Every so often, Joel Caruana hits the headlines. For those not in the know, Mr Caruana is the enterprising organiser of teen parties. A couple of criminal sentences handed down in his regard have not put a dampener on his apparent zeal to become a teen party organiser extraordinaire.
They are not put off at the prospect of being considered mainly as sex objects, they welcome it
Last month, Caruana was handed a suspended two-year jail term after he admitted defiling a 14-year-old, participating in sexual activities with her and offending public morals. A photo of him cupping her breast was produced in court. He had already been sentenced to a 10-month prison term, suspended for two years, in November 2010 for engaging in sexual acts with a 13-year-old girl.
Never one to let the trivial matter of a couple of convictions for fondling prepubescent girls deter him from organising a party for the same cohort of prepubescent girls (and boys), Caruana has announced that the party will be held. He bemoans the bureaucracy involved in obtaining the necessary permits, but is quite upbeat about the prospects of this giant kiddy gathering being held. “We promised we will be back and we will be back,” he declares on his Facebook wall (Where else?).
Now the authorities seem to be all afluster as to whether a permit will be issued for Caruana to hold this party. There seems to be a fair amount of hand-wringing about it online too. How can it be possible for our young and innocent girls be exposed to someone like Caruana? Won’t their purity be tainted once they are in close proximity to the party-meister?
Whatever concerns the authorities and parents may have do not seem to be shared by the teens flocking to Caruana’s parties. More than a thousand of them have indicated they will be attending the upcoming teen party, and all previous editions have been a resounding success in terms of attendance.
Caruana himself seems to be quite a hit with young girls. Judging by the number of photos of young teens draped round him on his Facebook page, it would appear that Caruana is to tweenies and teens, what George Clooney is to their mothers.
There’s one photo where Caruana sporting a white vest slouches against a souped-up Honda with two young girls poured over him. Both are wearing pussy pelmets and soaring heels. Neither have womanly curves. They look like little girls kitted up in Jerseylicious clothes.
Actually, most of the girls at Caruana’s parties look like that – the soft porn aesthetic is the look of choice for them. They are not put off by the prospect of being considered mainly as sex objects – they welcome it. These girls want to look hot. Because, as Ariel Levy writes in her book Female Chauvinist Pigs, “hotness has become our cultural currency”.
Increasingly, womens’ and girls’ worth has become measurable by how hot they appear to be. Other attributes such as beauty, intelligence and professional and sporting success have all become less important to that of hotness – or appearing to be always sexually available and being grateful for any attention received because of one’s physicality. This explains why successful professional women feel the need to pose provocatively in magazines or why even female Olympians thought it necessary to appear naked in Playboy.
It was as if these sportswomen did not consider their amazing athletic feats to be important enough. Or as Levy put it, “Bimbos enjoy a higher standing in our culture than Olympians right now.”
This ‘ambition’ to be a bimbo is a prime motivation of many of the 13-year-old girls who flock to teen parties looking for all the world as if they’re wannabe bunny girls. Maybe we should worry less about the parties and more about why generations of young girls have such limited ambitions in life.
cl.bon@nextgen.net.mt