Women’s social issues have been treated in programs geared towards teens for ages. Remember when DJ Tanner went on a crash diet so she could look good in a bathing suit, and then passed out on a stairclimber?

On Saved by the Bell, Elizabeth Berkley gained pre-Showgirls notoriety, for the famous Jessie Spano Caffeine Pill Breakdown (I’m so excited! I’m so scared!). Of course, Full House and SBTB were heart-warming sitcoms, where everyone learns their lesson in the end, and move away from their self-destructive behavior, never to mention anorexia, bullimia, or drug abuse ever again.

The breakout Canadian teen sensation, Degrassi, which airs in the US on The N network, covers a variety of teen issues, without the cavity-inducing sugary sweetness of the stuff we grew up on. Among the kids who dabble in drugs, alcohol, eating disorders, and bi-polar disorder, Degrassi introduced the world to Ellie Nash, who is a cutter.

I’m too old for Degrassi, but I don’t care. I’m pretty much obsessed with it. The best part about the show is that it doesn’t sweep the issues under the rug at the end of each 22-minute episode. And because the writers have the balls to “Go There.” I mean, come on: we all know the caffeine-pill incident was a stand-in for a harder drug, like speed or something, but hard drugs don’t exist at Bayside High.

I remember when the cutting craze swept my middle school. I have no idea who started it, or why it caught on, but at my school, cutting was the iPhone of the late 90’s. Read More »

Word on the iNet is celebrity hanger-on Gayimus Maximus Perez Hilton is designing his own clothing line, which debuts on June 6th. The line will be available at Hot Topic, and will be called…Perez Hilton for Hot Topic. Yow!

Though I’ve only seen a few items from the PH(Squared)T collection, it appears that is will consist of small t-shirts, skinny jeans, hoodies, rubber band bracelets, flip flops, sneakers…basically, all the cheap sh*t that a fifteen-year-old girl or sexually confused boy needs to trick out their wardrobe for the big Fall Out Boy concert.

In an online video promoting the line, Perez calls out Lauren Conrad and Heidi Montag on their own overpriced, mundane garbage lines and says that, unlike theirs, his will be very affordable and appealing to the demographic that his website caters to.

That said, I kind of have to give Mr. Hilton props. While I certainly won’t be sprinting in to Hot Topic on that fateful Friday in June, the line’s hot pink patterned pants and cerulean blue t-shirts featuring guns and sparkles and rainbows and hearts (Fact! All on one shirt!) look to be pretty much everything a fine young piece of prepubescent mall trash could hope for. Read More »

So I’ve got to vent. Being a writer and all, it’s always easier for me to vent in the form of a letter, so here you go:

Dear America,

Are you a pedophile? If you could just admit that you are one, then I would at least understand your sick obsession with underage Hollywood girls and their bodies. But since you’re going to pretend like the way you view bodies and sex is normal, I have no choice but to be angry.

Miley Cyrus is supposed to feel badly about the pictures she’s recently taken. One set of pictures features her in her underwear. Another set features her showing her…her…disgustingly inappropriate…BACK.

So what if the girl took some pictures of herself in her underwear? How is that really any different from her going to the beach and having pictures taken of her in her bathing suit? Oh…let me guess…it’s about the context of it all. A girl showing her tummy and thighs when she’s NOT post-ocean and in public is out of line.

And so what if she was wearing a sheet in a photo shoot? Did her back and right arm really offend you or give your children nightmares? Read More »