Teen Vogue, to some, is just not worth the read. To a parent of a teen, I will tell you something, it is and here is why.

Eventually, we parents of teenagers will have daughters who may challenge us with their view of the world and something they have read. We may have sons whose girlfriends read Teen Vogue. God help us all. In the “Sexual Health (Cough) and Identity” section comes one of the latest doozy to headlines: “Bear Creek High School Administrators Tried to Shut Down Student Newspaper’s Article About a Classmate Who Does Porn“.

Yes, you read that right. One of these students does porn and one student wanted to write about it after another student said nonchalantly, “Hey-this (fellow student) does porn”. The student’s name is Caitlin Fink. And the “award-winning” twit of a journalism teacher at Bear Creek High School by the name of Kathi Duffel thought this was a good idea:

Don’t you love how the news outlets frame porn as “adult entertainment”? It’s as if they’re trying to make it even less disgusting than it is. Not possible.

“The story focuses on the challenges the student, who is estranged from her family, has faced and how she has managed to overcome and create a successful career for herself. In her freshman year she said her grades were really bad and she was associating with the wrong group of people. It’s just profiling how she managed to overcome these kinds of obstacles and to get to where she is now, where she has a successful career and is living on her own money — she is self-reliant.”-Bailey Kirkeby, Bear Creek High School Student

Despite threats made on behalf of the Lodi Unified School District to Kathi Duffel, she “won” her battle for free speech and the article published, which you can read here. An excerpt:

“I still have the scars on my arm [from getting blood tested], [The phlebotomist] poked me four times in one arm, and she couldn’t get any blood out of it, so she poked my wrist for the blood. Four [phlebotomists] tried to get blood from me, and they were like ‘I don’t know what’s wrong; it’s not working. I swear I had it!’”

Fink was scheduled to shoot her first professional pornography scene in March, but the scene was canceled at the last minute when the company that booked her saw her body acne.

“[The company] has 4K camera quality that is crisp and clear, so they wanted me to get my body acne cleared before they shot a scene with me,” Fink said. “[My agent] told me the scenes I was going to be doing, too. I was so excited.”

Duffel intends to submit the article to the National Scholastic Press Association’s “Story of the Year” contest. Yay. More awards for the “award-winning” teacher at the expense of a very lost soul just trying to find her way. I don’t fault this 18 year-old young woman for being lead down the dark path of Pornhub and strip clubs. I hurt for her, actually. I blame the lack of parental supervision and the lack of supervision of the friends’ parents whom she is living with for this dysfunction. I blame poor role models. My guess is this girl didn’t just “fall into” the porn industry. Someone lured her there. Of course, this story does not delve into that aspect. So much for investigative journalism.

It is estimated that there are 100,000 to 150,000 under-aged child sex workers in the U.S. These girls aren’t volunteering to be sex slaves. They’re being lured—forced—trafficked into it. In most cases, they have no choice.”-John W. Whitehead, The Rutherford Institute

The statistics are alarming to say the least.

It started out very personal for us, just to tell a simple story of a girl who had made some choices. But somehow it got turned into some salacious aggrandizing of the porn industry that we were going to put out and focus on that. And how that got lost in translation is beyond me, truly.”-Kathi Duffel in an interview with Teen Vogue

Maybe because she talks about how much money she’s made in her “successful career” using her body in 5 minutes and how she is “excited” about upcoming sex scenes she now (legally) can perform, according to her scumbag agent? That is, after she takes care of that unsightly body acne…

What gets me about this is Teen Vogue‘s whole focus on the “humanizing” aspect of an industry that is dark, abusive towards women and objectifies women. I thought we needed to “believe women” when they are abused and objectified? I thought this was not okay, ever? Nope, it’s okay as long as you’re enjoying it and making the fat stacks of cash. It’s just a “simple story about a woman who had made some choices”. It’s filed under “human interest” in the school newspaper and under “sexual health” (THAT is a laugh) in Teen Vogue.

Journalism teacher, Kathi Duffel, may just get her award. Student journalist, Bailey Kirkeby will probably never know or understand a real struggle and will go to college on a journalism scholarship and grow up to be a good little liberal. Teen Vogue will capitalize on this story and continue to spread this tripe to young, unassuming women that porn is completely normal and a lucrative career. Meanwhile, young porn star, Caitlin Fink, at the ripe old age of 18, will continue her “successful career” while getting monthly blood tests for HIV and God only knows what else while she swims around in the cesspool that is the porn industry and people who don’t even know her pray for her lost soul. And this is why I truly hate some members of the human species.

Photo Credit: Flickr/Creative Commons/Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)/Cropped