TheWRITEaddiction.com

I can hardly listen to the radio anymore. The first time my kid asked me about Beyonce’s surfboard, or when she started singing along to Usher’s “Good kisser”I knew in had a problem. Thankfully, I have a few CDs above my visor that are kid-friendly.

We can’t watch primetime network television together as a family. The time slot once occupied by The Cosby Show and A Different World is now filled by Grey’s Anatomy. Recently, I learned the terms “triceratops” and “Eiffel tower” from TV shows that come on before my children’s bedtime on Network TV, not Cinemax (where I got most of my sex “education”.

But my kid isn’t always in my car or in my home. I can’t shield her from every sexually explicit reference. I have to take the questions as they come, (And boy, are they coming.) and guide her as best as I can.

I surely dread the day when she or one of her siblings walks in on mommy and daddy. (It’s bound to happen one day.) But I’m more concerned about the images she sees every day. But my biggest concern is my own overexposure.

You see, I didn’t notice how hyper-sexual our culture had become, until my babies came along. The above song-lyrics were background music to my every day life. I had become desensitized to the amount of sexually explicit material surrounding me. I could delete the spam emails promising to enhance my bedroom skills. I could cancel my cable subscription and still be inundated with images of half-naked men and women. And though I have no 2-Live Crew in my music catalog, songs I clearly remember dancing to in the 1990s are completely inappropriate. Not even sporting events are safe. Think about half-time performances. Heck! Commercials aren’t even safe.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not anti-sex. I am a mother of three, after all. But as a mother of three, I am concerned that what once was supposed to be a beautiful private experience between two consenting adults has become public fodder, leaving all of us overexposed.

Mama Radford