Raise your hand if you have ever watched Skins.
Raise your hand if you have ever watched the American version of Skins.
Now, I'm not going to ask you to give me your opinion of which is better. I don't want to hear your opinion of which is better. I'm not here to compare them, I'm not here to ridicule or shame one over the other, and I'm not here to discuss how much the American one inherently "sucks" because it isn't the British one.
Because a) I don't care and b) I don't think that the American one is any less a good show.
Because it isn't about how original it is.
Because it isn't about which actors are better.
I'm not writing about how awesome Skins is right now, I'm writing about this whole "Child Pornography" bullshit.
So you know what they say about porn?
I Know It When I See It.
That phrase came most famously from the Jacobellis v. Ohio Supreme Court Case of 1964, as said by Justice Potter Stewart as a concurring opinion regarding the possible obscenity in The Lovers, the film in question.
What she said, to be exact:
"I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description ["hard-core pornography"]; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that."
While over the years it fell out of favor as an argument, it still holds true.
When it comes to porn, you know it when you see it. I do, at least, but I can't speak for the dozens of horrified housewives who are turning to Child Pornography as a defense of their fear of this little bitty TV show called Skins.
Sit down and think about it for a moment.
Have you watched Skins before? Either version will do, just answer me. Have you watched Skins before? If so, and if it does fall into the realm of Child Pornography, did you know it when you saw it?
No?
Yes?
Maybe?
I first heard the I know it when I see it argument during a politics class my senior year of high school. We were talking about court cases and went through dozens, including the Jacobellis v. Ohio case. We looked at other cases of student rights and so on and so forth, things we "cared" about (not that most of my classmates cared, or seemed to understand), and do you want to know the unfortunate thing?
Well, unfortunate for groups who like scare tactics anyways...
It means that there are more well informed teenagers out there.
I'm not sitting here saying you have to like or even be comfortable with the content of Skins. I'm simply saying that one must identify what they're uncomfortable with.
I can tell you what made my parents uncomfortable when they endeavored to watch episodes with me, my mother of the original show and my father of the American version.
My mother thought they swore a lot. Not too much, just a lot, and that made her uncomfortable. I failed to mention that both my friends and myself swore more so and more colorfully of our own devices both at school and when we were hanging out away from the mandated educational institution. The American version censors - often even with a black bar over the actors/actresses mouth - most of those. While I find this unnecessary and actually a little bit rude to the viewer, they've cleaned it up because MTV didn't WANT to piss people off.
My mother also thought there was an awful lot of drug use. Someone was always popping a pill, sparking a spliff or drinking something of questionable origin. But she liked that there were - in a long way, a round about way - always consequences. Sid failing his coursework, Effy's overdose, Chris' eventual death and Cassie's inability to deal with the real world were all drug-related problems.
My father on the other hand was initially uncomfortable because Tea was a lesbian. Yes, my father was the brain who decided to get into Skins US while I was watching Tea's episode. Somehow, sitting in his living room while Tea and Betty came home from Northern Soul to Tea's house, all over each other, was more awkward than when my father asked me how many times I've had sex with my boyfriend. Not because it was graphic sex, not because it in any way felt like child pornography, but because he called lesbianism gross.
He then started to complain about the sex in general, the drugs in general, the partying in general. He said that it wasn't anything like real teenage life, and he claimed he knew this because he was a teenager once. For reference, my father turned 60 last June. I'm sure growing up going to Catholic school with strict Arabic parents in the late 1960's life was a bit more mellow. But it's not the late 1960's and the cast don't attend a Catholic school, it's 2011 and I don't think you'd believe half of the things I witnessed during the four years I spent attending public high school in Southern Oregon.
And I don't even live in or near a city. My town's population is less than 30 thousand. The town I finished high school in, just thirty minutes away, had an almost equal population. The largest employer around here is the school district.
Sex, drugs, drinking, partying... stupid choices are part of teenagerdom.
I'm turning 19 in nearly exactly a month and I'm still making stupid choices, generally intentionally and fully aware of and regardless of the potential consequences, not because I "saw it on some show" like my father claims teens do, but because it's fun.
The draw of "fun" is something no one really likes to talk about, is it?
And the willingness of teenagers to face consequences after the fact for the sake of fun is both concerning and my absolute favorite thing about my generation.
But what it all comes down to is the fact that Skins isn't some outlandish excessive view of what goes on.
Yes, they exaggerate it, but not by thinking about the most insane situations they can put the kids in. They rely on a panel of teens with crazy lives to give them feedback and ideas.
Half of what teenagers do in their free time is child pornography.
Get used to it.
But when it comes to Skins, child pornography isn't the first thing that comes to mind.
And when you think about child pornography, teenagers in completely covered sex scenes generally shown in montage form on an MTV program about the trials and tribulations of real teen life DOESN'T come to mind.
Child pornography is the big, scary, horrible monster that comes to mind as young children being sexually exploited. It's photos of naked or half naked little kids that should be off climbing trees or falling off their bikes.
While in reality the phrase child pornography encompasses any minor in a sexually suggestive situation, we're living in a world that needs to look into redefining the phrase anyways. The phrase is currently tossed around regarding things that were never an issue when it was first brought up. Teenagers sending each other scandalous photos are being pegged as sex offenders because it's "child pornography". It's a bigger issue than I want to try to defend, and I'm here to talk Skins, but it's something that everyone needs to keep in mind.
Because honestly?
If you compare Skins US to what these kids are doing to get in trouble with the law, less is seen on Skins.
We saw a naked butt while Chris ran down the street in his centric episode.
We saw Tea and Betty have sex... but we didn't actually see them have sex. We saw them laying together, making out. We saw their faces, their shoulders. We didn't see anything explicit.
Tea and Tony had sex at Northern Soul and what did we see? A girl in a dress with a guy in slacks and a jacket, blocked by the back of a couch, until Tea started laughing and pushed him away because she didn't like it since she was a lesbian.
Michelle and Tony are planning to have sex in Chris' room and Stan walks in, and what do we see? Michelle's bare shoulders and back while she's otherwise covered with a sheet. There's the point where we *know* she shows Stan her breasts to get his opinion, but we don't see it. We know that Tony's probably naked, but we don't see it. We see him in bed behind Michelle kissing her neck and shoulders. And then the scene is over.
There's even the scene in Cadie's episode where she seduces Michelle's mothers boyfriend because she's mad at Stan and highly unstable and we see her from behind with just her bikini bottoms on until Stan gives her his shirt.
Hell, even with the amount of masturbation in the show, we never really see anything. Hands under blankets while we watch faces. Hands off screen while we watch faces. Generally with strangely awkward overtones because, honestly, what isn't slightly awkward about masturbating?
But even though all of this goes on in the show, we don't SEE anything and that's the point I'm trying to make.
To those of you who have watched porn, think about it. Does Skins even slightly compare, graphically speaking?
I can't make you agree with me if you're determined not to, but hopefully if you can take thirty seconds to consider alternatives to freaking out and calling it porn then I've made my point.
This isn't a show about sex.
It isn't a show about drugs or alcohol or parties.
It's a show about friends, families, and navigating life as a teenager.
Yes it can look like a caricature of teen life, it's still true. It's based in fact. It's based in awkward. It's based in underhanded. It's based in scared. It's based in love. It's based in bad choices. It's based in consequences. It's based in worst-case and best-case and the messy reality that's teenage life.
What it isn't based in is the Child Pornography industry.
Parents are, I've found, afraid of Skins. Not just the American version, but also the British version.
Overwhelmingly, they don't want to believe that it could be true because they don't want to believe that it could be similar to what their children do in their free time.
But don't blind yourself to it. If you're afraid that your teen might "get ideas" (which we don't, technically, since trust me, we've considered it all long before the writers of Skins get around to creating shows about it) or if you're afraid your teen has already gotten the ideas and is off doing something, then sit down WITH THEM and watch Skins.
Watch it without freaking out about the drugs, the alcohol, the sex, the supposed unreality. Watch it and talk about it.
Are you afraid that your kid, like Sid (UK) and Stan (US) in the Tony centric episodes (Season 1 Episode 1), will be talked into buying massive quantities of weed and get in deep with his dealer?
Ask. Don't judge, just ask. Say, "if that was you, what would you do?" or "Do you know anyone who has had that happen?"
Are you afraid that your lesbian daughter, like Tea, is having random sex with a laundry list of girls?
Ask. Don't judge, just ask.
How about being afraid that your emotionally unstable daughter is, like Cadie, giving away her pills?
Ask. Don't judge, just ask.
Anyone seeing a theme here?
Skins is a catalyst for conversation. Pushing it away, swamping it with scary labels and controversy, is just cutting you off from a tool that you could use to keep tabs on your kids.
No amount of lecturing, no amount of rules, no amount of the scary parent act will get a kid to stay out of trouble. I kept out of it until I turned eighteen so that my consequences would be mine to bare and I wouldn't have to see my mother deal with them, but I'm a rare breed. Conversation is the only real way to help your kids navigate. You can't come at it from that authoritative place, that high horse, that supposed moral superiority. Just talk.
I'm not the only one telling you to just talk to your kids.
How many advertising companies put together anti-everything adverts that ask you to just talk to your kids?
So before we try to squish Skins out of existence, how about we try to look at it as a way to disseminate information. How about every parent that's pushing back against it so hard has to sit down and watch it and instead of just taking it as sex, drugs and alcohol, they look at the actually story line.
How about they try to have these big, scary, important conversations with their kids.
How about they just give it a chance?
And to those of you who don't care that they're mad about it, or to those of you who want to give it a chance, Skins is new every Monday at 10. It's also available online here.
Skins has done a lot of good. It's given us lesbian and gay role models that we can be proud of because they're very real. It's shown us how to overcome big scary situations like dead friends, dead parents, over medication, teen pregnancy, cheating, lying, violence, drug abuse, anorexia and other issues that other shows are too politically correct to talk about.
So don't knock it til you try it.
-