Oh, won't somebody please think of the children?

Holden Caulfield is a 16-years-old teenager, protagonist of The Catcher in the Rye, a J. D. Salinger’s novel. Holden recently had a breakdown because he did not want to assume that he was growing and will soon become an adult, with all the negative aspects that being one means.

The novel is written in first person so we just see the reality in Holden’s terms and the readers have the work of interpreting that. In this sense, Holden makes a lot of contradictions, particularly in the way in which he socializes with others, that make us understand the difficult stage that he is living.  

The adult world is represented as one full of complexities, hypocrisy, badness, conflicts and changes, and this terrorize Holden. But one of the aspects that scare him the most is sexuality, that is wider processed along the novel.

The title “The Catcher in the Rye” is related to a song that Holden listened from a child that was once singing in the street. He misunderstood that the song was about a guy on a rye that was observing children playing on a cliff. The task of the guy was to protect the children from falling off the cliff, catching them if they were in danger. Holden process this idea as protecting children’s innocence, the problem was that Phoebe, Holden’s little sister, told him that the lyric of that song was completely different.

The original song was about two people having a romantic encounter on the field next to a river. Actually it is completely the opposite of what he had understood, because he wanted to protect children from this sexualization but the metaphor of the catcher in the rye was about casual sex encounters. Ironic, isn’t it?

Today in the evening I went to the shopping center because I wanted to buy something for eating. I needed motivation to write this post and food seems to be the answer for all our questions. The mother source of inspiration. Once in the food court, I listened how a group of children were screaming and playing very happily with the sound of the typical Chilean children’s song: el congelao’. I suppose it was part of a familiar activity organized by the mall’s administration, but suddenly the childish music changed abruptly to reggaeton.

I will not lie about my musical preferences and yes, I do like to sing or dance reggaeton sometimes in a party, but watching how little 7-years-old smurfs were singing as a choir “ella no estaba enamora’ de mí, pero le gusta como yo le doy” as Don Miguelo’s song claims was pretty shocking, even annoying.

That uncomfortable moment made me reflect about how children are being hypersexualized at every time more and more early age. I have an 11-years-old little brother and the minimal idea of him losing his childhood and innocence due to the grotesquely amount of “only-adult” content in many platforms became me crazy. I just could think: oh, won’t somebody please think of the children?

I mean, for a moment I felt like Holden wanting to protect all children, especially my little not-so-little brother from the invasive publicity, erotic tv models who reinforce the idea that to be important nowadays it is necessary a body that has been through surgery, protect them also from the stereotypes of beauty and teach them that people should not be as a standard model to look beautiful. We are all beautiful in our own way.

But Holden did not counted with an enemy that I have today: the internet. What can I do to protect my little brother’s innocence if we are submerged in this world wide web? Can I be at the rye watching him 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, waiting if he is in danger to catch him and protect him? Painfully, I think I do not have the answer, or simply I can’t.

Actually, I do think that I can understand why Holden can not get separated from his little brother Allie’s memories. It is not easy to see how a fragile child is turning into a bigger and older person, who surely will be as phony as the rest of the adult population. From my point of view, it is almost like losing the child that you took care of years ago. In my case, my little brother is not dying, but he is (maybe in this exact moment), letting go his childhood thanks to the uncensored reality contained on the internet (or magazines, tv shows, songs’ lyrics, newspapers, publicity, stamped towels, etc!).  

In my opinion, the last thing that I can do is to serve as a guide if my brother needs one. If I do not want him to pass through all these changes to the adult life alone, who nobody taught me how to face, all what I can do is to offer him my help, as I am sure Holden would have done with Allie and probably will do with Phoebe.