The past week or so has seen seismic shifts in the world of showbiz, as iconic faces have passed onto better places. No longer will my children grow up in a world where David Bowie will take centre stage as a multitude of imaginative personas – giving the message: if you wear face-paint with conviction everyone will roll with it! Fortunately, both Rickman and Bowie ensured their work remain timeless and immortalised – at the flick of a switch I can show my children the importance of questioning if there’s life on Mars and the beauty of a man with eyeliner. But unlike many articles I’ve read in the past few days mourning the loss of Professor Snape and our Goblin King, it is in fact the “passing” of an institution that has me most concerned for the world my children are now going to grow up in.
This month saw the very last Playboy published with nude images. This has me concerned! As a mother of boys, it is something you have to accept from an early age that they will stop wanting mummy-cuddles, discover hair products, become teenagers, probably not want to shower for weeks on end, have bedrooms that reek of a Lynx vs smelly socks cocktail and that age-old rite of passage – discover porn. It is inevitable, a vital learning curve and something that has aided generations in their sexual exploration. But I look back on a time, not THAT long ago, when the worst a mother could fear was that her growing lad would discover dad’s hidden stash of Playboy and have a quick perve over a full bosom and a centre-page fanny. In hindsight, this was wholesome porn. Playboy themselves have admitted that their nudity seems relatively pointless, when at the click of a mouse and a few skirts around the BT parental blocks, every fetish, perversion and insalubrious activity known to mankind can be stumbled upon.
I only know this story too well – when a few months back, after being alerted by Mr Only Girl that one of the boys seemed a bit “withdrawn”, we checked said boy’s iPad history. What did we find? A myriad of searches for “Sherrill Coles boobies”. Yes, despite our ironclad, internet parental controls and firm belief that they were more interested in football – we were forced to have a somewhat premature “chat” about searching rude things on the internet. Although, as 21st century parents we were careful not to associate any shame with the perfectly natural adult past time, and ensured that “curious boy” remained anonymous – instead going for the broad approach of talking to all boys (bar the 9 month old!) at the same time, with a general stroke of what is and isn’t appropriate internet browsing. I can still hear the giggles now! Perhaps we may have ended with a mild threat that the police were watching our internet searches for rude words for the foreseeable future – this seemed to do the job, for now!
So after 60 years of fantastic fannies, beautiful bottoms and tremedous titties – Playboy’s leaving mother’s of boys in the lurch. We now have to trust that by the time our lovely, little boys reach the tender age of exploration, we have done everything we can to subtly guide them on an approved, somewhat mainstream, sexual path – and that by 16, the worst they’re still searching for is “Sherill Coles boobies”!
