As a guy, I had some difficulty relating to the movie at first--"stupid girls" was my first reaction. However, parallels kept occurring to me as the movie progressed. I can remember wanting to be cool, tough, and a ladies' man. In middle school, I started hanging out with skate punks and stoners--I became one. My home life was way more secure than Tracy's, but I guess I had issues to deal with nonetheless. Older stoner dudes were my role models (pathetic, I know). I wanted to be just like them--tough, grisly, cool, with sexy stoner chicks clinging to me. There was this pressure constantly in my mind to become that image. In a way, I think it was like the pressure felt by Tracy and by Connie from Oates' short story. It drove me to some destructive behaviors and dangerous risks--I am lucky for still being alive.

I like the idea of teaching kids to evaluate risks, but I wonder about the state of things in our world today. Are kids more at risk today? It's easy to fall into the line of thinking that today's world is more risky, but you could also argue that lives of teenagers were a lot worse in the violent times of the Vikings, in the times of chimney-sweep child labor, and in other parts of the world today (the violence in Israel, Chiapas, and Chechnya present a more deadly threat than drugs or sex, one could argue). What is different today in America is the information that kids are bombarded with, the marketing and images that control who and what our children strive to become.

Conservatives, both Democratic (e.g., Lieberman, Tipper Gore) and Republican (e.g., George Will (check out his commencement speech at William and Mary College), Bill O'Reilly), often complain about postmodern relativism, a lack of moral values, the decline of traditions and traditional families, and so on. I see a contradiction, though, as these same people are often also supporters of the corporatocracy, which is largely responsible for forwarding postmodernism. Corporations control the media, the markets and the products that teens buy. They put Hillary Duff (who I think sometimes looks like a thirty-year-old prostitute) and the thong-wearing Olsen twins in the faces of children, ever pushing the limit of what is an acceptable teen image. They advertise with sex, market thongs to 12-year olds, market alcohol to teens. They help create Tracy and Connie.