Inappropriate Content

And so it begins. The stage where I have to monitor my daughter’s use of the internet for “inappropriate content”.
Like most eight year olds, my eldest daughter Ruby can boot up a computer, open a browser and search the web, but still struggles to butter her own toast. For a few years she’s been able to get online and look at cartoons and songs designed for pre-teens, and for a while she was actually doing maths and spelling games (it was like tricking her into learning!).
But because we are mean parents who limit her ‘screen time’, she still sees ‘playing on the internet’ as a bit of a treat. It is usually a win-win situation where she can go and amuse herself for a while and I can get something else done around the house. (Although, as that is usually hanging out washing or doing the dishes, I don’t see how I win?)
Anyway, last week she came home and announced that ‘Ke$ha’ was her new favourite singer. She hadn’t actually heard any of the songs, but her friend was right into it and therefore Ke$ha was cool and Ruby wanted to check it out.
Google to the rescue.
As most popular culture from the past decade has completely passed me by, I had no idea who Ke$ha was, but 6.5 million other people had already checked out the video for her song We R Who We R on YouTube.
I could have ignored this butchering of the language, but when dozens of scantily clad women wearing too much make-up came on and started gyrating and feeling themselves up while giving the camera a sexually suggestive look, I reached over and shut it down.
Not surprisingly there were howls of protest.
To her credit she responded well to my little chat about it not being appropriate for her age and she suggested a compromise; minimise the screen so she could still hear the song and print the lyrics so she could sing along.
Okay. At this point I hadn’t really paid any attention to the lyrics, but I now know the chorus goes:
Got that glitter on my eyes / Stockings ripped all up the side / Looking sick and sexy-fied / So let’s go-oh-oh, let’s go!
Ruby was singing along to this when her mum came home and all hell broke loose. Lyrics were confiscated, there were tears and shouting.
I can’t wait for the teenage years.