I've been a mom long enough to have gone through the negative kid pop role models from Madonna to Brittany and Miley and now Justin. Brittany, Miley and Justin started out innocently enough but their image-bearers thought they needed ah...more sizzle. Time to toggle the MP3 player "off" if you want your little ones not to grow up too fast.
With Madonna, we knew what we were getting up front. Give her credit for dressing an entire generation in lacy underwear and at least being honest about her desire to shock. I have to say she's got a pretty good set of pipes.
With the girls following in her footsteps, they jack-knifed off their starter paths much to the dismay of parents who hoped their kids could enjoy some simple 'teeny bopper' music. Brittany nearly killed herself trying to find her identity and became a regular mention on national news for awhile. Miley decided she was grown up and sultry by the age of 15 with the support of her parents and disappointed another batch of kids and parents who had hoped she might remain untainted by celebrity.
Along comes this kid on You Tube. Squeaky clean who makes it so big so fast we couldn't even blink. I wondered how long he would last or when he would trip. Sadly, it has come too soon. He isn't 'bringing sexy back' like the girls, but he is bringing back the sagging 80's pants. I saw a picture of him recently and his belt was around his upper thighs, his boxers hugging his fully exposed tush.
This boy-man is now captured screaming at the very press that made him famous, getting in trouble and we hear stories of his entitled public behavior more than anything else. (Except for that very odd, very studded yellow hat.)
Like the others mentioned in this missive, he too has a great voice. He might even be a good entertainer. (Oh wait, I think I saw him grabbing his crotch over and over during a performance on TV. Urg.)
With entertainers, isn't what they do when they are off the stage what really impacts us? For me, that can make or break whether I can watch or listen again...depending on what they are doing. Are they giving to others? Do they have a mission? Or are they just about themselves? We are all clumsy humans, but if someone is in any way trying to make one small corner of the world better for others, I'm going to applaud.
Recently Justin visited the Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam. Anne Frank was a teen who hid from the Nazis for two years during the Holocaust before being captured and killed in a concentration camp along with six others also in hiding. Justin was in-between performances, visited the museum and then wrote something like "Hopefully she would've been a belieber" in the guest book. Since it was this rich young man, the comment went viral once the museum published this on its Facebook page. He was dissed world-wide. (The first part of his comment read, "Truly inspiring to be able to come here. Anne was a great girl.")
Jewish author Yvette Alt Miller published comments to the effect saying that at least he was attempting to better himself by even going to the museum. She has a point. Justin didn't have to do that. He put himself in a place of expanding his knowledge base. The second part of the comment is immature, certainly. But what if he was uncomfortable and didn't know what to do? After all, this guy hasn't had the luxury of staying a kid or being parented into adulthood. He's been a figure, not a person. He's been shorted a number of developmental years at home in exchange for fame and wealth. Now he has to figure out some of the basics in front of the entire world. I don't know about you, but when I've done my stupid things it's been in front of a much smaller and more forgiving audience.
Hey, I might even be a belieber myself. If he can just sing and stop trying to be a combination of Michael Jackson and Vanilla Ice and try being...Justin.
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