In a movie which I loved as a kid, "Freaky Friday," a mom and her adolescent daughter somehow switch bodies. The premise is, of course, quite funny and silly, making for all kinds of mischief as the woman in a child's body has to act like a kid, and the child in a mom's body has to act like a grown-up. Naturally, all is put back to rights — and the audience breathes a sigh of relief — before things really get out of control.
Not so in the real world. Today, it seems, we have a "Freaky Friday" without the happy ending. We force our children to "grow up" and adopt the knowing ways of the world at ever younger ages. Meanwhile, more and more we tolerate adults acting like selfish, immature, out-of control . . . children.
A recent Wall Street Journal article on gal parties for brides-to-be is a great example.
The Journal reported that one bride's celebration of her upcoming nuptials featured a "3-foot-tall erotic 'monument' made of Rice Krispies Treats. After noshing on that for a while . . . the 16 women piled into a shuttle bus, where they watched pornographic videos on the monitors while they were whisked away to a strip club." The bride's parents must be so proud.
Out are the days of the happy bridal shower, says the Journal. In are the days of raunchy, debauched, bachelorette parties.
At the celebration of the approaching wedding day of another young bride in New York, the women partygoers had to approach strange men in a bar and ask them for condoms they might have in their wallets. After that, the gals asked the men for their underwear, and proceeded to wear their prizes with relish. The scavenger hunt at the bar continued and, one suspects, continued to degenerate.
Exotic male dancers, condom paraphernalia, pornography of various stripes, raunchy sex games, various attempts at public sexual humiliation — what better way for these typically professional, successful gals to celebrate a wedding? From Las Vegas convention bureaus to television advertisers, the Journal reports, the raunchy bachelorette party is becoming a staple. As one such party organizer said, "I've been to many (parties) where the woman acts unlike her usual self, and I really believe it's become something where she feels she must outdo her husband."
Now that's a recipe for a successful marriage.
Some folks might welcome the "freeing" of a female sexual predator, a la "Sex in the City." Others might bemoan the switch from blushing bride to porno-bride, noting it's thanks to our feminist foremothers who gave women the green light for meaningless sex.
Either way it's more, because most women don't want meaningless sex. What they want is to mean something to a man. Which is why I find the whole porno-bride routine so revolting. It's all an act, a charade designed only to appeal to the lowest common denominator.
These women aren't turned on by eating phallic Rice Krispies Treats, or watching nude male dancers, or asking strange men for condoms. Nor would it be OK if they were, and no, I wouldn't give similarly behaving guys a free pass either.
But this is about the apparently new and certainly pathetic phenomenon of women who are turned on by acting like the most immature thing they can imagine — a media-created image of totally out-of-control, unrestrained, adolescent boys. It's like they are stooping as low as they can to taunt the guys with "anything you can do I can do better."
And they are doing it "better" all right.
Believe me I am not a prude. But these women are not getting in touch with some deep, raw sexual side by putting dollar bills in the g-string of a male stripper while they make lewd gestures at him. They are just the latest example of adults getting in touch with their juvenile side, or maybe their juvenile delinquent side, and being cheered on in the process.
And so it goes. We treat children like adults, while telling adults to get in touch with their inner child.
I agree with the commentator who said we need to get in touch with that inner child only to tell it to mature. So to all those silly porno-bride wannabes and their friends out there, I've got an idea for you: Plan a day at an Elizabeth Arden spa instead. Trust me. The "Freaky Friday" movie was cute, but it's a lot more fun being a grown-up.
Betsy Hart, a frequent commentator on CNN and the Fox News Channel, can be reached by e-mail at: mailtohart@aol.com.