Alison Garwood Jones

Paulina Mary Jean Gretzky

Someone grab the shepherd’s crook and pull this girl off stage.

©AGJ on PicMonkey.com

It’s too late to take back the message

It’s already out

And archived in perpetuity

I can’t even crop you,

You’ve taken over my web page too

If video killed the radio star,

The internet kidnapped daddy’s little girl

Sorry Wayne & Janet

You can’t get her back

That heart-to-heart about social media tanked

She’s back on Twitter

Hanging off the yo-yo boys,

Skating to where the puck is headed, not to where it’s been

And adding filmy veils on Instagram

This must be how Patty Hearst‘s parents felt

Dearest Paulina:

You choose this and you can never go back to that

Not when you’re female

Feminism can’t fix everything

It sounds so archaic, this idea that girls who do it are doomed

But something does die

Even in 2012

A sense of hope and potential

Of fresh starts

Of humanity prevailing

Poor judgement and its consequences used to be sent to the next town over,

Then reinvented in sweater sets somewhere else

Now poor judgement parties in that town’s central square

With cameras catching it from every angle

Wait, is that Charlie Sheen on the Jumbotron?

He knows you, y’ know

And he’s coming over to say Hi

…

The world gets in SUCH a frenzy over PYTs, doesn’t it?

Twas ever thus

It takes vigilance for a young woman to decide, then convince the rest of the world she’s real

Particularly when a Barbie physique comes naturally

It’s easier to cave into stereotypes when everyone wants it that way

It’s millions of them verses one of you

They look

You notice

It’s intoxicating

‘Who needs college or an unpaid internship or a serving job when I’m all this?’ you’re probably thinking

So you get to work at your first big job out of puberty

Posing

You sit up and arch

Lie back and pout

Aviators slipping down the slope of your nose

Or a pair of Buddy Holly’s when the look calls for something more academic

A few seconds pass and someone with your worst interests in mind hands you a pop song you can lipsync

You do your best to be your worst

Add a little dance number

Something metaphorical of you circling the drain in heels

They teach metaphors in college English classes, you know

Same with clichés

And dénouement,

That inevitable downslide after your peak is reached and we’ve all climaxed

Get your Wooos! in now while you still can

*For more on this “hot” topic, see this story in Maclean’s, “Outraged moms, trashy daughters,” by Anne Kingston. And for one of my earlier rants on the topic, go here.