If you haven't figured it out, the four letters...AYKM...stand for Are You Kidding Me? I'm still shocked at the racy ads running for CW's Gossip Girl. You've seen them on billboards and in commercials. One of the spots show the characters in a heated sexual moment...and several images continue flashing...leading up to that. During the commercial you see the three letters OMG, which stand for Oh My God. In some magazines, you see this ad with one additional letter - OMFG. I'm sure you can figure out what that stands for. The ads use letters to represent words...something teens often do while texting. Although the 30 second commercial spots are meant to generate buzz around the show(and they have!), are they a little too provocative for their target audience? Sex obviously sells, but when your showing cast members in the throws of passion...and pre-teens are idolizing these actors, I'm not sure it's the most responsible thing to do.
A recent report from the CQ Press discusses which US states have the highest rates of teen pregnancies and STDs. The three states with the highest rates of teen pregnancies are Missississippi, New Mexico and Arizona. As for the highest rates of STDs: Mississippi, South Carolina, Delaware and Alaska. We may not have the highest percentages here in California, but the numbers are still high enough for us to be concerned.
Every year more than 12 million cases of sexually transmitted diseases are reported in the United States. At least 3 million among them are from teenagers. Teens have the highest rates of sexually transmitted diseases of any age group.
If shows like Gossip Girl choose to run racy ads like this, hopefully they'll incorporate safe sex into their storylines. It would be the responsible thing to do. Before provocative commercials are released for all of the public, young and old, to see...we need to find ways to emphasize to our youth that a pregnancy, or an STD, lasts way longer than a 30 second TV spot.
