As the father of two tween girls who, as I may have mentioned, are kind of obsessed with High School Musicals 1 and 2,m I feel like I should mix my metaphors and add some fuel to the fire of the ridiculous tempest in a teapot of the Vanessa Hudgens nude photos. 
(No, I'm not linking to them. If you are reading this blog and you do not know how to find pictures of naked women on the internet on your own, all I can say is, ask your husband.)
Now, my parents were theater people, and I spent a lot of time as a young child around actors and performed in many plays through the end of high school, and all I can say is looking to professional actors as role models is only slightly smarter than looking to professional athletes as role models. So is it okay for us to say that kids can enjoy the performances of these people without having to emulate them? I can say in my house, nobody has ever expressed particular admiration for any of the actors involved in these movies--they like the characters, and they are actually old enough to know the difference. I don't think that actors need to be held to some puritanical code of conduct in order to perform for children.
I mean, what the hell is the big deal here? I think the problem is that we in the United States have our collective heads up our collective asses when it comes to sexuality in general and female sexuality in particular. So, if you've missed the "scandal", Vanessa Hudgens, star of HSM one and two, apparently took some pictures of herself in her underwear, and one in the nude, and they've now made their way to the internet, and apparently some people feel that this makes her ineligible to perform for Disney. Because...why, exactly? Because she trusted someone with something intimate and they betrayed her? Shit, that just makes her eighteen. (And it's not a bad lesson I think for the kids who are asking questions about this thing that you have to be very careful about whom you trust. I mean, what teenager hasn't trusted somebody else with their secret, their heart, their virginity, whatever, and been betrayed?)
I guess the whole idea that an adult being sexual somehow disqualifies them to be in programs aimed at tweens is just so back asswards as to be offensive. My big concern about how this whole scandal is unfolding right now is that my girls are going to get the idea (not from me, but filtering through their friends and the ether and what not) that Vanessa Hudgens posing naked for an intimate acquaintance makes her bad. It's not bad for adults to be sexual--it's normal. What's abnormal and bad is repressing your sexuality--it makes you troll for sex in bathrooms. (The obvious exception--if your sexual programming makes you want to have sex with children, repress the hell out of it, or else kill yourself.)
Sexuality is one of the great perks of adulthood, and it's my hope that my kids will, in time, enjoy it safely and responsibly and without shame. I guess Vanessa Hudgens is probably pretty embarrassed to have these photos circulating, but she shouldn't be ashamed.
Hopefully most of America will see that an adult engaging in consensual sexual behavior is nothing to be ashamed of and should have no bearing on Vanessa Hudgens' continued employment with the Mouse.
A few weeks ago I wrote that the book Coffee Tea or Me was ridiculously tame because its big revelation was that women get pleasure from sex. Apparently that idea is actually more scandalous in 2007 than I thought. Cripes.
