Tragedy: When drunk girls meet men with video cameras

The crowd at Baja Cantina. (Credit: Carlos Chavez/azcentral.com)

I am not too good for spring break. I am not too moral, too uptight or too serious.

But there are just some things that suck. There are just some things that make me want to go home and start a mentoring program for young girls and teens.

There are just some things that make me want to kick big, grown men in the shins and grab them by their cheeks and shake their whole bodies violently.

There are just some things that make me want to scream at these men (it's ALWAYS men) about how they are bottom-feeders, they are parasites, they are reprehensible, vomitous losers who deserve to have their photos printed on the front pages of their local papers with the word "Predator" below them.

And there are just some things that drunk girls should not be allowed to consent to. There should be a policy regarding certain acts that if you're not sober enough to legally drive, you aren't sober enough to legally consent to do these things.

I saw girls doing these things tonight. Because they were drunk. Blind, fall-down, puke-in-the-street, cry-in-public drunk. Then I saw their barely more-sober friends scream at them and try to drag them away from the man with the video camera. (There's ALWAYS a video camera.)

This was in the middle of a big night club. There was security everywhere. And men laughing everywhere. And girls thinking this is OK everywhere.

And it broke my heart.

Let me just say that I have seen women disrobe as artistic statements, as declarations of personal pride, as joyful expressions of freedom and youthful exuberance. I have seen women share their bodies in public —in person, or via film, photography, painting, etc.—in ways that glorified them as people and that enriched the viewers as people, too.

This was not that. This was abhorrent. And if your initial reaction to this post is that I should just lighten up, that kids will be kids, or that women degrade themselves all the time, so it's not a big deal, then I would ask you to pause for just a second longer and consider the paucity of spirit that that particular attitude engenders.

These are not sober, grown adult women making choices about what to do with their bodies in public, in front of video cameras. These are high school and college students. And they deserve discretion from the adults around them, even if they are too drunk to exercise any themselves.