Which is the True Picture of This Generation?

Some of you know of Wendy Shalit as the author of Girls Gone Mild, but did you also know that she wrote an article in the latest Wall Street Journal’s online Opinion Journal?

What I found interesting was that she talked about the difference between what she’s seeing in young ladies and what Dr. Phil claims is going on:

I lost count of the number of times that the children portrayed their parents as clueless, frumpy or “just old.” It’s “just two different generations,” the viewer was told again and again. One young woman suggested that her elders were “jealous” because their wrinkly bodies were no longer attractive.

Finally, stepping into this catfight of his own making, Dr. Phil mused that the kids feel that the grown-ups “need to get with the times.” He compared Megan, one 11-year-old girl who favored microminis, to his own college-age son, who sports a mohawk–and even instructed Megan’s parents to “lighten up” and give “her more leeway” since “she is a straight-A student.”

But by omitting all the younger, more wholesome role models from his show, Dr. Phil unwittingly revealed how much distortion is required to prop up this media-stoked controversy. The dichotomy between prudish elders and wild young’uns turns out to be, on closer examination, largely adult dogma. Yes, many young people are rebelling–but today they rebel, increasingly, by upholding high standards in the face of the low ones promoted around them.

This is what I’ve been reading more of too– a growing number of ladies that want their parents to hold a standard but the parents are failing them.