TamraWatch Your Language!!
June 18th 2008 11:32
Parents fight back
"Hey look everyone: W-a-n-t l-o-n-g-e-r l-a-s-t-ing S-E-X!!!" and that's from the six year old in the back seat. Am I alone in being thoroughly OVER the billboard phenom lately that sees inappropriate material being advertised 100 feet high for the kids to read, mimic, repeat endlessly to friends and family? Sex is fine, but try to describe longer lasting sex and why you don't ask grandma about it, to your five year old.
And that's the least of the problematic billboards. Up the road we've currently got one that has 'bastard' with only a few letters replaced, we've got 'bugger' up there frequently, and 'bums' attached to angels and toilet paper. Nice.
How are we meant to keep our kid's mouths relatively clean when the advertising industry and our local communities by their inaction, are hell bent on doing the reverse? Some might say, hey chill, it's not a problem, they learn it off the other kids at school. But my argument is when is it ever great to hear offensive language or swear words being issued from a young child? I think the cute factor wears off after the first utterance when they're three. Then it's an all out effort to get them to stop saying things that just don't sound right coming from the mouths of babes.
So now we have billboards, for all the kids to see saying it's fine to say these things - it's up there, it must be okay, right? Isn't parenting hard enough without having to try and address the constant double standards introduced by our fellow (overpaid) grown ups?
The other thing about swearing, is no matter how good it might feel to use the odd word when you're furious or you've hit your finger with a hammer, it's just plain lazy. I've been reading the excellent Don Watson's Death Sentence recently and I've become a convert to clear, concise language that says what it means and means what it says. There shouldn't be any reduction of flavour, colour, tone and novelty, in fact, bring it on. But swear words are just laziness, a reliance on shock value with nothing to say and kids dependence on them is just as bad if not worse than adults. We're losing the delight, the richness and complexity of our language and reducing it to blandisms. Yeah right, f**k off. Swear words have their place, but they're drastically over-used, introduced in places I question and to be honest I'm completely sick of driving past those wretched posters.
Where the bloody hell are you... how proud we all are of that slogan meant to reflect the tone of us as as a people and our home land.
Well, it might be just me but if you're sick of them too, let the big guys know how hopeless their billboards are. They might just have to write some witty, interesting ads instead. Tamra x
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