a 12 year old girl her first kiss in exactly the same way, it would be creepy.

Right? Why is that? I can’t explain why I feel that way, but boy, I sure do.

Many years ago, I went with a friend to see the film “Rambling Rose.” The title character is a ditzy housekeeper in Depression-era Georgia, who confuses sex with love. She seduces the young teenage boy of the household, and deflowers him. It’s played for comedy in the film. I was laughing about it on the way back to our car, and my friend said, “If that was a grown man doing that to a girl the same age, you wouldn’t laugh. You would be horrified.”

True. It wasn’t that I approved of what happened — the deflowering, I mean — but only that it didn’t strike me as a huge big deal. I mean, yes, it was wrong, and if that happened to my son, I’d have been mad as hell. But it wasn’t, to my way of thinking, the catastrophe it would have been had the kid been a virgin girl, and the sexual initiator been a grown man. That would have meant ass-whippin’ time for the man.

I still believe that, by the way. Is this a double standard without rational foundation? You tell me. If it is a groundless double standard, it’s one held by many people. Everyone in the audience cheered at the sweet gesture by Carrie Underwood. If a male country star had done that for a 12 year old girl, they would not have reacted that way.

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