Stop shaming these teens, teach them the good ways

Shaming teens for taking nude pictures is wrong and mistaken. FILE PHOTO

What you need to know:

  • I blame the adults, and especially those rabid feminists among us who have drilled it into the minds of young women that your body is yours.
  • Shaming teens for taking nude pictures is wrong and mistaken.

If you are a parent to a teenager, click on the hashtag IfikieWazazi at your own risk. It is bad.

Teenagers are now taking pictures of themselves while naked. And the pictures are disgusting.

The old me would have gone all the way to describe the photos in astounding detail, but since I am a reformed and recovering controversial columnist, I am going to stick with safe words such as “improper” and “immoral”, hoping you will understand the magnitude of dishonourableness we are talking about here.

Kenyans on social media, in their Solomon wisdom, decided that the best way to handle a scandal of this enormity would be to humiliate these teenagers by sharing these photos hence the hashtag IfikieWazazi (let it reach their parents).

VINDICTIVE
IfikieWazazi is not a call to morality for our teenagers. Let us call it what it is.

IfikieWazazi is a sadistic online bullying movement pushed by irresponsible adults.

It is a poorly thought-out, unfair and hypocritical crusade that seeks to humiliate teenagers and consequently destroying their lives for good.

Most importantly, IfikieWazazi is a criminal offence known as “revenge pornography” and I would like to challenge the police and relevant authorities to track down the people behind this hashtag, arrest them, shame them, charge them and jail them.

If the police can find the person conning MPs and sending them naked pictures within a week, then they should live up to their utumishi kwa wote (service to all) philosophy and track down the people responsible for this shameful trending topic.

FEMINISTS

And to the adults fanning this flame, shame on you. Those teenage girls are other people’s daughters, for God’s sake.

What value does sharing pictures of a naked teenager on your social media account add to your life?

And now, to the elephant in the room.

Why would a teenage girl, barely 20, strip naked and take pictures alongside a young man humiliating her?

I blame the adults, and especially those rabid feminists among us who have drilled it into the minds of young women that your body is yours, and you can do whatever you like with it, including taking naked pictures.

MORALS

These teenagers have grown up in a culture of toxic feminism that encourages women to “do whatever they want with their bodies”.

Not long ago, pseudo feminists encouraged women to post pictures of their naked bosoms to apparently “celebrate” their bodies because feminism is best practiced naked.

What followed was a barrage of pitch-black areolas and massive bosoms from women across the country in the name of “emancipation”.

Little wonder that one teenager fiercely supported her peers and said: "...if I decide to show off my body, like it is mine, I will show it off till the day I die…” Sounds familiar?

How do you expect teenagers to behave if all they see is pictures of perverted women masquerading as ‘feminists’ posting their naked bosoms in the name of equality?

NUDITY
I also remember as a fierce critic of women exposing themselves on social media, I was severely objurgated and accused of being a retrogressive “foot soldier of patriarchy”.

Now, the same people are chastising the poor teenagers for doing exactly what they do on social media; posting naked photos.

Secondly, we will be massively misguided to push toxic hashtags like IfikieWazazi thinking these teenagers will reform or even care at all.

It is hypocritical to admonish these teenagers for stripping and taking pictures, while we celebrate and tolerate women representative aspirants who take equally sexy pictures for their campaign billboards.

REINFORCEMENT

When we tolerate and reward women like that, who have shown beyond doubt that it is your behind and not your brains that will get you to the Senate, we are sending a strong message to teenagers that sex does not only sell, it takes you to high places.

Also, why are we vilifying young people for showing their nakedness, while we have a parliament full of nefarious charlatans who take pictures with their juvenile lovers?

Shaming teens for taking nude pictures is wrong and mistaken.

These little ones are a reflection of what they see on the billboards, on social media and in parliament.

If we do not want teenagers to strip in the streets and take pictures of themselves in their underwear, then let us start by changing the man in the mirror.

***
George Herbert Mead and his protégé Herbert Blumer, the key proponents of Symbolic Interactionism, argue that people interpret messages and assign meaning to events based on their “imputed meanings”.

This is where the idea of multiple realties stems from, that people derive meaning and make decisions based on their subjective understandings of their environment.

It occurs to me that my column last week was severely misunderstood because it was more confusing than the newly marked “red” lane on Thika road.

REBRAND

A column that was meant to set the record straight ended up scaring my readers out of their wits, thinking that I was finally heeding to the calls of my critics to terminate my column and leave the group altogether.

Contrary to reports by bogus bloggers, I am happy to report that I am absolutely, positively, not terminating this column - at least to the best of my knowledge, neither am I leaving Nation Media Group.

I will say what I meant to say in black and white. "City Girl" is all grown up now.

She is changing her content, expect her to be less controversial and more thoughtful. Simply, City Girl is here to stay, but she is rebranding.